Copps feels vindicated by court ruling

From Multichannel News by Ted Hearn:

"If voters toss out the Bush Administration in November, the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission in January could be Michael Copps."

"The court strongly rebuked the FCC's Diversity Index — basically, a formula for calculating ownership diversity in a local market for the purpose of deciding which mergers to allow and which to block.

The court also said the FCC accorded the Internet too much weight as a source of local news in competition with TV and radio stations.

Pointing to just one strange outcome, the court said the Diversity Index, as applied in the New York City market, assigned more market impact to Dutchess (County) Community College's TV station than to The New York Times and a Times-owned radio station.

“A Diversity Index that requires us to accept that a community college television station makes a greater contribution to viewpoint diversity than a conglomerate that includes the third-largest newspaper in America also requires us to abandon both logic and reality,” the court said in an opinion by Circuit Judge Thomas L. Ambro and joined by Circuit Judge Julio M. Fuentes."