THIS SHOULD BE FRONT PAGE NEWS
But it's not...

Cheered on by the Bush Administration and powerful media conglomerates, Federal Communications Commission chair Michael Powell is pushing ahead with a June 2 vote to gut longstanding rules designed to prevent the growth of media monopolies. If successful, Powell's push could, in the words of dissident commissioner Michael Copps, "dramatically [alter] our nation's media landscape without the kind of debate and analysis that these issues clearly merit."

Click here.

Even though I have a degree in communications, I've really kind of avoided writing about this topic because all I seem to be able to do is shake my head. Dumbfounded. As anti-deregulation media mogul Ted Turner puts it in the above linked Nation article, "There's really five companies that control 90 percent of what we read, see and hear. It's not healthy." Indeed. That's the current situation (a situation that Ted Turner helped to create) before this new round of FCC deregulation. Things are absolutely awful right now. It's just about to get worse and I have great difficulty imaging anything worse than now. The media is little more than diversion for the overworked masses and propaganda for everybody else. How can things be getting worse?

But I will force myself to say these brief words and post these couple of links. After all, the failure of the US news media is one of the reasons that I've become so vocal and opinionated in my old age. The failure of the media is a major motivation for my blogging. Media consolidation and corporatization have been the silent but powerful partner to the rise of American conservativism. Even if media monopoly is a preordained conclusion, protest must be made.

Who knows? The movement against deregulation has grown quickly and gained some powerful players. Maybe deregulation will be halted, but what is really needed is a government enforced breakup of the current media oligopoly. Alas, I don't see that brewing.

One last thought. Eschaton points out that Bob Harris over at This Modern World has shown that conservative views about media deregulation prove that there is no such thing as a liberal media. Or something to that effect.

Click here.

$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$