The media reform crowd is going nuts over reports that the Federal Communications Commission is holding closed door meetings with ISPs, Google, and Skype in a bid to reach a compromise deal on the agency's proposed net neutrality rules.

"It is stunning that the FCC would convene meetings between industry giants to allow them determine how the agency should best protect the public interest," declared Free Press. "The Obama administration promised a new era of transparency, and to 'take a backseat to no one' on 'Net neutrality, but these meetings seem to indicate that this FCC has no problem brokering backroom deals without any public input or scrutiny."

The Wall Street Journal says that the talks involve coming up with a compromise that would dodge making "wholesale changes" in how the FCC oversees broadband, but would still get the agency some enforcement power over Internet service providers. The fear among the big ISPs is that the Commission will partially reclassify them as telecommunications carriers, and govern their activities via various common carrier rules.

"We're going to have a whole series of stakeholder meetings," FCC Chief of Staff Edward Lazarus told the WSJ.

And something along those lines is also going to happen over at the Senate Commerce Committee, it appears. The Hill reports opaque meetings between that committee's staff and various stakeholders scheduled for Friday.

"It seems clear that top lobbyists from the major Internet service providers, such as AT&T, Verizon, and Comcast, will be invited," the publication says. A list of attendees to the Friday meeting at the Senate will be posted soon.

The big question is who else will be defined as "stakeholders" in these discussions; will consumer groups count? And if so, which ones?

"This secretive process is especially unseemly for what is supposed to have been the most transparent FCC in history," the Media Access Project's Andrew Schwartzman chimed in just a few minutes ago. Indeed, given that the agency says it wants to add a transparency rule to its current Internet "four freedoms" policy, that principle should also apply here.