Senate Votes to Reverse FCC Decision Allowing Media Consolidation
Thursday night, the Senate cast a near-unanimous vote to reverse the Federal Communication Commission’s December 2007 decision to let media companies own both a major TV or radio station and a major daily newspaper in the same city.Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.), who introduced the rarely used “resolution of disapproval,” said last night that “the FCC is supposed to be a referee for the media industry, but instead they’ve been cheerleaders in favor of more consolidation. … We already have too much concentration in the media.”
Senator Barack Obama added his support to the resolution saying, “I urge my colleagues in the House of Representatives to expeditiously pass the legislation.”
The Senate vote is good news for everyone who is fed up with a media system, that, in the words of Jon Stewart, is “hurting America” with propaganda pundits, embedded journalists, horse-race election coverage, and celebrity gossip posing as news. It reflects growing awareness — in Congress and with average Americans — of the perils of concentrated media ownership. Namely, insatiable profit pressures that gut newsrooms, replace labor-intensive investigative news with salacious, cheap-to-cover stories, and encourage the dumbing-down of the most pressing issues into 30-second sound bites and partisan shout-fests.
Media concentration is also central to the rise of extremists like Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh, who overwhelm the dial on conglomerates owned and run by businessmen with far-right politics.
Back in 2003, Senator Dorgan and then-Sen. Trent Lott (R-Miss.) passed a similar resolution of disapproval to overturn the last effort by the Bush FCC to loosen ownership limits after 3 million Americans - both liberal and conservative - decried the FCC’s handout to the largest media companies. That resolution languished in the GOP-controlled House of Representatives, and the proposed rules were later rejected by a federal court.
The “newspaper-broadcast cross-ownership ban” that the FCC is trying to get rid of has been in place since 1975. It keeps media outlets from merging already stripped-down local newsrooms in the name of “synergy” and protects diversity of viewpoints in the local press, something the Supreme Court has recognized is critical to the health of our democracy. Thursday’s vote sends a clear message to media executives and the FCC that further media consolidation will not be tolerated.
The resolution of disapproval now moves to the House, where it already has bipartisan support. President Bush has threatened to veto the measure. A statement from the White House yesterday called the FCC’s new rules the product of “extensive public comment and consultation” but failed to mention that only 1 percent of the public that testified at public hearings or sent letters to the FCC supported the administration’s position.
Typical of most Bush appointees, FCC Chairman Kevin Martin disregarded the will of the American people and granted another handout to the largest companies. A veto-proof majority in Congress supporting the resolution would stop Bush from doing the same.
The fight is far from over. But last night’s vote is a historic victory for the public interest over one of Washington’s most powerful lobbies.
Josh Silver is the Executive Director of Free Press a national, nonpartisan organization that he co-founded with Robert McChesney and John Nichols in 2002 to engage citizens in media policy debates and create a more democratic and diverse media system.
Copyright © 2008 HuffingtonPost.com, Inc.
The Senate has taken note of the American people and are racing to catch up with them (if only to save their jobs).
The Rethuglicans are in retreat. Bring in reinforcements! Democrats unite!
The more the Democrats unite, the more this sort of thing will snowball. The more they unite, the more power they will have to stand against Bush/Cheney.
I call again for one of the Dem Presidential candidates to withdraw and unite the party against the common foe.
This will be a year of immense change - unite, build a momentum that will be unstoppable, and good things will happen.
I know this was only a voice vote in the Senate, but does anyone know who voted against this “bill” that would stop the FCC from further consolidation? Whoever they are need to be ousted from the Senate.
Dem unity solving our problems? It would merely trim the worst excesses of the future, and would rectify few of the past. We need to see both parties indicted under RICO and destroyed. A libertarian versus progressive contest is potentially honest and productive.
The three Senators who went on the record voting against the resolution of disapproval:
Saxby Chambliss (R-GA), who won a close election against triple amputee and Viet Nam war vet Max Cleland with ads like this one http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tKFYpd0q9nE is up for re-election in 2008;
Johnny Isakson(R-GA) who voted in favor of the 2007 resolution declaring Iran’s military a “foreign terrorist organization” in Iraq (isn’t that what the U.S. army is???) is up for election in 2010;
and Lisa Murkowski (R-AK), who has been given 2% and 11% favorable rankings by environmental groups for her support of drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, is up for re-election in 2010.
Message to Georgia: WAKE UP!!!
Let’s help each of these three find new careers.
this is great news!
Rebel Farmer, and gde,
YES; with what both of you posted.
sands,
It seems to me that Max Cleland should have a good chance of winning the next time around. It sure sounds like he should; only needing for Georgians to wake up and be awake-principled, instead of principled, while also asleep.
NOW, and to express a concern the article raises with or for me, what it says is only with respect to ‘more’, ‘further’ consolidation, nothing about undoing the damn hell-consolidation already, and majorly so, in place. We know what this “machinery” has produced for public “education” over the past … many years, and this shit needs to be curbed once and for all time.
To be able to achieve that, however, requires enough politicians of strong and righteous principle, and a sufficiently (or stronger) fitting analogy is presented in the following article.
“Salvador Allende and Hugo Chavez: Similarities and Differences on the ‘National Road to Socialism’”,
by Prof. James Petras, May 14 2008,
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=8975
It makes very enjoyable reading in terms of President Hugo Chavez, while the unfortunate idealism of once President Allende is … sad and certainly tragic.
The USA needs the kind of leadership Hugo Chavez illustrates, and the above article is not long, but is very good for reflecting upon, carefully thinking about; even in a meditative sort of way, to really absorb what the article says.
Undoing Wrong is NOT wrong to do!