An FCC leader who served for ten years made a public confession for the murder of journalism.

Former FCC commissioner Michael Copps released an open letter on the Columbia Journalism Review last week the confessed to standing by as media conglomerates ate up independent journalism and undermined democracy. 

Copps was a commissioner for 10 years, beginning in 2001. Since he stepped down, "the situation has only gotten worse," referring to the recent merger of Comcast and Time Warner Cable or the January ruling by a U.S. Court of Appeals against the FCC and net neutrality.  

Back when Copps joined the FCC, he was looking forward to defining technologies role in the information age to expand access and innovation, according to the letter. However, the FCC at the time, as Copps put it, "had fallen madly in love with industry consolidation," encouraging deals and mergers until the market became homogenous.

"stead of expanding news, the conglomerates cut the muscle out of deep-dive reporting and disinvested," Copp wrote.

And those are the same conglomerates that are the gatekeepers to the internet. Copp pointed out that Americans pay more and get less when it comes to broadband access thanks to FCC deregulations.

"Broadband is the critical infrastructure that will fuel 21st century," Copp wrote. "Jobs, health, education and democracy, just as roads, bridges, railways, highways, and rural electricity fueled the earlier growth of our nation. But until we develop a sense of mission to bring high-speed, low-cost broadband to everyone [...] the future will belong to others."