The FCC's Big Power Grab:

Making Media Monopoly Part of the Constitution

The best way to grasp how the communications law was passed is to imagine the classic scene from The Godfather II, when Hyman Roth, Michael Corleone and several other American gangsters meet on a rooftop in Havana to divide up the island between them in pre-Castro Cuba. They do so by ceremoniously each taking a slice of a cake with the outline of Cuba on it, and while they are doing this, Hyman Roth intones, "Isn't it great to be in a country with a government that believes in a partnership with private enterprise." The 1996 Telecom Act was drafted on that proverbial rooftop, only instead of mob families there were trade associations like the National Association of Broadcasters and corporations like News Corporation and Viacom. The public played no role in the Telecom Act, and it received virtually no news media coverage, except in the business and trade press where it was covered as an issue of importance to owners and investors, not citizens in a democracy. The powerful lobbies--much like Roth and Corleone--were duking it out with each other for the largest slice of the cake, but they all agreed that the public had no right to participate in the process. It was their cake.

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What has happened in radio is about to be visited on the balance of the media system. We know what many of you are thinking -- "hey, the media system sucks, it can't get any worse." But one look at radio should tell you otherwise. It can get worse, much worse. And it will, unless we stop the FCC. Moreover, the political power these ever larger media firms will accrue, will make any prospective media reform down the road that much more difficult. [Full article here]

ACT NOW TO STOP MEDIA CONSOLIDATION! CLICK HERE!!

Don't let the FCC's rule changes go through!

Senator Dorgan asked Frank Blethen, publisher of The Seattle Times, what he thought would happen if the expected deregulation of ownership rules went through.

“I think we will see the beginning of the end of democracy,” Blethen replied. “It’s going to be a sad day for America if that happens.”

The public hearing, sponsored by San Francisco advocacy group Media Alliance, the University of San Francisco, Stanford University and the University of California at Berkeley, drew a passionate, over-capacity audience that expressed anger over the prospect of media-industry deregulation.

Lessig is mobilizing against the FCC's relaxation of media controls which will leave most of the United States' professional media outlets in the hands of a tiny number of owners.

"When the content layer, the logical layer, and the physical layer are all effectively owned by a handful of companies, free of any requirements of neutrality or openness, what will you ask then?"