Trump administration. Joining us are two former members of the federal communications commission, robert mcdowell, republican member, served from 20062013, and Michael Copps, former member on the democratic side, 20012011. And, in fact, served as acting chair for about half a year. Michael copps, you were there during a president ial transition. Whats the process like . What happens at this point . Guest well, i think the process is going to vary from Incoming Administration to Incoming Administration. Youre in the middle of a transition now. We hear rumors about whos in and whos out, is there even a transition going on. I assume there is. I hope that the business of the commission will continue as we go between here and january. There are a lot of items teed up that Republican Commissions and democratic commissions both have worked on in recent years, and i think its time to put some of those issues behind us. Therea whole negeraon ofelomnitis su o e,ndrsm a co those whats the future of the internet Going Beyond Network neutrality, what does it mean with artificialintelligence, what does it mean for jobs, what about the consolidation and commercialization . These are issues we havent really even broached yet. So this is a time of transition. I hope were going to focus more on issues rather than whos going to be the next chairman or who held the most fundraisers for a specific candidate or Something Like that. Such a vibrant and important part of the economy, and all of our lives as individuals, so we need to look afresh during this transition about what it is were going to be doing. Host robert mcdowell, you went from being in the majority to the minority. Did you try to push some things through the transition period . Guest first of all, a shoutout to my colleague and good friend, Michael Copps, he was acting chairman in 2009, and the commission was down to three commissioners with our friend, Jonathan Adelstein, undertaking the Digital Television transition. And it was what we call now the era of the three amigos led by the chief amigo right here. And i will destroy both all the credibility we have for all of our constituencies, mike copse copps and i agreed 900 of the time during 100 of the time during our tenure. I wore by duke cuff links and tie today just for that purpose. But the transitions are very important. During the bush to obama transition, we all worked with the obama Transition Team. They came and visited me as a commissioner and vice versa, and we talked about ideas such as on fcc process reform. Mike and i worked together a lot on those issues as well, what can be more transparent, speedier, more public comment, etc. So all these things are important in terms of policy making and the nuts and bolts operations of government. You can disagree on the outcome, but you should have a fair, open and transparent process in the interim. Guest you know, the city has gotten a lot more partisan over the last few years. But hearkening back to that spirit we had then, i really hope that we can keep that in mind as we move ahead. Obviously, there are always 32 votes, theres always division on big issues. But you have to have some level of cheej yallty collegiality and camaraderie, and i think when that slips away, its very much to the detriment and the credibility of the fcc host has it slipped away in this current fcc . Guest well, i think everything in washington has slipped away when it comes to partisanship. I think most votes at the fcc are still unanimous, but when you get to big issues, whether its media ownership or privacy, theres going to be partisanship. But on the personal realm, thats why for years aye said lets get away from this closed meeting rule that prohibits commissioners from getting together and talk about issues. You can have the lawyers there to have it all above board and above suspicion and all that, but i think so much of the personal conflicts that weve seen and this goes back before this commission too could be aleve acleaveuated if commissioners alleviated if commissioners could sit around a table like this. Host robert mcdowell, ajit pai has endorsed letters sent by the Commerce Committee in the senate saying hold off on controversial items during this transition period. Do you agree with him . Guest i do. First of all, hes my former colleague and a friend, but this is tradition. Doesnt matter if youre a republican or a democrat. The same thing happened in 2008 when george w. Bush was leaving office and barack obama was coming in. The Democratic Leaders of the relevant committees in congress sent a very similar letter to thenchairman kevin martin, and so we actually ended up having our meetings sort of by teleconference. I remember actually the very last meeting for my other former colleague, deborah tate, was by phone which was kind of sad in a way. She didnt get the proper sendoff. Nonetheless, there were not major, complex issues tackled. We had hoped that we could have reform of universal service, but had to wait until Julius Genachowski was in office. So these are normal things. The elections happened, put your pencils down, its the American People have voted for a change, so lets move on, and big, controversial issues will happen later. Guest but before we got, before we got to having a permanent chairman while i was interim chairman, we did the dtv transition. And rob and i and jonathan, we teed up an initiative on broadband strategy where were going to have we did some stuff on forbearance, on translators. We did quite a few things, and it just seems to me on Something Like special access or bds, i remember signing letters, and maybe rob was there too in 2007, promising congress that we would, we would deal with this issue by 2007. And now its 2017 almost ten years later, and its not there. So at some point you just have to say, okay, lets, lets go ahead and do what weve got. But we cant go back and start all this research over and all this data gathering and everybody fighting about every level of data that you want to get. Its time to move on. There are new issues, as i said at the outset, that the commission needs to tee up if its going to do justice by the internet and the digital age. Host lets bring brian fung of the Washington Post into this issue. Thanks, peter. Two issues that have been controversial and dropped off the radar, one being the bds proceeding and the other settop box. Do you see those coming back in 2017 . Business data service, these are the big pipes that connect Office Buildings and cell towers, big data pipes, and so the wheeler fcc has wanted to regulate that more. It was actually the clinton era sec that deregulated it under a price cap regime. So i dont see that being a priority. Now, let me caveat everything by first of all saying when it comes to the donald trump era, the prediction business has been hard hit, right . Nobodys really predicted whats happened this year. So here we are, we can take our best guess. We really dont know for sure. But i sense that what plans chairman wheeler teed up for Business Data Services and also the settop box item where there wasnt any unanimity or consensus among the democrats for starters is probably also not going to get a off the ground in 2017. Guest i hope thats not true. I hope we can deal with it. There is an item that is being negotiated. I think it can be discussed and dealt with before this commission ends. You know, were still in the early stages of analyzing what this election means, but to me, this was not a typical liberal or conservative contest or even republican versus democrat. If the media is correct in its early analysis that we didnt hear a hot from the rust belt or we didnt hear a lot of reporting of what people were thinking about in Rural America and small town villages, keep in mind these arent employees of at t or verizon or cox or comcast were talking about, these are americans out all across the country who dont like paying 232 a year, who dont hike all this consolidation thats going on, who dont like bills that are constantly going up and up. So i think, i think president elect trump will probably take a close look at this too and try to figure out that and what fights he needs to get involved in and what he doesnt and what really reflects the base of people who came out to vote for him. It might be a little different than were thinking right now in these early stages of electoral analysis. Guest lets hope, though, that the fcc restores its image as an infeint9 agency independent agency. Same with the federal trade commission. So i think that needs to be revitalized, that image. These are independent expert agency, should not be an arm of the executive branch. Thats been the transition. So you appoint good people who understand the subject matter be regardless of the outcome. I think you would agree with me on that. But i think thats going to be a major point for improvement here guest if you commissioner copps point, you know, one question seems to be looking at who president elect trump has tapped to lead the transition. One big question is whether theres a tension here between more establishment type figures versus folks who want to sort of shake up the system, if you will. And, you know, whats your expectation for that tension as it applies to the fcc in. Guest well, i dont know what my expectation is, but the first thing we ought to do is confirm nominees for the federal communication commission. Poor Jessica Rosen wore el sits down there rosenworcel got caught up in strictly nasty partisan politics. Everybody, i think democrat as well as republican, realizes her expertise, theres probably never been a commissioner that came into that job with more knowledge of the Telecommunications Industry and spectrum and all these things. Shes mastered it, and shes sitting out there not knowing if shes going to be on the commission in january because of capitol hill politics. If congress was serious about this being an independent agency, we went through a process where her name came up long ago. Why in the world wont they vote on her and confirm her and let her do her job . Thats a harsh indictment of government. I i think its just unexcusable that shes in this situation, and its inexcuse beinexcusable that an independent agency is held hostage to this kind of politicking. Not the way it should be. Many. Commissioner, do you see a path forward for commissioner rosenworcel . Guest thats up to the Senate Majority leader and the senate to figure out. Thats also perhaps up to chairman wheeler in that there are three democrats on the his term as a commissioner doesnt run out for a couple more years. So he has it within his power, i think, to make that happen potentially. But if you have three democrats who could essentially be sitting on a Republican Commission deep into 2017 and 2018 and not knowing the outcome of that, i think thats probably on the minds of many. Back to your other point, we just dont know who will be appointed to these agencies at subcabinet level. Were taping this a week after we understood the Election Results or knew what the outcome was, so, you know, the Transition Team is not going to turn its attention to subcabinet level appointments such as fcc chairman for quite a while. And anyone whos saying with great conviction they know whos going to be the next chair is full of it as with these oh subcabinet positionings. Thats the big wildcard, and maybe we can reconvene in 30 days or so, peter host were speaking and, in fact, were taping this right before the fcc meeting for november. Guest right. Host so if some of the big ticket or controversial items are on that agenda, could they be overturned in january . Guest absolutely. So thats part of the tension here that we talked about earlier, those congressional letters saying pencils down. You know, these 32 votes that have happened over the years, a lot of those items, i think, will be overturned, maybe replaced. You know, i think industry, Public Interest groups, think tanks, all the rest, consumer groups want to understand what the rules of the road is. So merely repealing things every four years doesnt do anyone any good because investment decisions, buying decisions, Consumer Behavior are influenced by what the government does here. So will Congress Step up and legislate some of this . Theres a terrific opportunity over the next 18 months to do just that. So if you look at the title ii classification of Broadband Internet access service, i think thats probably very ripe for the fcc to repeal that, but will Congress Step in to have rules of the road . Two years ago we were very close to a bipartisan consensus between senator john thune and senator bill nelson on the relevant committee, and i think that spirit can be rekindled to protect an open internet and freedom, to have a win win situation where the edge of providers over the top providers all can flourish as well as Network Operators have an incentive to continue to invest in what will be the internet of things and 5g connectivity and the denseification needed to make the internet of things happen under 5g. So i think congress has a terrific opportunity here to act, but most people say just repeal things and not knowing what the rules of the road are is unhealthy, what are you going to replace it with . The world needs to understand what the constructs will be going forward. Guest its always easier for the incoming folks to say this, and as the outcoming, i understand thats just, thats just a fact of life, and you have to deal with it. But again, back to the independent agency. If the independent agencys been working on Business Development services, special access, been working onsettop box under deadlines sent by congress, get this done, and its 5, 0, 15 years later, vote on em. Yes, the next commission can do away with whatever they want to do away with, assuming they can get the courts to go along with it, and that opens up the whole Net Neutrality which were not talking about right this second. But it should do its job with the evidence it has, and as i said, for heavens sake, lets put some of these ballots behind us. Were not selecting commissioners just to deal for another ten years with special access or settop boxings. We have a commission here thats responsible for oversight of a sixth of the economy. All these important questions i talked about before that go to the core of where we live and how we work and how many jobs are going to be displaced in this new digital age. We ought to have having a white house conference or some kind of a blue ribbon conference on the future of the internet. And part and parcel of that, and this gets me into the train i feel so passionately about, is whats the future of news and information on the internet, whats the future of journalism, whats the future of the jobs that you guys do . This is going to be our town square of our democracy paved with broadband bricks, how are we going to get real news and information on there instead of the stuff we see up there now . Is it fake or is it real . All this sort of stuff. Its a travesty. Its not, its not what selfgovernment needs in order to not just thrive, but to survive. This was just, you know, this election weve been through was the ultimate commercialized reality show of voting celebrities off of the island. It had nothing to do with the problems of democracy, nothing to do with the real problems this country faces, and theyre Serious Problems that can drag the country down. Already its dragging it down. We need to get receives. Guest are you saying the government should be the arbiter of what is fake news or not . Guest i am saying we as a society have to come up with some model that brings back a lot of the Investigative Journalism that we have lost over the last 20 years. Weve lost maybe half of our newsroom employees. We have lost deep dive journalism. Weve got reporters now, you know, heres your job for the day. Cover these ten things, write something in the computer, write a cute headline, if it doesnt get clicks what happened to those days with the muckrakers where they go out and take a year. Find out whats going on in the energy industry, the telecom industry, the meatpacking industry, and theyd do it. Theyd go off for a year or two, come back and write a 50,000word or article, and people would read that. Were not informingouts. How did this come under a lot of criticism for contributing to the spread of fake news. Do you think facebook has a responsibility guest of course i do. Theyre making a lot of money off the news, all these aggregators. What are they putting back into journalism, google or all these people . Investive reporting is expensive, but it is a public good. It is a public necessity. I mean, you can go back to James Madison and Thomas Jefferson and all of those folks who realized this was a crying need of society. Thats why they subsidized the distribution of newspapers and all of that, because they knew that this experiment of theirs, which nobody knew would succeed or not in selfgovernment, depended upon the people having news and information. To me now, for the last few years ive said according to somebody else, i forget who that our democratic dialogue has been dumbed down. Im asking now, is it did. Im that worried about it. Is our democratic civic guest both our parents were print journalists, as you may know, so i think it was the era before the crossownership ban and the tvradio crossownership ban. I think weve seen a big decline in newspapers because of Natural Market progression, but now youre required to fund two newsrooms, tv or radio an