[Peace-discuss] Fwd: 'FCC: Public Be Damned' from The Nation

[Alfred Kagan]

FYI from Bob McChesney


Please spread this around the Internet. Thanks, Bob

http://thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20030602&s=nichols

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>    FCC: Public Be Damned
>    by John Nichols & Robert W. McChesney
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>    Cheered on by the Bush Administration and powerful media
>    conglomerates, Federal Communications Commission chair Michael
>    Powell is pushing ahead with a June 2 vote to gut longstanding rules
>    designed to prevent the growth of media monopolies. If successful,
>    Powell's push could, in the words of dissident commissioner Michael
>    Copps, "dramatically [alter] our nation's media landscape without
>    the kind of debate and analysis that these issues clearly merit."
>    Copps and the other Democratic commissioner, Jonathan Adelstein,
>    have asked for a thirty-day delay in the vote, but Powell has the
>    upper hand--he and two other Republican commissioners form a
>    majority on the five-member FCC. The chairman will not win without a
>    fight, however, as his decision to force a vote on rule changes that
>    have not been broadly debated or analyzed has provoked a fierce
>    response from the widest coalition of critics ever to weigh in on an
>    FCC rule-making decision.
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>    Powell's contempt for public opinion, evidenced by his scheduling of
>    only one official hearing on the proposed rule changes, is so great
>    that he refused invitations to nine semiofficial hearings at which
>    other commissioners were present. The hearings drew thousands of
>    citizens and close to universal condemnation of the rule changes.
>    Likewise, an examination of roughly half the 18,000 public statements
>    filed electronically with the FCC show that 97 percent of them oppose
>    permitting more media concentration. Even media moguls Barry Diller
>    and Ted Turner have raised objections, with Turner complaining,
>    "There's really five companies that control 90 percent of what we
>    read, see and hear. It's not healthy."
>
>    Outraged by Powell's antidemocratic approach, Common Cause has
>    launched a national petition drive demanding a delay in the vote,
>    while web activists at MoveOn.org are highlighting the issue in
>    bulletins and calling on the "media corps" they organized to monitor
>    media bias during the Iraq war to turn its energies toward stopping
>    the FCC vote. Consumers Union and Free Press, a national media-reform
>    network, have launched a letter-writing campaign to Congress and the
>    FCC from www.mediareform.net. Local governments are also getting
>    involved; the Chicago City Council urged rejection of the proposed
>    changes in a resolution that declared: "Unchecked media consolidation
>    benefits a small number of corporate interests at the expense of the
>    public interest."
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>    Noting that the consolidation of radio ownership that followed
>    passage of the 1996 Telecommunications Act has proven disastrous for
>    pop music, journalism and local communities, Bonnie Raitt, Billy
>    Joel, Don Henley, Patti Smith, Pearl Jam and other musicians signed a
>    letter telling Powell they were "extremely concerned as American
>    citizens that increased concentration of media ownership will have a
>    negative impact on access to diverse viewpoints and will impede the
>    functioning of our democracy." Nearly 300 academics signed a letter
>    to the FCC protesting Powell's refusal to allow an evaluation of the
>    "research" he has talked of using to justify relaxing the media
>    ownership rules. The national associations of Hispanic and black
>    journalists called on the FCC to delay action until more study of
>    threats to diversity could be completed. Leaders of the AFL-CIO, the
>    Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, the Consumer Federation of
>    America and many other groups argued that Powell had not allowed
>    enough time to analyze the potential damage to democracy.
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>    On Capitol Hill, nearly 100 House Democrats signed a letter by
>    Representatives Bernie Sanders, Maurice Hinchey and Sherrod Brown
>    calling on Powell to delay the June 2 vote on the rules, open the
>    process to public comment and demonstrate how his proposed changes in
>    ownership limits will serve the public interest by promoting
>    diversity, competition and localism. Fifteen senators, led by Maine
>    Republican Olympia Snowe, declared in a letter to the FCC: "We
>    believe it is virtually impossible to serve the public interest in
>    this extremely important and highly complex proceeding without
>    letting the public know about and comment on the changes you intend
>    to make to these critical rules."
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>    The stirrings in Congress prodded the Bush Administration and its
>    allies. Commerce Secretary Don Evans urged Powell to proceed with the
>    June 2 vote regardless of the opposition, and business-friendly
>    members of the House echoed that call. But the political climate
>    surrounding media ownership has become so electric that nothing
>    should be taken for granted. Twelve of the fifteen senators who
>    signed the Snowe letter to Powell are members of the Commerce
>    Committee, and committee chair John McCain--though he did not sign
>    the letter--has overseen three recent hearings at which sharp
>    criticisms of FCC moves promoting media consolidation were raised
>    both by Democratic and Republican senators. McCain says he will call
>    the FCC commissioners to a hearing after June 2, and he may yet join
>    efforts to have Congress renew at least some of the rules. In
>    addition, Senate Appropriations Committee chair Ted Stevens and David
>    Obey, the ranking Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee, are
>    making noises about having Congress step in to defend controls
>    against monopoly. Even if Powell prevails on June 2, the tempest will
>    continue to grow. He may ultimately be remembered not for loosening
>    the rules but for pushing so hard he woke America up, forcing
>    public-interest concerns back into the debate over media ownership.
>
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>This article can be found on the web at:
>
>http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20030602&s=nichols
>
>
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-- 


Al Kagan
African Studies Bibliographer and Professor of Library Administration
Africana Unit, Room 328
University of Illinois Library
1408 W. Gregory Drive
Urbana, IL 61801, USA

tel. 217-333-6519
fax. 217-333-2214
e-mail. akagan at uiuc.edu