C-SPAN has no real clout. In the end members of Congress really don't want to be seen and heard like we've shown them. They [prefer] that the process not be seen. And lately there have been a couple who admit it. Freshman [Rep.] George Nethercutt [R-Wash.] is on the record saying that because we're here, we're the problem.
They only want things to be open so much. We've asked to put our own cameras in the chamber of the House and the Senate, and have been laughed at behind the scenes. [Congress has always controlled the cameras.] We've made some inroads, but we're a long way from getting to the real story of what goes on in Washington, D.C.
Reason: So much of it goes on at the markups and the committee meetings that you can only cover selectively.
Lamb: Now we're allowed to show all committee meetings, but for 15 years John Dingell [D-Mich., former chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee] wouldn't allow cameras into a markup. We asked at the beginning of the 104th Congress to cover all markups, all conferences, all committee meetings, and were given that in the rules of the House.
But now what happens in conferences is we show up with our cameras, and they'll have a public meeting, and then they'll shut it down and do private meetings until they get their decisions made, and you'll never see how the deals are cut. Then they'll come back to the public meeting and we'll be able to show the last hour of the debate, but you'll never know how staff put the whole thing together behind the scenes. I suspect you're never going to know. I think people will find ways to not show the public how the decisions are really reached.
Reason: You are in an unregulated sector, you don't have a public interest obligation, you don't have a license from the FCC, you're out there in the unregulated world, yet somehow this oasis of information and objectivity has blossomed. How did C-SPAN become C-SPAN?
Lamb: The short answer is that [fairness] was our objective and we stuck by our objective--that was our mission.
I took at face value what people were saying--in the government and in the media and in business over the years--that all they really cared about was fairness and objectivity. And the closer I got to it, the less I believed it.
I'm not trying to do an "Aw shucks" routine here, but I'm a little guy from a small town in Indiana who believed in all those civics teachers. When I came here, looked at it up close, saw it first hand, I said, "This is not what I was taught. This is just not the way that they told me in civics class that it was supposed to be."
I've been enormously lucky to have had some tremendously honest businesspeople who trusted me and supported me--and now us--to get this job done. I can take you to no less than 15 human beings and say these people made this place work because they learned what we were really up to, and then they really believed, and now they are our strongest supporters. They would kill for us. They are cable television executives who have been slammed by Congress saying, "They're nothing but greedy people--all they care about is money." But they did create an institution that truly belongs to the public.
I never believed in the Fairness Doctrine. I thought it was the biggest joke in the history of the world. To put a government official in the Federal Communications Commission and say, "You decide what's fair" is outrageous.
Then we came [along] saying, "We're not going to make money," and we got support from all these different cable television executives, and they've never ever interfered with us, ever. At the base of most American businesspersons, once you scratch through all the nonsense, is a very honest individual who wants to do the right thing. That's what I've experienced here. And that story is never told because the press doesn't particularly care about it--they don't want to say anything nice about people in business.
I have no problem saying that, because I've seen it first hand, and I've seen [businesspeople] be a lot more honest in the end than some people in my own profession, meaning the media business. Because people in the media business are no more honest than people in business. They just like to think they are.
Reason: How many people watch C-SPAN?
Lamb: I have absolutely no idea.
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