It’s finals time, and I just lost my first attempt at this post, because I forgot to put in a title. But, I want to alert you to the fact that June 2 is D-Day — the day when the FCC announces its new media ownership caps in local markets. Professor Lessig is charting the mobilzation to counteract increasing the percentage caps on his blog, and he details the dangers of further deregulating the ownership rules. Believe me, the effects of further media consolidation, which he describes, read like a horror script, so you shouldn’t let Michael Powell give away your local news to the likes of Rupert Murdoch.
As the SF Bay Guardian, an indie weekly in SF pointed out, when the FCC held a hearing on the ownership caps in SF on April 26, none of the major news outlets in the Bay Area, covered the event. As it stands, the only daily paper in San Francisco, The Chronicle, is owned by the Hearst Corp, which will stand to benefit greatly from further deregulation.
Also, I just wanted to point out the Clear Channel example of how deregulation of radio, under Clinton, has killed off the diversity of radio in America. The fact that this started under the last president, shows that neither party has clean hands in this matter.
I just wanted to quickly clarity my last paragraph. The two FCC board members who oppose the rule changes are Democrats (the 3-2 split is along party lines), thus, it appears that the Dems aren’t fully sleeping with the devil.
echan, you are speaking a foreign language to me.