Catching Up & A Call To Mobilize Against Media Ownership Deregulation

Not surprisingly, I’ve gotten behind in posting archives of the mediageek radio show. I just posted the April 18th show where my guests were media scholar Robert McChesney and Matthew Rothschild, editor of the Progressive Magazine, who were a great help in getting listeners to call in during WEFT’s pledge drive. You can listen to this show on the radioshow page.

McChesney has started a new media reform organization, along with Nation Magazine journalist John Nichols, called Free Press. they’re sending around this message to help mobilize people against media deregulation:

Dear Friend,

If you believe that we need a free and independent media in the United States, we need you to send an email to Congress right now telling them so. Go to www.mediareform.net now, or stay here and let us explain.

On June 2, big money special interests and the Federal Communications Commission plan to further relax or eliminate the remaining significant media ownership laws. They call it “deregulation,” but it is no such thing. It is actually “re-regulation,” such that all the choice radio and TV licenses can go to fewer and fewer massive firms, and these firms can buy up far more newspapers and cable TV systems and channels than was ever possible in the past. If you like what has happened to radio since its ownership rules were scrapped in 1996, you’ll love what is about to happen in the rest of the U.S. media. It can get worse. Much worse.

The majority of the FCC members are under the thumb of the massive media conglomerates that are demanding these changes so they can get bigger and face less competition. They are working to rush these changes through without any public involvement.

The AFL-CIO, Consumers Union, the Consumer Federation of America and leading religious and civil rights groups have argued that the changes go too far. Yet, polls show that most Americans do not know that the FCC is preparing to dramatically shift the landscape of American media, journalism and democracy.

Only concerted effort on our part can stop the FCC.

In the next few weeks, the U.S. Senate Commerce Committee will hold crucial hearings on the proposed deregulation.

Public comments will determine whether or not Congress allows Big Media to have their way.

Please go to www.mediareform.net. One click will send your message to Congress and the FCC demanding they preserve current media ownership rules for the sake of a diverse, independent, and competitive media.

If we lose this fight, the likely stampede of mergers will give a handful of large corporations greater influence over what is– and is not — reported in the news. The quality of media will get even worse as the public’s ability to have open, informed discussion with a wide variety of viewpoints declines, eroding the foundations of our democracy.

No matter what your issue, media reform is integral to it. As they say, You control the news, you control the views.

Finally, please send this message to everyone you think might be interested via email. We can win this fight.

Bob McChesney & John Nichols

Thanks to my fellow communications grad student Andrew Ó Baoill for passing this along to me.

One Response to Catching Up & A Call To Mobilize Against Media Ownership Deregulation

  1. Megan Baker May 3, 2003 at 2:13 am #

    All this info is great, but I need concrete facts and arguments so that I can draw up a petition and maybe do some tabling about this thing before June 2 is upon us. Where can I get facts and arguments? I mean, I need specific stuff that I can use in writing to the FCC and whoever else and that I can ask others to use. I’d really like to do something about this issue, and I think we can get quite a few people here in Austin, TX to write letters or sign petitions. But I can’t even write up a petition without a better handle on how to argue this thing, and I can’t get that without very specific background on it, facts and possible ways to spin our side of it. Can you recommend a source for this kind of information?

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