FCC Plan Will Result in Freedom Of or From the Press? 132
macduffman writes "Kevin Martin, Chairman of the FCC, has fired a volley in the war against media moguls ... or is it in the war against freedom of the press? An article in the Editor and Publisher describes the plan to ban cross-ownership in the same market (i.e., owning a newspaper and a broadcast station in the same city). Several waivers exist for some current ownerships, but would not be passed on to new owners. The plan calls for public comment beginning in mid-November, and the FCC would vote on it a month later." This follows an unpopular 2003 decision by the FCC that was eventually invalidated by the courts. At issue is the speed at which this complex decision is being carried out: "Media consolidation opponents said Wednesday that the chairman may be moving too fast. Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., said that one month for the public to consider the rule is not enough time. 'If that's his intention, it's going to subvert the public interest,' he said. 'The FCC needs to learn a lesson here from what happened previously.'" Update: 10/19 17:58 GMT by Z :Rewritten for clarity.
That is freedom OF (Score:3, Insightful)
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its not "fixing" (Score:3, Insightful)
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Whew! Good thing that's not the case [corporations.org]!
Funny you mention that... (Score:2)
The day after the head of CC had a "meeting" with Shrub, suddenly all their talk hosts stopped talking about his treasonous Illegal Immigration Amnesty plans and his treasonous plan to sell the US down the "North American Union" river.
Coincidence? I think not. Multiple callers have been cut off since then. I think the head of CC got marching orders from Shrub to squelch it, and the talk hosts were given their
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its anti-monopoly regulation and it is necessary. if such regulations werent around, united states would be controlled by around 4-5 big robber barons as of now. up to now there was not a regulation for individual media channels for this. this new thing is good.
It already pretty much is.
TFS:
Several waivers exist for some current ownerships, but would not be passed on to new owners.
And so, will also get worse since it will effectively lock the barons in place forevermore. If they were really serious, they'd bust up some of them up now.
Clearly both politicians and established corporations love this bill.
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Why is that?
I'm always skeptical when people in the US are skeptical of their own government, since when it's working right, the government is us.
I'm skeptical to the extent that corporations have increasingly become the government. We need to go back to the public running the government instead of private interests owning it.
Most of this "skepticism" of the government is a canard that's been propagated by the authoritarian Right Wing.
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Most of this skepticism was started by our founding fathers. You might want to read some history books.
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Well, you are certainly right as far as you mean it, but I believe the GP poster was referring to the modern American Right Wing notion that government cannot be the solution (or at least the vehicle of the solution) for any of our problems. For example, Ronald Reagan (in)famously said someth
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We have to also remember that our Founding Fathers used that skepticism to write our Constitution and start a government by, of and for the people.
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Re:That is freedom OF (Score:4, Interesting)
The problem is this: print is dying. A lot of what keeps print media and news radio and other niche services alive is the cross-promotion on other media outlets in the same market. Were it not for that, we'd have even fewer newspapers than the already vanishingly small number that we have today. At this point, I think web publishing is quickly emerging as a replacement for what the print media used to be, and there's only so much we should do to force the independence of what amounts to a dying medium.
Even as someone who generally supports laws to limit ownership of large numbers of media outlets in a single market, I find myself against the cross-ownership rules. That's not the right way to ensure freedom of the press. What we need are laws that undo the consolidation of the radio industry that we've already seen (and the continuation of the laws we have that protect TV from the same fate).. We need to:
That is how you ensure freedom of the press---not by preventing one individual from being able to control a single stack of local media (a TV station, a radio station, and a newspaper), but by ensuring that for any given medium, there are multiple independent outlets through which different voices can be heard.
sensible (Score:2)
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Mandate local ownership by setting a maximum of 50% of the radio stations in a market that may be owned by any company or individual not headquartered within the station's reception range.
Not that I'm disagreeing with the spirit of your suggestions but the devil is in the details...
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If each conglomerate is limited to three FM stations in a market, you'd still have about 33 companies in any market instead of the average of 2 companies we have today in most major markets even if you didn't do anything more than that rule.
With regards to your second point, satellite channels should not be limited, as satellite bandwidth really isn't a highly constrained resource. The Washington Post would be irrelevant if this rule gets killed, so I'm not sure why you mentioned it.
As for needing more
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Most larger markets have pretty much clogged spectrum. You have 101 FM radio slots (20 MHz band, one station every .2 MHz, plus one for the other endpoint of the range), so divide by three. Actually, though, that's off by a factor of about 1.5 because you can't realistically use first adjacents for higher power commercial stations, so it's probably more on the order of twenty. In any case, it would be way more than two.
Bear in mind that I'm talking about per market. Markets are generally pretty big ge
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Why three? Why not one?
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Why not one? Because there are a hundred and one usable frequencies in the FM band... fifty-one if you throw away all the first adjacents (which is commonly done on either side of higher power stations). If you really had fifty-one stations all competing independently, you'd have to have an extremely large market area to support anything approaching that level of competition effectively. Most stations would probably just shut down if you limited it to a single station per market.
Also, some markets are
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I don't believe it. No, you'd instead have stations lowering their costs by running more esoteric programming, sort of like NPR or college radio.
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I'm just not seeing the desire of radio or TV station conglomerates to control a bunch of newspapers. With TV and radio, there are obvious benefits to being in a conglomerate. You can pretty much publish the same story. WIth newspapers, apart from a few papers with broad appeal, most people buy them for local news. That means that it has to be collected locally by local people. You can't realistically consolidate it and expect to keep your readers. As a result, the advantage of owning lots of newspape
Its not starting, its growing (Score:2)
Way to read the article (Score:5, Informative)
Currently, there's an FCC rule preventing multiple media channel ownership by teh same company in the same city/region. You can get waivers for this, but it's kind of a pain in the ass. What the current FCC chair wants to do is abolish that rule, allowing companies to own as many media channels (ie, a newspaper, a TV, and a radio station) as they'd like. In general, the Republican appointees support this plan, the Democrat appointees oppose it. Regardless, however, the post states the exact OPPOSITE of what's really happening.
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All that said, the relevance of radio and newspapers has diminished greatly over time. There're few truly independent radio stations in most cities, and most independent
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a. If it is not interesting people wont pay attention to it.
b. Going to much in depth looses people interest in the topic
c. less people interested means loss of revenue.
d. Loss of revenue means you can loose you job.
e. if you make it interesting you need to cut the depth and trigger emotions
f. to trigger emotions you need to make a Good guy who has been harmed and a Bad guy causing the harm.
g. The person being portrait as a bad guy doesn't like being a bad guy so he shows
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On the downside, NPR tends to be extremely esoteric, and thus mostly captures the attention
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This is more akin to old-school reporting, where biases are secondary to substantive programming. I can't speak to your local station's programming, obviously, but this seems to be true of the national programs such as "All Things Considered", where I'd challenge you to find
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I for one applaud efforts to deregulate the free market. Supply and demand tends to work pretty well.
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For example in a small town I could see one company owning both a Spanish radio station and newspaper.
I would worry about one company owning ALL the TV or Radio stations that serve and area.
I would like to see the public service requirements brought back as well but hey that is just me.
Alternative proposal (Score:2)
Let any one entity own no more than a certain *percentage* of the *total* media outlets for a given broadcast and circulation area. That way if there is only one newspaper and one radio station, the same entity can't own both, but if there are several of each, then anyone might own more than one type of media.
At a guess, 1/3rd of the total media outlets would be a reasonable max under a single ownership, with waivers down to 1/2 in markets that are too small to support
Re:Way to read the article (Score:4, Insightful)
For example, let's say Rupert Murdoch comes to dominate Smallville, USA. He could then elect to minimize coverage of certain local candidates in favor of ones who would reciprocate his favors if elected. Clearly this drives special interests over public interests. Such a monopoly is the antithesis of a free market.
Imagine if Microsoft controlled all news media in a town, and you objected to schools buying Microsoft products over using open source. Or Wal-Mart owned the media outlets in a town and supported candidates for office who did not object to destruction of local merchants by the big box. A fair system would have some amount of healthy competition between media, and their coverage, thus helping guard against such domination.
Re:Way to read the article (Score:5, Interesting)
You need to clarify your comment a bit. I suspect you understand the issue, but your wording could confuse people into thinking that this rule is about something that it is not really about.
This is not about wanting to own an unlimited number of media outlets. Most people want limitations on that. This is about owning an arbitrary number of types of media outlets---that is, if you own any number of radio or TV stations in a given market, you cannot also own a newspaper. There really is not a good reason for that sort of limit, and I support tearing down that limitation. It really isn't important to have such a restriction for print anymore, as print really isn't that important anyway in the grand scheme of things.
At this point, all this law is really doing is A. preventing newspaper companies from easily diversifying into more viable media like radio and TV, and B. making it harder to sell off print properties, thus encouraging less profitable print properties to be shut down entirely. Thus, I think it would be a great idea to shoot it in the head. I've thought the law was a bit silly since I first learned about it a decade ago. While this might seem counterintuitive to those folks who remember print back in its heyday, killing this law off is likely to significantly increase freedom of the press by allowing print publishers to expand into TV and radio, thus helping to reduce the current radio duopoly that we are seeing between Clear Channel and Infinity.
The law made sense when print was king, but in this day and age, it is an anachronism that only serves to hasten print's demise.
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- Many of the 'print' media are still the source for other media outlets. Reuters, AP, et al.
- Print is coming to the Internet in a big way. Yes, it's been here for a while, but now they are getting serious.
- And print is still relevant even to
Preventing conglomerates from owning all three of the major media types in a market
But it only applies to new ownership? (Score:1, Insightful)
Who cares? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Who cares? (Score:4, Insightful)
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Also, there are 3 stations in my broadcast area that carry the BBC broadcasts, headlines, and a number of other world news sources. I can learn more from a 3 minute BBC blurb in an extended commercial break than I can fr
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how? (Score:2, Insightful)
How does one address the lack of ownership by minorities and women? It seems to me that it would not be possible to "force" minorities and women to buy media outlets, nor would it be possible to force people to sell to them...
well, ok, maybe you could force people to sell to them, but how are you going to compensate them for the price difference that they would have gotten from someone else? And wouldn't a forced sale implicate the takings clause?
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"How does one address the lack of ownership by minorities and women?"
Decree it.
"It seems to me that it would not be possible to "force" minorities and women to buy media outlets, nor would it be possible to force people to sell to them..."
Why not? Just pass a law requiring the sale and transfer of new or existing licenses to women and minorities. Done."
"well, ok, maybe you could force people to sell to them, but how are you going to com
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How does one address the lack of ownership by minorities and women? It seems to me that it would not be possible to "force" minorities and women to buy media outlets, nor would it be possible to force people to sell to them...
Consider that women/minority-owned businesses get some financial breaks, and those groups STILL won't really touch broadcast media. Mayhaps everyone but the media CEOs sees the writing on the wall.
Heck, I'm deaf, and wouldn't get anywhere NEAR media as it stands now; pandering to the lowest denominator to stay afloat just doesn't do anyone {but the stockholders} any favors. I bet we could name a few channels whose educational value has dropped due to sensationalistic "Sharks Gone Wild"-like fluff that is
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Not quite, guys (Score:5, Informative)
An article in the Editor and Publisher describes the plan to ban cross-ownership in the same market
FTFA:
Among the rules that are potentially on the chopping block is a ban on one company owning a newspaper and broadcast station in the same market.
So the post should have read:
An article in the Editor and Publisher describes the plan to no longer ban cross-ownership in the same market
Oh fer chrissake (Score:4, Insightful)
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If the only alternative is federal legislation mandating what alternative views will be provided to us... well, we're pretty much screwed either way.
But I think the only way somebody can truly monopolize communication is with the full cooperation of a corrupt government. Therefore, minimalizing the government's ability to influence communications is probably the safer route.
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Then all you'll have is ClearChannel (Score:2)
That's EXACTLY what happened in New Orleans.
In fact, the moment your market can't generate income, like after a hurricane, a tornado, an eruption or a tsunami, it gets dropped and further rolled up into a larger conglomeration.
Do you WANT your town wiped off the metaphorical map?
'cause that's what'll happen...
Ban multiple owndership, period (Score:5, Interesting)
I know, I know, I'm talking about a time before everyone got merger fever, back when the American (and beyond) experience was very different from place to place. But now that the Internet can ensure that everyone can get the same experience (news, music, television) if they really want, wouldn't it be a interesting thing to ban the unified voice of corporate broadcasting?
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I understand your point about music and commercials (though I honestly think you're not looking hard enough), and there's something to be said for one company having a monopoly on public opinion in a region. But it's quite another to say that no company should be able to own multiple smaller companies. It makes zero business sense, either in media or m
Re:Ban multiple owndership, period (Score:4, Insightful)
This is defintely a straw man. Unlike the case of most franchises, radio stations, and newspapers are a limited public resource (newspapers are a limited resource only because of the government bureaucracy that must be waded through in order to have one). Further, unlike a hardware store, they both naturally affect public opinion about them because they're media sources - so they're natural monopolies. Monopolies do bad things when they're confined to a region, but they get really bad when the get bigger.
It makes zero business sense, either in media or most any other industry.
This is where your argument falls apart. I'd go so far as to say that it profitability and productivity actually goes down when you go beyond a certain size in almost every industry because the people "running the show" become necessarily less detached from their target market and the people doing the work become detached from a profit-motive (because income isn't really tied to profitability and/or doing what they love). The only thing it does is make a few people very, very rich most of the time. The exception to this is commodities that everyone wants exactly the same way, like milk, gasoline, eggs, internet access, etc.
I think this is especially true of radio stations - which have local community listeners. The local operators are the ones who should be making the decisions because they're the ones who know their audience. Further, every area needs pretty much the same equipment. It's not like corporations get a big boost in efficiency because they're a corporation.
I can imagine it and I don't want it. (Score:2)
I know its currently the belief of many that media conglomerates are destroying radio but in my city we have
Let the market decide (Score:2)
What's preventing those stations from operating now? That the conglomerates have lower overhead? All that means is that the competition isn't interesting enough to attract higher advertising rates.
I liked FreeFM, but not enough other people did. I didn't care f
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And the problem is...?
Hell, I think we ought to not only break up ownership of the individual stations, but also bar the original conglomerate from maintaining ownership of even a single one, by revoking its business license!
Pandora's box (Score:2, Insightful)
a) a specific city or county or region or
b) the number of stations of a specific genre or
c) the number of stations of a specific genre in a specific area?
How are the media market sectors defined? In addition to those categories I mentioned above, you also have ethno-centric programming and demographics to contend wi
This may be meaningless; we've gone 2 the web (Score:2, Interesting)
So we don't care. Sir Rupert can put better money in his web properties. And Clear Channel and Emmis clearly suck in their radio markets. TV? Does it matter? The FCC hasn't reflected popular choice in years. Why should they start now??
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Show me the last time someone got fired for posting lies on the web, not fired from the real job, but in a way that prevents them from posting anymore. It doesn't happen. Dan Rather got booted from CBS, show me the equivalent on the internet.
Oh yea, we also have this lack of local news on the internet. My county has one newspaper and roughl
Re:This may be meaningless; we've gone 2 the web (Score:4, Insightful)
Go to Media Matters, or one of the right-wing websites and get a load of what accuracy means today. If you're looking to bloggers for news, you're hosed. These are opinions, not journalism. My RSS/Atom reader gets 50 different sites every eight minutes. Local content in my 'major' market has been a monopoly for years. Heaven help you if you're a suburb, or a rural community. But this ruling doesn't affect them-- it's about major market competition.
You have to take EVERYTHING with a grain of salt these days; the integrity of print media and daily news are at a formulaic all-time low. You trust these guys? I don't.
In major markets, there are lots of the same bubble-headed bleached-blonds on TV (thank you, Don Henley) spouting the same foo at 6pm and 11pm. Then there are the morning shows. The rest are network fillers and commercials. This, this is quality? I can watch 900+ cable channels, and it's still a wasteland.
If you're a suburb of a major market, you're screwed for local news. Where are you going to get the news on a local level? The FCC's decision doesn't affect you, it only dries up competition in major markets-- that's where the money is.
TV 'anchors' are stars now. They don't get the news. They get make-up jobs and Lexus rides, and show up, looking pretty, when the mayor turns a shovel some place. Parts of the community? Nope. Entertainment. And it's been that way for two decades now.
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The web is not reliable if you take an average of every page out there (nor is print media if you average respected newspapers with tabloids)... but on the web there is at least a greater diversity of opinion and sources. Real experts have blogs on the web (whereas they would get perhaps a few seconds of air time in a year of mainstream media), and
Adelstein's Comment + FCC Abilities (Score:2)
Can someone explain how
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Bah (Score:2)
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There is a lot of wealth controlled by minorities (Score:2)
the thing they miss is that even if minorities (women
The real apalling act (Score:2)
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Once again government prepares to muck up... (Score:2, Informative)
Really, I don't see this as a problem. And I think it's stupid, so what you're saying is you can own a TV station but not a newspaper or radio station. That's just dumb.
Why doesn't the government do something really useful to us? Like put an end to the forced purchasing of packaged content. And enact legislation that allows consumers to purchase ala cart specific channels from Sat/Cable companies.
Thi
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Really, I guess the whole "FCC deregulation of cable" and our nice $80 cable bills. And having to pay $20 extra for cable internet if you don't want cable TV service. Or $20 extra for DSL to have a phone line you never use.
That's all flamebait too....
Yeah...well it may be flamebait. But it doesn't mean it's any less true of a statement.
***
This idea to prevent and restrict ownership of different type of media is one of the DUMBEST IDEAS ever proposed. (And is probably unconstitutiona
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Are you seriously claiming that the "free market" approach has been better.
Puleeezee.
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And yet, after all this we've got next to nill approvals of "LPFM" radio stations being granted license.
Wait a minute... (Score:1)
From TFA:
First of all, how is the (potential) suppression of freedom of the press by consolidated media less important or pressing than the race or gender of t
WTF? (Score:4, Insightful)
Why is there an inherent idea that women and people of color have an interest in ownership in every segment of society? How many people of color own companies in the tanning market? How many women own companies in the aftershave market? I realize this isn't a perfect comparison but could it be that women and "people of color" simply haven't attempted such ownership? The idea that equality means equal distribution is socialistic in nature. Equal treatment doesn't equate to equal distribution. Rather, it should mean equal access. If someone decides they have no interest in the access it's not "an appalling lack of ownership" it's an "appalling lack of interest."
I see his point, but... (Score:1)
...couldn't this result in less-lucrative media (newspapers, for one) getting neglected or severely declining (more so than they are now) in quality?
I keep hearing about how newspapers are losing money left & right these days, so I would think that being owned by an entity that can make their money elsewhere to offset any losses might help buoy up the newspaper...at least the company can look at it as a "halo product".
If a company has to choose between owning a newspaper and owning a TV station, I'd i
old since the 1960s (Score:2)
now, you still have cross-owners, but they're historic ones preceding that time.
the industry was hoping to get the ban overturned, for the benefit of the "media convergence" gurus who think that if you bundle a losing newspaper, losing TV and radio businesses, and a marginal web site, you become a genius and make millions of dollars a minute.
while there are synergies, they ain't taht big.
Is Slashdot considered a newspaper? (Score:2)
Should tech websites be forced to address their lack of ownership, by woman and people of color?
Could newspapers one day be considered a method of Free Speech, and gain 1st Amendment protections?
Will we do anything but... would-a, should-a, could-a? How about a vote-a.
The Australian Media Rules (Score:2)
It doesn't seem to affect the freedom of the press at all, in fact, it tends to make it a bit more balanced (Though there have been moves to change it (that obviously have nothing at all to do with Rupert Murdoch or the Packer family )).
It's the Fairness Doctrine... (Score:2, Flamebait)
It's been going on for awhile, but the two-tiered attack began with Reagan eradicating the Fairness Doctrine in 1987 which paved the way for partisan talk radio which were basically paid mouthpieces for various corporate interests who could sway public opinion on key issues, and also stations no long
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BTW, where did the FCC gain the authority to regulate newspapers?
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BTW, where did the FCC gain the authority to regulate newspapers?
As I point out elsewhere:
The FCC has no jurisdiction over newspapers. It does have jurisdiction over who does or does not get a (temporary) broadcast license, i.e., use of something (spectrum) which is owned by the public, and, if Congress so directs, or seems to, can deny a license to someone who also owns a newspaper so as to avoid too much concentration of ownership of communication outlets. Having been denied a broadcast license, the owner of the newspaper is prefectly (sic) free to continue owning the newspaper.
...regulating what they can say in those channels clearly trods on the First Amendment.
Regulating what they can say in the newspapers would be in violation of the First Amendment, but regulating what can be said over broadcast channels is merely regulating, on behalf of the public, how the (temporary) holder of the broadcast license gets to use the public's property, the airwaves.
Opposite of campaign contributions? (Score:2)
But I'd have to say that (media outlets) == speech is a much *more* reasonable claim. So how is limiting the number of presses / stations one owns permissible, when limiting one's campaign contributions is not?
Sounds good and bad (Score:2)
My other problem with it, is that it is an arbitrary limitation on free enterprise. I'm not even sure the FCC fits in with a democracy, because nobody elected the people who are running the show and making the d
You have the power to free yourself (Score:2)
I don't read newspapers. I watch very little tv (I don't have cable tv, just internet access). I don't listen to the radio. I find it's a blissful existence. Far less bullshit, and far, far fewer advertisements reach me. Especially with Firefox and Adblock.
Whe
Not bad (Score:1)
Drop the cross-ownership ban (Score:2)
I'm surprised at how resistant some people are to dropping the newspaper/broadcast cross-ownership ban.
First of all, everyone should want the FCC to get a ruling out the door quickly. Why? Because this thing is going to end up in court no matter what the actual ruling is; I would anticipate it eventually being appealed up to the Supreme Court, which is where the final say is going to take place. After all, something very similar happened to the cable/broadcast cross-ownership rule, which was tossed o