Don’t look for the Internet to replace broadcast news and other...

lacks the “model, the mass or the momentum to fill the void that has eviscerated traditional media,” he said. “Big media likes to tell us the age of mergers and consolidation is over -- but I guess Comcast, NBCU and AT&T never got the memo. And most of what I read from the analysts now is that the stars are aligning for more deals, more consolidation, more stations owned by hedge funds, banking trusts and private equity firms for whom the public interest may be a wholly alien concept.” So all’s “not well in the land of journalism,” Copps said at an awards ceremony at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles. “The praiseworthy reporting that we honor today becomes harder to find because there is less of it,” Copps said: There’s a worsening “crisis” in journalism. The commissioner has long bemoaned the state of media and has opposed consolidation. He spoke of “a multitude of discouraging signs that new media is heading down the road that traditional media trod” of consolidating and “public policy shortfalls.” Copps said he wants the FCC “to start doing its part” to help the situation. He wants to require more disclosure of political ads, and for radio and TV stations to do more to show they deserve license renewals, Copps said Tuesday, repeating previous remarks. It’s “utterly unfathomable to me that some in Washington are trying to gut the very limited funding we currently provide for this precious news, information and education resource,” he said of efforts to defund federal money that goes to public broadcasters. “Other democracies leave us in the dust by investing meaningful resources in public broadcasting, while the issue here is lining it out of the budget,” Copps said. He praised programming on NPR and PBS.