BIG MEDIA COMPANIES WANT TO GET
BIGGER, AGAIN
Common Cause, Tuesday, June 13, 2006
Remember back to June 2003, when over 2
million Americans from across the political spectrum sent a message
to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) urging it not to
allow big media companies to get even bigger? Well, the FCC is
considering revamping the rules again.
We are calling on current FCC chairman
Kevin Martin to guarantee that the rulemaking process be
transparent, that a number of public hearings be held, and that the
actual language of any proposed rules be made public with adequate
time for public input before the FCC takes a vote.
Back in 2003 when former Chairman
Michael Powell was in charge of the process, the public was not
given time to review the rules or voice their concerns about how the
rules would impact their local communities. Only one public forum
was held in Richmond, Virginia, and the rules themselves were never
made public prior to the FCC's vote. The only thing that kept the
rules from going into effect was a decision by a Philadelphia court
that found that the rules were flawed, and so was the process that
produced them.1 This
time around we want to make sure the public has a seat at the table.
Media ownership in America is already
pretty concentrated. Did you know that since 1995, the number of
companies owning commercial TV stations has declined by 40 percent?2 Did
you know that Viacom owns CBS, General Electric owns NBC, Disney
owns ABC and News Corp. owns Fox Broadcasting, which in turn runs
Fox News Channel? News Corp. also owns the New York Post,
the publisher HarperCollins, and the film production company
Twentieth Century Fox. How much power and influence does that pack,
and how much more of our major media
should we allow any one corporation to control?
Even though the Internet has increased
our ability to access diverse sources of news, major corporations -
including AOL/Time Warner, the New York Times, CNN and
USA Today (owned by Gannett) - dominate the top Internet news
sites. To get an idea of how big these media companies already
are, visit the Columbia School of Journalism's Who
Owns What search
tool.
Please join us in this very important
campaign and send a letter to Chairman Martin today!
-- The Common Cause Media Reform Team
2
Common Cause report - The
Fallout from the Telecommunications Act of 1996