As soon as most people see the words “duopoly,” “cross-ownership rules,” or “FCC” in the headlines their eyes glaze over. But not my friend and many people’s hero, Bob McChesney. Bob eats memos about telecom regulations for breakfast. He has campaigned tirelessly, along with John Nichols, Mark Crispin Miller, Jeff Chester, and others, for reform of our nation’s media regulatory apparatus.… return to article
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Reader Comments (13)Page 1 of 1 pagesWell put, Susan. If only we knew what to do to fix this FCC nightmare ...
Posted by monica on Jun 2, 2003 at 7:13 PM The fcc web site is at www.fcc.gov The fcc has always made sure that the wealthy have a voice and the rest of us don’t. If you go to their web site, you will find how to contact them. Tell them to drop licencing fees and all limits on free speech, but keep a 30% cap on the number stations an individual or corporation can own.
Posted by demosuzuki on Jun 2, 2003 at 9:52 PM Well, interesting article, but this seems to be too late.
Aren’t FCC commissioners and employees working for the federal government? Don’t they have the same limitations as federal employees when it comes to traveling on industry’s dollars? Why has this been allowed? Why haven’t these people been fired? Since Powell has essentially put himself out of business, let’s get rid of the FCC.
In the 1930s, the Germans were ill informed as to what was going on because the government controlled what the people were told. In 2003, the US is going in the same direction. Since our (non-elected) President has worked hard to gut our educational system (educated people question, uneducated people follow blindly…) and has now gutted any semblance of news, we, too, can repeat history. Boy, aren’t we great!???
Whatever happened to the Society of Professional Journalists and their cry about the “public’s right to know”?
Posted by Diane on Jun 3, 2003 at 5:37 AM Let them eat cake, he said. And why not let them make the rules, too? After all, they are disadvantaged…Meanwhile, folks like me will have to go online(safe for now) and rely on foreign media venues. Once again our government is looking out for Corporate interests so they can win the next election.
Posted by Robin on Jun 3, 2003 at 9:57 AM From Chr. Powell’s responses on C-Spann, 2 questions, Did he imply that the internet does not utilize Public Air Space? and, are demographics available
on the use of the internet by citizens? My impression is he believes all citizens has resources and time to utilize the internet for diverse news, comments, etc.
Posted by Marvin Wagner on Jun 3, 2003 at 2:35 PM Good article, what do we do now? Where is the press? We need to protest this!!!!
Posted by denisedecarlo on Jun 3, 2003 at 8:18 PM These changes are payment for services rendered.
Now let"s create a fee structure to have commercial media access fees fully fund- multiple and diverse- community Papers,Radio and T.V. stations.
Posted by Darrell Denisi on Jun 4, 2003 at 5:55 PM Public Stations, funded by high airwave fees for commercial media would provide access for honest candidates.
Posted by Darrell Denisi on Jun 4, 2003 at 6:01 PM Ok. These guys hijacked the white House and reality showed them that the “rabble” hesitated to buy their war. So they need a more powerful propagandaapparatus to stay in power and continue to rule this world by military force. Transnacional corporate facism require totalitarian monopolic control of peoples minds, dreams, values, moral, lust, sex….During the brutal Reagan-Thatcher years I was stationed in Centralamerica as representative for Swedish Save The Children. The wellknown Jesuitpriest/professor in psycology Padre Ignatio Martin BarŪ in El Salvador was of great help for us in designing our psychosocial strategy for our work with childrens wartrauman. A few weeks before he was assassinated Padre Martin-BarŪ was preparing a paper he was to deliver on an internacional congress in december 1989. In the paper he wrote that the US counterinsurgency project ” emphasized merely the formal dimension of democracy,” and that the mass media must be understood as a mechanism of “psychological warfare”. Hitler said that the propaganda in the dictatorial state has to be adapted to” it„s lowest standing objects”. So to say - the propaganda should be adapted to tastelesness, brutality, and inmorality.
Dostojevskij„s dictator speak out of the book “Evil spirits” and the beast of dictatorship Peter Verchovenskij steps forward and whisper that “the masses has to be disarmed intellectually. Their will and ability to indipendent thought must be eliminated and be substituded with the strongest force of all that keeps the system together -namely the shame for an opinion of their own.”
The counterrevolution of moral and justice has to be prevented.The most eficcient way to do it is to let “the slaves to trundle in a state of drunkenness, of libidinous colletively as well as individually.
“We shall sow drunkenness, gossip and delation ..... and transform the human beeing into distasteful and doomed beast, frightened, cruel and selfish.”
That will be the medias funktion
It is frightening how well the medias adaptation to the markets demands is following Hitlers and Verchovenskijs advices. We can point to the genious of Dostojevskij in his understanding of how “the lowest and the vulgarity” attracts the human beeing.
The market has the same genious.
Posted by Nils B. ModČn on Jun 6, 2003 at 11:12 PM Does anyone know what the biggest news name/show in the US is?
The O’Reilly Factor, Bill O’Reilly says he independant because he criticizes repubs but he is still pretty conservative. Studies have shown that most people watch pundits who confirm their own beliefs and not those who fight them. So therefore, the 2 or 3 million people who watch “factor” watch because they agree with him. You say that Phil Donahue got canceled becuase he is a liberal, NO, he got canceled because 400,000 people watched his show.There are more news voices than ever in the history of our country. That’s a fact. Radio, TV and the internet have provided people with infininate amount of sources.
Posted by Brad on Jun 7, 2003 at 11:33 PM How many watch the News Hour on PBS, Brad? Or 60 minutes? Or Washington Week?
And what qualifies O’Riley’s as a News Program, anyway?
And while we’re at it, What is this mysterious “factor”? Is it Bill’s boorishness and nasty temper? Huh?
Posted by tim snyder on Jun 8, 2003 at 6:57 PM The “O’reilly Factor” is the highest rated cable news show, the shows you mentioned are all network shows, so obviously more people watch them. But in terms of cable news, which is continually growing in popularity, fox news is dominant.
Posted by Brad on Jun 8, 2003 at 7:26 PM Page 1 of 1 pages -
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