Congress May Overturn FCC's Media Consolidation Plan 439
Spril writes "A congressional committee voted yesterday to prevent the FCC from allowing even more consolidation of the media industry. The original ruling was covered on Slashdot. The committee attached the pro-consumer proposal to a bill funding the Justice and State departments for 2004. But the Bush administration has threatened to veto the funding because they support ever-larger corporations owning ever-bigger chunks of the spectrum that theoretically belongs to the public. Clear Channel may need to cough up some more money for their lobbyists."
What the fuck... (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm waiting for the day... (Score:5, Interesting)
Thank god... (Score:2, Interesting)
At least there will be some discourse, or so one would hope.
Don't get too happy. (Score:5, Interesting)
Still, better than nothing I suppose. If this passes, Fox will have to go ahead and divest itself of the excess Television coverage they picked up that put them in violation of the cap.
Re:What the fuck... (Score:5, Interesting)
a few issues on both sides that i agree with, with a lot of issues "undecided/don't know"
what i do know is the republicans push the idea of "smaller government"
this is appealing in a way. i don't want a large overbearing government fucking with my life.
but i think many pure unquestioning republicans don't understand is, I DON'T WANT LARGE OVERBEARING CORPORATIONS fucking with me either.
the end result is the same. I, an individual, am made irrelevant.
THAT is why i have so little faith....in either party.
I've pretty much ... (Score:5, Interesting)
If you trust anything reported by so called unbiased media sources, you are a fool. Times have changed, the news is all about ratings. Sensationalism, no matter the truth or consequences is the order of the day.
And no, you can't trust the news from the internet either. Honestly, as a society, I am concerned about what we are going to do next. If we continue along this path, Time-Warner, Clear Channel and the rest might as well just start speaking for us.
I'm certainly not against free speech...but I think more effort needs to be invested in keeping media conglomerates in check.
Strange bedfellows (Score:4, Interesting)
Needless to say, I was a bit, um, amazed. But regardless of what you (or I) think of him, Trent Lott is a seasoned politician. And the only way to become one of those is to listen to constituents.
Maybe he's still atoning for that Strom Thurmond thing...
Re:What the fuck... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Not a republican, dont agree with them, but... (Score:3, Interesting)
Oh come on. This is the second post I've seen that bitches about that line, but it's not editorializing! It's the honest-to-God TRUTH! I noticed that neither of you tried to deny the veracity of the statement, just the way it which is was said. BTW, I don't see this as a Republican versus Democrat issue; both parties are corporate stooges. It's just that Republicans are often the most egregious offenders.
I reckon you're just used to the way the media likes to frame the wholesale corporate hijacking of our airwaves, which are, (or "were") in theory, public-owned. The media, to say the least, likes to phrase it delicately, but why should that be surprising? This is all about media control, is it not? And you don't think Tom Brokaw is going to raise his fist in the air on TV and yell, "Power to the people!" and still have a job tomorrow, do you? The hierarchical structure and constricting cultural climate of corporate life negates this possibility without the need for enforcement. It's a clear danger to democracy, and it's spreading.
Orwell was damn close, but he forgot about big business. The real danger is the unholy alliance between business and government. Once all the "voices" in society are all filtered through the government and big business, what room is there for the individual? Group-Think. Corporate-Speak. These are not just the fodder for a million Dilbert comics; it is the stupefying sound of the banality of evil.
Either party? Try the others... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:I'm waiting for the day... (Score:4, Interesting)
Not that thats a bad thing. Many historians believe pure capitalism and pure socialism is doomed for failure. I do too. A mixed economy is the only way to go. This is up for dispute, but I do not wish to discuss it.
You say, quite ignorantly I might (or might not) add, "and a democracy (the US is a republic).". You are correct. The US has democratic qualities, as well as republican qualities. Our Democratic party once started out as the Democratic-Republican party, believe it or not. St. Earlier, it was the Anti-Federialists party.
Following your unbased queries and uncontradictory statements, you begin to spout drivel.
They do both. The most coherent sentence I've ever seen from a half Nelson. Just kidding, I'm just playing with you man. I can't parse this. Does "only in the minds" mean that such a thought can never materalize? I think not.A revolutionary thought. (Score:1, Interesting)
I sincerely hope that Congress does in fact overturn the FCC's media consolidation decision. Personally I found the decision to be THE most obnoxious political action of the past several years. The Clinton impeachment trials at the very least had some appearance of a real process behind it. The FCC's recent decision however was blatantly partisan and was simply un-democratic.
The airwaves belong to the public; they are for the "public good." The FCC held an open forum for the public on this decision. Everyone opposed further media consolidation! People from the both the right and left of the political spectrum joined together to rail against it. The only people in favor of further consolidation were the Republican members of the FCC board and the large media companies themselves. What was the result?
The FCC simply ignored the public en masse and gave the big media companies a free ticket to gobble up whatever they could. I tell you, I have never felt so outraged or violated in my life. This is a blatant disregard of the will of the people by politicians who obviously wish to control what we see, hear and read...and ultimately...to control how we vote.
An idea struck me. What if a company like Clear Channel bought up all the media in your town? Would you blow up broadcasting towers? Would you sabotage printing presses? Would you jam the airwaves? Let me make something absolutely clear: I DO NOT UNDER ANY CIRCUMSTANCE ADVOCATE PHYSICALLY HARMING ANYONE. Theoretically, if I were to do these things, I'd be sure not to do it while anyone was around.
My reasoning for these kinds of actions is that the voice of the people has essentially been taken away from them. The big media companies don't represent local voices! They don't want to and career politicians like it that way. If your voice has been taken away from you, I say speak out the only way you know you'll be heard. Take those big, bossy, trashy, corporate mouths off the air.
Thanks for letting me vent.
KBOM - "Bringing the phrase 'kill your television' to a whole new level."
Re:I'm not a techie. (Score:2, Interesting)
MORE INFO ON A CLEAR CHANNEL SCANDAL (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:That is not it, it is fundraising. (Score:5, Interesting)
Needless to say, I was a bit amazed (omg wtf lol!). But regardless of what you (or I) think of him, Trent Lott is a seasoned politician. And the only way to become one of those is to listen to constituents.
Maybe he's still atoning for that Strom Thurmond thing...
Re:Not a republican, dont agree with them, but... (Score:1, Interesting)
"Conservative columnist William Safire wrote in today's New York Times:
"Here is what made this happen: Take the force of right-wingers
upholding community standards who are determined to defend local
control of the public airwaves; combine that with the force of lefties
eager to maintain diversity of opinion in local media; add in the
independent voters' mistrust of media manipulation; then let all these
people have access to their representatives by e-mail and fax, and
voilà! Congress awakens to slap down the power grab."
From the moveon.org mailing list
Own Your Own Station (Score:5, Interesting)
The FCC doesn't like it, but you can probably expect to be on the air at a couple of watts (1-2 mile range) for a year or more before they come knocking. Just choose your frequency carefully, and listen to neighboring stations for interference (which, BTW, almost never occurs).
Re:Who Owns What (Score:2, Interesting)
NOTE: Yes, I do work for Clearchannel.
Is the democracy in the USA dead? (Score:4, Interesting)
You can come to two conclusions:
1) The Democrats are also after the same money from these media companies as the Republicans are, which in fact makes the USA's democracy rather dead: there is no real choice for Joe Sixpack, the two parties which matter are NOT serving the interests of the people
2) The Democrats are incapable of fighting Bush effectively. Which also makes the USA democracy rather dead, because the general public doesn't KNOW there is an alternative to 'Bush'. When Bush gets the concetration of media in place, and the holders of these media on his side (which seems to be the case) he controls EVERYTHING and the republicans can stay in power, well... forever.
If the republican party would exist in The Netherlands, Europe, they would get at most 2 seats in the 150 seat parlement, roughly guessed. Not because we're all 'stinking liberals', but because we tolerate less a government that thinks of big $$$ first and the interest of the public second.
(To the USA citizens: as a European I see you as a group of people who thought that a president who nailed his intern with cigars should be impeached and a president who started a very expensive war under false intelligence in a time where jobs dissapear very quickly should stay in his office and should stay popular. Think about that for a second.)
Re:I've pretty much ... (Score:3, Interesting)
and with the advent of blipverts and the passing of the mandatory TV act of 2005 the citizens will recieve 12 years in Jail for not watching their required 4 hours of TV a day.
Meanwhile in other news, the federal government executed 27 members of a illegal music sharing cartel citing the rosen/valenti act of 2004. and President Jeb Bush released 12 serial killers from federal prisions citing, "WE desperately need more room in out prisions for real criminals, It's time to release the minor offenders and get the real criminals behind bars!"
Oh yeah, you gotta love where this country is going....
Re:Own Your Own Station (Score:4, Interesting)
www.northcountryradio.com their $150 ish kit has a limiter built in, a modulation meter so you can actually adjust it, AND they designed it so it can be aligned with a voltmeter, just like the old Marconi excitiers found in older radio stations.
If you are going to get on the air, you need to spend $$$ if you want to be on for any decent amount of time . you need good feedline, antenna, transmitter, amplifier, and then process your audio... also put a $400.00 high speed 3 band limiter before the transmitter AND do some slight equilization.
Next, dont act like a N00b and start spewing vomit like the other 90% of the "pirate idiots" make your station sound like a real station, play Ad's , PSA's, station ID every hour, etc...
only complete morons fire up the transmitter and start the "F**Kin FCC I am King! You are listening to the F***Kin F**K S**T Shiznat Hoe smakin and house blowin' up king of da Radio! WORD!"
Blend in, I know of one fake station her eth at has to be transmitting at 10 watts and has been on the air for over 5 years.... because they sound like they belong, but only play Indie music.
Re:I've pretty much ... (Score:3, Interesting)
Because America's News is Strictly Filtered (Score:5, Interesting)
Because we don't get the news here.
Seriously.
Or, to be more precise, the main networks and popular media outlets have filtered the foreign and domestic news beyond all recognition.
Why? Not because they harbor some pro-Bush bias (although clearly some, such as Fox news, do), but because they all compete in a market for viewership, and several factors coincide to make the media self censoring and self-slanting, including the desire to cozy up to the administration in order to get and maintain access to the white house (which the Bush administration exploits and enforces shamelessly and aggressively...witness seasoned reporters who have been in the whitehouse for 20 years or more being relegated to back seats behind neophytes for posing difficult questions in White House press conferences and subsequently being ignored by the press secretary/president/etc.) and the desire to maintain popularity with a public they perceive as supporting the president.
The latter is an assumption that is quite possibly mistaken, if the conservatives I work with are any indication (most of whome are saying rather loudly that Bush has gone to far and things are spirallying out of control
Back on topic, the news we get in the United States is NOTHING like the news you get overseas. Our information is so sanitized and slanted that you would probably not recognize the same events if you saw them reported here. This was driven home rather forcefully the other night when I was at my girlfriend's watching the BBC news on PBS at 10:00pm, and for the first time saw footage of injured soldiers and Iraqis, and heard first hand just what an appalling quagmire this administration's precipitious invasion has put us into. Contrasting that with Fox or CNN (modulo the editorializing there is little difference of late) is like night and day.
So, while we aren't forbidden from getting foreign news sources per se (the Internet is available, after all, and the BBC is available once/day at 10:00PM), we are discouraged in that the BBC is shown at a time when it must compete against most of the local news broadcasts, on a station few bother to watch (more's the pity), and that virtually every mainstream press to which people have subscribed for the bulk of their lives is heavilly censored and sanitized
It is incredibly discouraging to be an American at a time like this, when our country appears to be spiralling full steam into a state of plutocratic fascism, the FCC has gutted and destroyed our telecom industry, crippled our internet industry, and is hell bent on consolidating our remaining media into a few easilly-influenced mega-companies, perhaps even into a single monopoly. The freedom I grew up with has dissappeared bit by bit ever since the Reagan era in the 1980s, and while more people are becoming aware of it today, still there are too few of us, and too many who simply toe the party line or bury their head in the sand in a frenzy of misplaced national pride, and things continue to spiral downward and get worse.
Perhaps this years record deficit of 450+ Billion dollars, beneath a Republican President and
Blind. The media is blind. (Score:2, Interesting)
You know what would make it easier to provide free broadcast television? Maybe some content entering the public domain. They need to relax their grip before they strangle themselves.
Re:I almost forgot (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Either party? Try the others... (Score:2, Interesting)
Again you show your ignorance and lack of substance in your statement. It is easy to sit on that ivory throne and pass judgment. You ignore facts and draw your own conclusion with that holier than thou attitude with out ever having to sacrifice anything.
"unlike you I have higher order thinking powers"
I assisted in the liberation of a country, what did you do? Speculate and condemn with out ever having to leave your air-conditioned 3 meals a day existence. Watch that 21 inch peep hole to paradise and believe what they feed you. No my friend go ahead and believe what you will, bury your head in the sand and hope it will go away. I pity you for the fool you are.
"You held them responsible by destroying their water treatment and power facilities, roads, bridges and hospitals"
Fool, that's war. But again I state that people like you are always too free with authorizing a "Police Action" because you don't have to do it. But the politically correct term does not hide the reality of what it is. Death, destruction, and horror. It's to be avoided, but no, you'd rather authorize a "Police Action".
"Start with inspections, they were going along just fine"
What a fool, UN resolution 1441 acknowledged they were a failure. That's why the UN voted passed 1441, check your facts.
"If thhey did not succeed then maybe assassination of the top leaders"
Hypocrite, that's violation of international law. Again you speak out of pure ignorance and sense of reality.
"When you were there killing people did you also rape 13 year old boys?"
My God you're a fool, still again I'm skeptical about you being a Vet with comments like this.
"I was in the Air Force. We were allowed to think."
That's why most of high tech work is done by civilian contractors? I've worked with the Air Force a bit, both as a Marine and civilian.
"What do you get when you cross a marine and an ape? A dump ape"
Yep, you have no basis of facts to stand on so here it comes.
"once again. Unlike you the dumb ape I have higher order thinking powers. I can think of more then just two possibilities."
Yes bury your head and hope it all goes away. We don't care if the butcher continues violating the cease fire agreement. We don't care if he invaded, raped, pillage, and conducted a scorched earth policy. Why? Because we have a higher order of thinking. I think you should change from Malcontent to Nevil Chamberlin.
"You really think nobody in the world has computers they can sell to china"
I was giving an example of how Slick Willy gave up out technical edge. How he was in bed with China after accusing the first Bush of being to close to China. Let's look at what I posted
"NY TIMES of April 4, 1998, Jeff Gerth with Raymond Bonner exposed a manipulation wherein the US government and 2 major American arms companies transferred Ballistic Missile technology to China. As a Grand Jury was investigating whether 2 American companies (Loral Space & Communications and Hughes Electronics) gave China space expertise that significantly advanced Beijing's ballistic missile program, President Clinton approved of this transfer 2 months ago"
I think that's a little more than a few computers!
And you don't think they provide this tech to dictators in countries like N. Korea?
"The size of the overall govt shrank. If he took it out of the military then great."
Again the facts elude you, the Military cuts were started with the Bush administration and continued through the Clinton administration. I enjoy how you keep ignoring the facts and spewing nothing but your own version of reality.
"Besides the Clinton military did a great job in Iraq didn't it?"
They did a great job in spite of 8 years of Slick Willy
"Ronnie had a mental disease. he was an imbecile"
Again you ignore the facts, let me enlighten you with a few facts. Unlike specul