FCC Commissioner Stumps For Media Diversity 159
maynard writes, "Speaking at a New York City town hall meeting on corporate media consolidation and its deleterious impact on the expression of minority viewpoints, FCC Commissioner Michael Copps stumped against greater media concentration and instead argued for greater diversity of media outlets and voices. In 2003 the FCC, under Chairman Michael Powell, changed media ownership rules to favor greater corporate media consolidation at the expense of local owners. In an attempt to reverse totally the prior FCC policy, Mr. Copps argued strongly in favor of independent media owners. Read on for what he had to say.
Michael Copps: "The FCC is in the midst of a hugely important proceeding right now to decide what the future of our media, our TV, our radio, our newspapers, our cable, even our internet, are going to look like for a long, long time to come.A little history, just to set the stage for our discussion. Three years ago, under then FCC Chairman Michael Powell and over the objections of my good friend Commissioner Adelstein and myself, the FCC severely cut back — really "eviscerated" is a better word — the rules that were meant to check big media's seemingly endless appetite for more consolidation. It passed new rules, which have allowed a single media giant to own in a single market up to three television stations, eight radio stations, the cable system, the cable channels, even the internet portal, and the local newspaper, which in most cities in the United States of America is already a monopoly. And the agency did all of that behind closed doors and without seeking meaningful input from the American people. Can you imagine that? Authorizing a sea change in how news and entertainment are produced and presented over the people's airwaves, without even involving the people who own those airwaves and who depend so heavily upon them. It was a near disaster for America.
Thankfully, citizens rose up across the land. They sent nearly 3 million protests to the Federal Communications Commission. Congress rose up, too, and then a federal court sent those rules back to the FCC saying they were badly flawed and they needed to be reworked. That was good, and anybody that doesn't believe that citizen action can have an effect should just revisit what happened there. We checked those rules. You checked those rules from going into effect. It was concerned citizens at work, and it was a citizen consumer victory.
But, here's a reality check now. We're right back at square one, and it's all up for grabs again. And if we're going to have a better result this time around, doing something positive for media democracy, it's going to be because of more citizen action and more input from folks like you. So, this time we need to make it an open public process, instead of hiding in our office in Washington like the majority did in 2003. This time, let all the commissioners come to New York City — I wish they were all here tonight — and let all the commissioners get out across America and find out what's happening in the real world, beyond that Beltway that they bemoan so much but seem to love staying behind so much.
So, as we begin our discussion, then begin with that simple reminder: it's all of us who own the airwaves. There is not a broadcaster, a business, a special interest, and any industry that owns one airwave in the United States of America. They belong to you, and they belong to me. And, my friends, now is the time to assert our ownership rights."
Bolshevization of North America (Score:4, Interesting)
From TFS:
A quaint sentiment, indeed, that the private citizen is still sovereign; I'm afraid, however, that the Bolshevization [marxists.org] of North America is well underway, and that more violent notions will be required to reverse it.
The Bolshevization of North America consists above all in:
Eminent domain [cbsnews.com], if anything, should prove how highly our gubernatores esteem “ownership.*”
_____________
* Quod autem vide: DRM and fair use.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
But after the New London, Connecticut case where the Supreme Court ruled that municipalities really could take private property and hand it over to condo developers, there was a huge backlash. Eminent domain laws are mainly at the state level, and that's where citizens took action. A number of states now have laws on the books explicitly forbidding those kinds of eminent domain seizures.
- Greg
Re: (Score:2)
lus the added bonus of being tracked constantly, because there will be checkpoints all over and RFID tag enabled stations to read your tires (all new tires soon will have chips in them)
Care to provide a link?
Re:Bolshevization of North America (Score:4, Insightful)
For decades now the UK has had state own/governed (or at least centrally funded) channels dominating the airwaves. We've also enjoyed independent outlets, so its not like N Korea. But news in particular is the BBC's domain. And for all that time, we have been the envy of America with regards to freedom of press (or at least the Americans who have witnessed both). You want the glossy crap, its there to, but you want more even handed, insightful, in depth news the UK's has beaten the US for a long time. But why?... It doesn't seem right.
It's not that I don't see your point that centralisation is a danger, and can lead to more total loss of objectivity. That is clear and obvious. Yet why is it that the contrary is born out in practise for us? I would say it is something that you do have control over. Your culture. Is it snobbish to think less of someone, you know could care more about world affairs, but who can't be bothered? Or is it your duty as a responsible citizen? Fox News would not get watched here. I know, because they tried something approaching it on channel 5. It stank. No one watches it still (even though its improving slightly). I would be ashamed to do so. If I saw a friend watching it, I'd say don't watch that shit. Its all sensationalist crap. Why watch the news if its not news. Watch kids TV or something. And I'd mean it. My tone would be seen as condescending snobbery to many Americans. It would not to most Brits. THIS is the reason you have "consolidated press". Here we have many Newspapers owned by one corporation, that are politically conflicting even. Why? because people expect varied opinions. This is bolstered by my experience of German news, and attitude to news. Which is an exaggerated version of the UK culture. And they have better news for it.
I do fear that this is fading some. And that the US way of toeing big business/party lines with soundbites and banalities, interspersed with adverts for the very same power mongers, is approaching. But there is still a big enough distinction for us to see the phenomena for what it is. Sadly know one wants to think they are living a lie. Or to pull your bloody socks up! Which is kind of what you are being told by people like me. But there you have it. DON'T watch crap, centralised, sanitised news. e.g. If you're being told everyday how many of your soldiers are being BRUTALLY MURDERED. And vague indications, if that, of civilian "casualties" that there have UNAVOIDABLY been, then your news is not news. Its propaganda. And you really are better off switching of the box and staring at the wall, or better still talking to a real person about what might really be happening in the world. AND EXPECT the same of your friends. EXPECT the same FOR your friends. They deserve better, as do you. I assume.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
but you obviously haven't read this article: http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3318582, 00.html [ynetnews.com]
Or this article: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/new s/news.html?in_article_id=411846&in_page_id=1770 [dailymail.co.uk]
The BBC ADMITS that is not only NOT objective, but that they are VERY far to the left. Of course, I guess if one is already a socialist this would appear to be "objective" but to the rest of us that are more towards the center and right-of center this is hardly "Objec
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The beauty of the BBC is that I can see it is left leaning. And as you rightly point out that it admits to this. Thats the point. FOX's tag line is a
Re: (Score:2)
Actually, I've never seen "unbiased" in their tag line. The tag line I've always seen/heard is "Fair and Balanced".
Therefore, if they have someone on from one side, they have someone on from the other and give them about the same time to speak. Obviously when you have two guys butting heads over a point, it sometimes turns into a shouting match and no one is heard, but that's the fault of th
Re: (Score:2)
You see, this is the difference between Conservatives and Liberals in the media (The American media particularly, but the worldwide media as well.) Conservatives (in the Anglo-American
Effort to get Fox News silenced (Score:2)
I do not know if "most liberals" is true. In fact, I doubt it. However, there certainly has been an organized effort by some to pressure the government to yank Fox stations' licenses for airing political content that the organizers do not agree with.
Fox News can't control itself? (Score:2)
That's only an excuse, maybe, if it is the moderator's first day and it is live TV. Beyond that, just about everything in the way the moderators run their shows is with Fox News' approval and direction. You can bet that any shout-out on "Hannity and Colmes" is 100% the fault of the channel. If they didn't like these, they'd eas
Re: (Score:2)
What then definese "news". Is that a term you use for the propaganda you happen to like?
Re: (Score:2)
Both of them are. One is just more subtle-looking than the other. Both of them made subjective decisions of what to say, and what not to say.
Using your technique of comparing two headlines about the same event, consider this example, using a historical situation from the 1930s:
1) Regional agricultural administrators predict that Ukrainian harvest will fall below expectations for this 5 year period.
2)
Re:Bolshevization of North America (Score:5, Insightful)
Britain is dominated by state power. America is dominated by corporate power.
State power is at least somewhat grounded in the people, so varied opinions have their value, because the chief parties can acquire actual power through persuasion and viewpoints.
Corporate power is entirely guided by money. Acquiring more money means no varied opinions - it means one central opinion.
Because of this fundamentally different end goals (and thus the different means needed to acquire them) American news is simply incomparable to British news. They aren't even the same creature.
The flip side to this is that America as a whole is the more economically successful of our two countries. That's cold comfort for most Americans, but that's the guiding spirit of pretty much all of America.
Re: (Score:2)
However, we're here to debate, so instead of just backslapping - would you see it worthwhile trying to alter this? IF you'd prefer a less capatalistic power moulding your lives over there (for this and/or other reasons) do you see it as a lost cause? Or as I see it, well within culture's grasp, to, at the very least guide the hand of your master?
Re:Bolshevization of North America (Score:4, Interesting)
From the individual's standpoint, as pervasive as conglomerate media can be, it's fairly easy to just tune out and do your own thing. In fact, this path is so easy that it is, unsurprisingly, the most popular option. And it's easy because it's empowering - it often reveals the emperor has no clothes.
From the collective's standpoint, conglomerate media still kowtows to the almighty dollar, and it can be exploited as necessary. The major advantage to this is (verging on irony) is that many of the quote unquote liberal views of the day - the green economy and environmental sustainability, better education and better schools, and more federal support for programs like stem cell research and Medicare - are actually more econonomically viable than their alternatives. So when Google can push out a solar-powered campus and say, "This is good for the environment *and* the bottom line," then the money-focused mainstream media starts touting this as part of the central tenet: greed is good. If you can tie on socially desirable benefits to greed, so much the better.
So there really is no guiding the dollar, because it is entirely based on an economy of scale that can't really be guided by anything short of toppling 2 towers in New York City on a Tuesday. So the issue isn't that you have to convince the the other side that you're right - there's no Parliamentary function at hand in America's future (our levels of Congressional approval are more implicit signs of mistrust rather than the effects of recent scandals) - but you must in fact *be* right. And if you are right, the bottom line will bear you out.
This also explains a lot of America's success - the market intuitively and instinctively moves towards the best ideas for making money. This allows us to be more risk-takers, and our overall economic success is pretty much a function of the risks taken by all Americans throughout history. It's why Americans seem so cocky - there's a whole lineage of success behind us. And the price for that is, simply put, corporate hegemony - but when you're part of the corporation, you're less likely to complain.
I think one of the real challenges for both our countries over the next century is to figure out how to "do business" with Asia, South America, and the developing nations of the world. This is probably where are two disparate approaches will differentiate themselves most clearly - and I don't doubt for a second that America will come out on top. At what price?
Junk Media Formats (Score:2)
You can carry the cultural surperiority thing as far as you'd like, but don't forget 3.5 million Brit's pick up a copy of Sun everyday, which is probably worse than Fox News. Germany's in the same bag; the most popul
Re: (Score:2)
But its true that the tabloids are awful here, and they feed the brains of millions daily. And yes Germany has its problems there
Re: (Score:2)
Are things better in Europe? Perhaps marginally, but it's only a different strain of the same disease.
The problem is living with nominal democracy and a steady supply of entertainment is enough for most people. There's a historical pr
Re: (Score:2)
With this counter-culture's explicit admiration for the extremely brutal totalitarian dictatorship in North Vietnam, "pro-democracy" is not a label you could put on them. Real positive change did occur due to related forces during this time. See Martin Luther King Jr.
Yea. definitely bad. it should been so that (Score:2)
What i am most annoyed with is the likes of you who come and make accusations of communism at every single move that is made to further the interest of ordinary people, like me, like you, against modern day aristocracy. The people, as in "the people". remember what it was ? if it wasnt for that, you would still be praying for permission from your
Re:Bolshevization of North America (Score:5, Insightful)
Nice troll, but you've forgotten that;
1.
2.
3.
Blaming your countries problems on the long since dead communist bogeyman is less than derisable. No sir, your problems are entirely as a result of unrestricted market forces acting upon your society. Enjoy!
Re: (Score:2)
At which point they become socialists, since they have met the definition of socialism.
Re: (Score:2)
Can you deny that once those in this scenario have a monopoly control over everything, that they will likely have also become the government/state?
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
That sounds like a cop-out to me. "We can't change it without violent resistance" is not a sentiment that you should be too eager to adopt, IMHO, and most people who claim to espouse that sentiment only use it to avoid doing anything about the problems they perceive. Perhaps you're not one of those who ends up doing nothing because of that belief, but you'd be a exception if so.
The courts are not completely bought and paid for and thi
Re: (Score:2)
That's nice and all, but if "we" all own the airwaves, why don't "we" have any say as to who can broadcast on them, why don't "we" have any say as to who can bid on the airwaves, and where is my check for the leases for these airwaves handed out to companies like Verizon that pay billions that I never see a dime of?
Don't fool yourself, you and I don't own squat.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Except the opposite has happened. In the last 25 or so years, the number of major national news outlets has just about doubled. There has been an explosion in alternative weekly newspapers. There's the new phenomenon of public access TV on cable.
Cite your sources, or risk derision (Score:2)
1 - An independent telivision station not owned by a media conglomerate.
2 - An independent radio station not owned by (or owning) a media conglomerate.
3 - An independent newspaper with circulation (no the net and your blog don't count) not owned by a media conglomerate.
I dare say sir, you are full of shit, or being sarcastic.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Only, not, because they're all owned by titanic media conglomerates run by incredibly wealthy folks who, quite understandably, tend toward a conservative bent. (Fox is merely the most obvious about it.) There wasn't much difference between ABC, NBC, and CBS to begin with. But no, no, there's no media consolidation, because we have six whole TV networks instead of th
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The three are not interchangable.
"Only, not, because they're all owned by titanic media conglomerates run by incredibly wealthy folks who, quite understandably, tend toward a conservative bent. (Fox is merely the most obvious about it.)"
Actually, some are owned by titanic media conglomerates with wealthy folks who have a liberal bent. Quite understandably.
"
Re: (Score:2)
Which ones would those be?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Is many thousands of hands "few"?
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, if you look at all of the employees and all of the stockholders, there are more people that "own" the media today then before. But those people don't make the day-to-day decisions on what to cover or set the overall direction for the media outlets, which was more to my point.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
"Relevant" meaning only the media you subjectively have made the decision are important? With arbitrary criteria like this, how can you possibly lose an argument?
"the major sources which actually have substantial audiences"
Even more subjective: you are choosing those which are very popular, without regard to the actual number of media "voices". These vo
Re: (Score:2)
According to recent estimates, there are approximately 600 million hands in the United States, so yes.
(I'll leave it for someone else to factor in amputation and birth defect statistics.)
Best use of the airwaves (Score:4, Funny)
If they'd rise up more often, they could call it exercise.
Well, if they belong to me, I'd like my airwave now. I'll use it to broadcast Janet Jackson's nipple 24/7. Just as we've been desensitized to violence through the massive amounts of it on TV, it is my dream that, via continuous exposure to Janet Jackson's nipple, we'll soon become desensitized to breasts and let them bounce freely across our screens all day long (not just late at night on Cinemax).
- Greg
*Wipes back tears* (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Woe the day we get desensitized to naked boobies.
Re: (Score:2)
JJ nipple even was at most a funny attempt of a declining star to draw some attention on a meaningless PR stunt instead of her artistic work (and I would say it was a success, because I know what she did, but cannot remember anything the sang). The overreaction tells is by itself more intersting, and therefore, I indeed like your idea of promoting beauty instead of violence, but your choice would be as if we chosed
Re: (Score:2)
Take a look at the picture sometime. Her breast was being lifted strangely by what was left of her top, leading to a serious pancake effect. If that was intentional, don't you think they would've done something mroe flattering?
Low power community FM (Score:4, Interesting)
However, I definitely want more of a diversity of voices. Low power FM radio station [panaxis.com] licenses should be made much easier to get for community radio.
Re: (Score:2)
Who are you speaking of specifically? I don't know of any such entity in the US.
Re: (Score:2)
Do you have any sort of real example of where this is a real danger? Clear Channel is often mentioned, and they own 7% to 8% of questions. If they doubled the number of stations they own, they'd still have less than 20%.
Re: (Score:2)
if one company owned every TV station except one, and there was a law that prevented them from buying that one, how would that be silencing them?
Re: (Score:2)
If this "theoretical situation" is not a realistic one at all, why bring it up except for sensationalism fallacious "slippery slope" arguments?
"if one company owned every TV station except one, and there was a law that prevented them from buying that one, how would that be silencing them?"
Rather like passing a law that puts an upper limit on how many newspapers the New York Times can sell. Wel
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Number of stations is the only issue. Why bring up the audience share unless you are looking to change legislation and policy to punish someone for daring to be too popular?"
"but because almost all of those stations are large stations in large markets, they account for a huge percentage (75% or so) of all listeners."
How is this a problem when they control a minority share of the stations?
Re: (Score:2)
They're not popular because they have excellent quality -- which would be a bad reason to punish them -- they're popular because they BOUGHT all the big stations. The reason this is a problem is that there's only a finite number of radio stations, because of the way the FCC allocates the EM spectrum. Having one entity account for that
Re: (Score:2)
Whether or not it is a bad thing (you know, maybe it is!!!!), we are nowhere near getting to anything like this.
"The fact that Clear Channel only owns 11% of all the individual radio stations nationwide has no relevance."
It's a
missed this (Score:2)
That is like saying that it is bad for pumpkin pie and makes Baby Jesus cry. Totally unrelated.
"It's not like people can just start up a bunch of competing radio stations -- you need an FCC license (expensive and limited in number), and there's all the usual costs involved in starting a business"
If you go WAY back up to my first post on this, you will see that I identified this as a problem we should
Re: (Score:2)
But if you take into account the relative market share that equal voices have, you are in effect making policy that is based on how popular something is. How trollish is that: wanting to censor something because too many people "like it too much"?
"I could print up a thousand different independent newsweekly's that never get distributed pa
Re: (Score:2)
If you take into account market share instead of actual station share, you are really using popularity as a criteria. As for focusing on "amount of influence" as a justification for censorship, I'd really love to give you a time machine so you can go back to the Constitutional Convention and try to convince them to add a clause to the Bill o
Re: (Score:2)
How? They own less than 10% of the stations. They didn't do this, and they can't do this.
"It's about limiting one entity from owning a majority or all of the main media point in a location"
Can you show a place where this has happened? Or is even close to happening? The movement is really all about censoring certain people. A little while back, when there was a controversy over rules changes, the opponents of re
Re: (Score:2)
Which might be a concern if we got anywhere here this. With situations where the largest companies control only a small fraction of the stations, this is far away.
In your face, Mike Powell! (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
Copps is not the Chairman! (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Copps is not the Chairman! (Score:5, Informative)
You are absolutely right [fcc.gov]! Here is Commissioner Copps' [fcc.gov] biography page.
Well, I got that writeup very wrong. Slashdot editors: _please_ fix the title and text so as to remove FCC Chairman, and instead shift it to FCC commissioner. Or, conversely, since the premise of this story is factually inaccurate, just go ahead and wipe it.
Re: (Score:2)
report issue to: daddypants@slashdot.org (Score:2)
Note: make subject the subject.... (Score:2)
MOD PARENT UP - factual error in article (Score:2)
The article is completely different if it's "FCC Commissioner" versus "FCC Chair." The guy making the remarks quoted isn't the head honcho, he's a minority member.
If the FCC Chairman had actually come out and said stuff like this, it would be holy crap, stop the presses, who are you and what did you do with the turd pile I used to call my government time.
An FCC Commissioner saying it, is still impressive, but it's an order of magnitu
Total Bullshit (Score:2, Interesting)
BTW, I honestly don't see the democrats as being much better on the same subject.
Re: (Score:2)
I totally fucked this up.
Not the chairman (Score:3, Informative)
Kevin Martin is the chairman at the FCC.
The remainder of the commission consists of:
Michael J. Copps
Commissioner
Jonathan S. Adelstein
Commissioner
Deborah Taylor Tate
Commissioner
Robert M. McDowell
Commissioner
THIS STORY IS WRONG (Score:5, Informative)
I should have fact checked it better before submission, and for that I apologize.
Re: (Score:2)
There are those of us who would suggest that kdawson should have fact checked it better after submission...
Still, respect for owning up to your mistake.
Re: (Score:2)
Send an email to daddypants@slashdot.org. They'll get on it right away!
Bwahahahahaha!!! (sorry, it's hard to say that with a straight face)
Re: (Score:2)
Speaking at a New York City town hall meeting on corporate media consolidation [democracynow.org] and its deleterious impact on the expression of minority viewpoints, Michael Copps, minority Democratic commissioner, stumped against greater local media concentration and instead argued for greater diversity of media outlets and voices. In 2003 the FCC, under Chairman Michael Powell, changed media ownership rules to favor greater corporate media consolidation [wikipedia.org] at the expense of local owners.
Re:THIS STORY IS WRONG (Score:4, Insightful)
no, you need not bother apologizing. No one believed you in the first place.
It is inconceivable that a Republican appointee to the head of the FCC would come out against further consolidation of media ownership. Your story set off all the bullshit detectors of every politcally savvy Slashdaughter. There was simply no way that it could be true, and it wasn't.
I was wondering to myself if it were actually April 1 already. It's an equinox and I pay more attention to the season and the daylength than I do to the months. I was afraid that I had gotten six months out of sync somehow.
Re: (Score:2)
Really - when I read that title, I thought I had woken up in bizzarro-world or something.
Re: (Score:2)
I should have realized we'd never get that lucky.
What a crock! (Score:3, Interesting)
It really is that simple.
Re: (Score:2)
If you want to prevent monopolies, there's other government bureaucracies in that business.
I long for the day when everything is on cable or satellite and these people completley lose power.
Re: (Score:2)
I also think they should make it easy to get licenses, without denying them for silly discriminatory reasons such as someone thinks you are a "media conglomerate" or your skin color is that of a group that represents a "traditional racist power structure.
"I long for the day when everythin
Irresponsible, racist, and convoluted (Score:4, Interesting)
Read the transcript. Read it. Gonzalez himself is the biggest offender. He literally blames whitey for the phenomenon of media consolidation, undoubtedly finding a use for his own Latino ancestry as a carte blanche license through which he may criticize The Man for all of The Man's failings. If you're easily frightened by the cliched Orwellian future that people like Gonzalez try to paint, then here's some fearmongering for you right now:
"That's right! Our world is run by rich white men!!" It's an understanding of the problem that goes no deeper than what you'd find at a freshmen political science class.
The entire interview is a clumsy mashup of two unrelated ideas: White ownership (framed as the confusingly converse concept of "minority representation") and corporate consolidation. The former is a symptom of the way in which America was settled, and has no place in a rational discussion about the latter (which Gonzalez gladly forgoes in favor of white-baiting).
Corporate consolidation of media outlets, on the other hand, is also a tragedy. But what it means is that the media industry is no different from any other. You can wax philosophical about how the airwaves are free, man--they belong to you and me, man, but in the end there is still a situation where companies who have money buy out those who have less. Don't blame whitey, blame capitalism. To complain bitterly about how the people doing the buying out are white misses the point. It badly and embarrassingly misses the point.
I know this is Slashdot, so by all means, please feel free to copy and paste select portions of what I've written and take them out of context, because I'm sure that works better than actually discussing the issues.
Eh ? There are still "people" in united states (Score:2)
So its not like big money white asses and oil rich bastards running everyting - there are still "people" as in "we people" around ?
Well thats a relief
Watch Out! (Score:2)
Sounds like Willie Wonka (Score:2)
Stop.
Don't.
Re: (Score:2)
simile != analogy
No.
Re: (Score:2)
Privatize them? Who gets the profit from the sale of the airwaves then? The government? Who? And also, just in case you haven't noticed, it's already easy for companies with a lot of money to take up a lot of airspace, so what exactly is your "solution" supposed to be solving? If you want diversit
Re: (Score:2)
Why wouldn't they count? However, if you want to get into some more important (?) indicators, there are 66% more national networks now and twice as many national TV network news
Re: (Score:2)
C-Span actually goes most of the way to counting as a sort of news network. The news and public affairs content of the other ones probably adds up to the rest to count it as a full "one".
So here you have a situation of:
Before: ABC News, CBS News, NBC News, PBS News
After: ABC News, CBS News, NBC News, C-Span, Fox News, CNN, C-Span/etc, Link-TV cable network, various shows such as "Democracy
Re: (Score:2)
It's not. We have almost twice as many national news TV outlets as we did 20 years ago. None have been lost/consolidated, other than that little ABC competitor to CNN that was hardly around at all. Next time.... count.
Re: (Score:2)
Already did. This one large company you are thinking of controls less than 8% of the radio stations in the country. Do your research (and check a dictionary) before spouting such "krap".
"as well as how many newspapers a company could own in a single market"
What part of the First Amendment did the guys who actually restricted newspapers not understand?
"WTF does an increased number of
Re: (Score:2)
The fact that you are complaining about (and wanting legislation to stop) "the press" from "controlling and shaping" its own editorical content speaks volumes of your ignorance of the Constitution. Besides, the consolidation you speak of is just not happening.
"So what you're saying is it's okay with you that media consolidation continue..."
Maybe if it was happening in the real world, this hypo
Re: (Score:2)
As there is no need for them to do so, I want them to not do this job, and instead concentrated on making it easier to get access (licenses, etc) rather than clobbering those who dare to be too popular.
"What objective voices are you referring to? I have supplied many links to analyses of media consolidation"
None of which showed any media consolidation, as there are thousands of "voices.". They intenti
Re: (Score:2)
My mind is made up because of the facts.
"Thats ok, keep watching Fox and listening to O'Reilly. They'll tell you what you want to hear."
What does this have to do with anything at all? Does it have to do with a claim of media consolidation? I could point out that when O'Reilly is on the radio, I can listen to about 20 other radio stations that are not airing O'Reilly. Also, what is wrong with "they'll tell you what you want to hear"? That
Media consolidation is nonexistent in the US (Score:2)
They were discussed. I also pointed out the flaw that the studies excluded most media voices in order to make a case for "concentration". You do simply make a statement as if it's a fact without proof. The CJR link is yet another that only looks at a small number of companies owning a small part of the media.
"Lets look at what media consolidation is, it is whe
one last bit on this (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Nice way to change the subject from the fact that actual numbers of media voices show that there is no media consolidation.
"When you consider that Clear Channel used to own a paltry 41 before the Telecommuncations Act of 1996, and has now ballooned to over 1200 stations"
How misleading when you conveniently leave out that this is a small fraction of the total number of stations.
"but there are several others who have go
postscriptum (Score:2)
You might not know what independent means. CBS is independent (a separate company voice from the others). So is Fox News, CNN, Link TV, C Span, etc. CBS, by the way, has just a few hundred TV affiliates, which makes them even more "marginalized" than "Democracy Now" carried by 500 stations and growing.
Not a fair trade? (Score:2)
So I take it that having you excuse me for a typo was not a fair trade for me excusing you for calling me a Nazi. I could call you a "spelling Nazi", but that would impose a similar Godwin debt upon myself. Anything else I can toss in? I'm sure that there are some periods or spaces you missed in your postings that I could call you on.
Fair trade? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)