Undoing Michael Powell’s Mischief at the FCC
Giving the cable companies more power and control–and hence wealth–was precisely the point of Michael Powell’s reclassification of broadband Internet as an “information service.”
Cable Monopoly’s Gain Is Community Media’s Loss
Critics have rightly argued that if the merger is approved, customers will experience less choice and higher cable bills as a result of increasing media monopolization. What tends to fly under the radar in this debate are further dangers that disproportionately impact underserved communities.
Michael Ratner on Bradley Manning Hearing, Joe Torres on FCC
What happened at the Bradley Manning hearings this week? Corporate media don’t seem interested; Michael Ratner tells us what they missed. And big media getting… bigger? Joe Torres on the latest at the FCC.
FCC Wants to End Persecution of Media Moguls
The L.A. Times (11/6/12) reports that following the election, the Federal Communications Commission appears likely to ease cross-ownership rules—because supposedly nobody cares about that stuff anymore. The article by reporter Jim Puzzanghera tries to work up sympathy for media moguls: Paul Boyle, senior vice president for public policy at the Newspaper Association of America, said […]
Local TV News–Now With Ice Cream!
A new survey from the Radio Television Digital News Association reveals that we’re getting more local TV news: For the fourth year in a row, the latest RTDNA/Hofstra University Annual Survey found that the average television station set a new record for the amount of local news aired. Over those last four years, the average […]
Beyond the ‘Vast Wasteland’
On the anniversary of former FCC commissioner Newton Minow’s speech decrying television as a “vast wasteland,” Chicago News Cooperative columnist James Warren makes an important point: Minow’s speech was really about how broadcasters should be forced to do more public affairs programming in return for their free use of the public airwaves: Sitting high above […]
Tangling the Net
At a time dominated by headlines about the economy and ultra-partisan politics, a critical debate has been kept out of the spotlight—though its consequences could alter American social, political, economic and cultural life for decades. On December 21, the Federal Communications Commission voted to enact controversial “net neutrality” rules establishing new federal oversight of Internet […]
Taking Media Mergers to the Next Level
Over the last decade, dozens of media mergers and purchases have resulted in a media industry controlled by a handful of companies—and the cable giant Comcast wants to be one of them. After a failed attempt to purchase Disney in 2004 for $66 billion (Inter Press Service, 3/20/04), Comcast offered to take over NBC Universal […]
Right-Wing Witch Hunt Reaches FCC
When the Obama administration’s Federal Communications Commission underwent its first hearing by the House oversight committee on September 17, the agenda largely centered on FCC chair Julius Genachowski’s upcoming broadband plan and net neutrality—yet before it was over, a Republican representative from Oregon felt compelled to examine the Commission’s new associate general counsel and chief […]
Localism: Corporate Media’s Ultimate Bogeyman
On his Media Citizen blog, Free Press’ Timothy Karr (9/17/09) has compiled some astounding Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh and Lou Dobbs quotes propounding a “fear that’s laced with paranoia, stoked by misinformation and prejudice and fed to millions of people via powerful media”–namely that “the most anti-American notion of the lot is the idea that […]
Way Cleared for More ‘Excessive Media Consolidation’
On news that “today, a federal court threw out the Federal Communications Commission’s rule to cap cable ownership at 30 percent,” Free Press (8/28/09) comments “the rule served as an important consumer protection from media consolidation and growing cable cartels, and encouraged diversity in ownership in the cable industry.” The media advocacy group’s Ben Scott […]
Anti-Hate Activists Win S.F. City Media Resolution
The Hispanic/Latino Anti-Defamation Coalition, along with the National Hispanic Media Coalition (8/11/09), “applauds” the San Francisco Board of Supervisors for being “the first elected body to take a stand against hate speech in media” by having approved unanimously a resolution urging the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to conduct a comprehensive investigation on hate speech in […]
Telecoms Rally Against ‘Transformative’ Internet Bill
Free Press campaign coordinator Misty Perez has sent out (7/15/09) a call to action in light of the astonishing figure that “in the first three months of 2009, the phone and cable industries spent at least $20 million to hire more than 400 lobbyists” in an effort to “push for policies that fatten phone and […]
Infomercials Amok
When critics talk about “saving journalism,” the image one gets is of ink-stained toilers bringing important truths into the light of public scrutiny. But this bears little relation to most people’s experience of news media. For one thing, most people get their news from TV, not generally the poster child for journalism worth saving. Certainly, […]
Why I Couldn’t Say What Dan Froomkin Said Reporters Should Do
I wrote a short item on Dan Froomkin’s firing for FAIR’s radio show CounterSpin today: One of the bright spots at the Washington Post media enterprise was Dan Froomkin’s column, “White House Watch,” for WashingtonPost.com. It often struck us that Froomkin had a whole different attitude—skeptical of those in power, and critical of their journalistic […]
On AT&T’s ‘Arbitrary Intervention in the Open Internet’
Keeping up with corporate attempts to abuse new media technology, the activists at Free Press (6/18/09) have a new campaign pointing out exactly what’s wrong with the fact that “AT&T is allowing Major League Baseball to stream video live to the iPhone on the carrier’s 3G network, but is prohibiting other companies like SlingPlayer Mobile […]
New Medium, Old Story: Telecom Greed
Senator John Kerry’s post to the SaveTheInternet.com blog (6/16/09) looks at the fact that “nine of the most popular 10 phones are locked in a deal with one of these big wireless carriers,” and how this corporatization limits the new medium: Here’s the issue I think we need to wrestle with: Wireless service providers are […]
Tell the FCC to Keep Public Access Accessible
Today’s Democracy Now! (3/9/09) features Amy Goodman reporting that “a House Appropriations subcommittee has… asked the FCC to look into the allegations” of media activists across the country: Community media groups are accusing the telecom giant AT&T of discriminating against local public access channels across the nation, and the deadline for public comment is midnight […]
Josh Silver on FCC ruling, John Conroy on Chicago police torture
This week Josh Silver from Free Press joins CounterSpin to break down the recent FCC decision to eliminate a ban that aimed to prevent the creation of cross-industry media monopolies. Also on the program: We’ll talk to journalist John Conroy, who has covered the Chicago police department for decades and, recently, found himself out of a job, thanks to the cost-cutting of his paper’s corporate parent.
Daniel Davies on the Lancet study, Peggy Charren on the FCC and indecency
This week on CounterSpin: Journalist Daniel Davies joins for a discussion on a recent study by The Lancet, which found that hundreds of thousands of Iraqis have died as a consequence of the war. Also on the show: The FCC’s war on “indecency,” with Peggy Charren.
