Sirotablog
David Sirota is a political journalist and nationally syndicated newspaper columnist at Creators Syndicate. David writes about political corruption, globalization and working-class economic issues often ignored by both of America's political parties.
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November 1, 2007 8:24 AM
Poll: Most Americans Oppose FCC Move to Allow More Consolidation
With the FCC considering a plan to loosen media-ownership rules and allow more media consolidation, we get this from Radio Ink:
WASHINGTON -- October 31, 2007: Most people favor keeping the broadcast-newspaper cross-ownership ban, according to a new poll from the Media and Democracy Coalition, a lobbying group that opposes loosened media-ownership rules.
The coalition released its poll as the FCC held its sixth and final planned hearing on localism and media ownership, in Washington, DC, and as FCC Chairman Kevin Martin is reportedly seeking a vote on his not-yet-public plan for revised ownership rules as soon as December 18.
Fifty-seven percent of 1,000 respondents age 18 and over said they support the broadcast-newspaper ban. Seventy percent see media consolidation as a problem, and 42 percent say it's a "major problem."
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About David Sirota
David Sirota is a political journalist and nationally syndicated newspaper columnist at Creators Syndicate. He is the New York Times bestselling author of Hostile Takeover. He lives in Denver, Colorado. His daily blog can be found at CREDO Action. He contributes regularly to the Denver Post's Web site, is a senior editor at In These Times magazine and is working on his second book. He has been profiled in Newsweek and the Rocky Mountain News and is widely known for his reporting on political corruption, globalization and working-class economic issues often ignored by both of America's political parties. Sirota serves as co-chair of the Progressive States Network, a 501(c)3 organization that supports state legislators and that is a partner of CREDO.
You can subscribe to Sirota's e-mail newsletter by going to davidsirota.com and signing up in the lefthand corner. To find out more about Sirota, download his official biography or see his recent media appearances. You can e-mail him at sirota@credoaction.com.
The views expressed on this blog are his own, and do not necessarily represent the views of Working Assets (publisher of CREDO Action) or the institutions Sirota works for.
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Discussion
Good to know. However, as long as more Americans are kept into numbed and dumbed down status, the wrong leaders will be elected to keep fudging the rules while giving those voters a dog bone in the form of OJ, Lewinsky, Paris Hilton, American Idol, etc ...
Its moot, the people have no voice in gov't since since Pelosi and Reid are running the show.
Hell both of them make their GOP predecessors look moderate.
I agree with Waltc. We do not have a government that is with the people. We have a corporatist Fascist ruling group that is bought and paid for by the corporations.
The FCC was an UTTERLY USELESS bureaucratic agency whose time has long passed. That agency must be ABOLISHED as it has been used by the rightwing terrorists as a tool to kill the Constitution !
The FCC, like most of the rest of the government has become a tool in the hands of the corrupt, inept, and uncaring Bushiato.
Not only should broadcast/newspaper conglomerates be banned, but the accumulation of TV and radio stations under single corporation ownership.
Congress needs to be pressured to take a hand in breaking up these corporate disinformation networks.
It used to be we had local stations, and local newspapers, who were individually owned and speaking their own minds.
These chains of radio and TV stations which are controlled out of a single headquarters, and fail to react to local conditions/problems/even emergencies are a public disservice which needs to be brought to an abrupt halt.
If the FCC doesn't act, then we need to pressure Congress to start investigating and drafting measures to break up these broadcast disinformation chains.
Now, what can we do about these newspaper chains?
I had the chance to hear Gen. Sanchez speak a couple of weeks ago, and after the event had broken up and only the stragglers and suck-ups were left, he commented (paraphrased here), "What worries me is, what's gone wrong with the way America grows its leaders?"
This morning, in another thread in this blog, waltc commented, "... both parties ought to be abolished. Both are corrupt and in cahoots with one another in keeping the current system broken."
A country grows leaders over time, based on societal structures that hone skills, set standards, and provide a ladder-climbing process of self-selection. Crappy countries have crappy incubators for leaders.
One of the reasons for the success of the United States was that, even considering the corruption and prejudice inherent in our systems, we took the development of our leaders seriously, from high school organizations forward. This focus was built around a pursuit of excellence for its own sake, and a collective reverence for high character.
These developmental structures, and the values they represented, have almost entirely broken down. Only the military seems still capable of producing quality leaders, and it is under duress. (You'll note that some of our best rookie public officials are folks freshly back from the Iraq war.)
The problem we face is that this process is generational. The bozo's we loath now were produced over the last 20 to 30 years in our system. Is anything occurring right now that would imply that we will grow better leaders than this for the next generation? What kind of people will we see in ten, twenty years from now?
This is how ethically sick we are today:
"The chief of the Consumer Product Safety Commission and her predecessor have taken dozens of trips at the expense of the toy, appliance and children's furniture industries and others they regulate...
...
Commission spokeswoman Julie Vallese said the agency's counsel and its ethics officers conducted "a full conflict-of-interest analysis" of the trips and stand behind their decisions."
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21589678/
This is not an R problem, and it's not a D problem.
This is an American problem.
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