Federal Communications Commissioner Michael Copps criticized American media in a speech airing yesterday on BBC World News America.

Copps said that media in the U.S. isn’t “producing the body of news and information that democracy needs to conduct its civic dialogue,” the Los Angeles Times reported.

Specifically, he called out television news and stated he thinks it is “in its hour of grave peril.”

Copps also is expected to say in a speech today at Columbia Journalism School that the government is partially responsible.

“The place where I work — the Federal Communications Commission — blessed it all, encouraged the consolidation mania, and went beyond even that to eviscerate just about every public interest responsibility that generations of reformers had fought for and won in radio and TV,” Copps is quoted as saying.