Slashdot Mirror
House Overturns FCC Media Consolidation Plan
son_of_a_general writes "Looks like the House of Representatives just overturned the FCC's media consolidation rules, previously covered on Slashdot here(1), here(2), and here(3). The article over at CNet shows that the House passed a bill that overturned the rules, by a 400 to 21 vote. All is not clear yet, however, as the bill still must pass through Senate and face being signed by a President who has already indicated that he may veto."
It doesn't matter if the bastard vetos because congress can say screw you in a 2/3 majority, which they no doubt have. the senate is the real decision maker at this point as the house seems to already have its mind made up.
Please, can the government make one good decision this year, please??? I mean sure, it's just a correction of a previous bad move, but it's something. Gotta set the expectation bar low to achieve satisfaction.
The GeekNights podcast is going strong. Listen!
Even if this bill only rejects funding of the recent FCC decision, having such a lopsided vote will have to sway some lawmakers. Even if the Senate is a more deliberative body than the house, with this much opposition in the House, I'm fairly certain that the Senate would pass this with at least 67 affirmative votes, overriding the threat of a presidential veto.
The only way I could see this getting messed up is if the language gets neutered in a compromise bill, though, so we're still going to have to speak out to our local Representatives and Senators to let them know what we think. And with any luck, they might even listen.
From CNet: Powell and his allies at the FCC have offered two major justifications for relaxing ownership restrictions.
At the time of last month's vote, Powell said the United States needs "modern rules that take into account the explosion of new media outlets" and are not tied to a "bygone black-and-white era." Technology offers a wealth of media alternatives--such as the Internet, 802.11 wireless networks, XM and Sirius satellite radio, DirecTV, hundreds of cable channels, low-power FM radio--that were not available a generation ago, the argument goes.
While it's true that these options may (or may not) have existed a generation ago, it is my considered opinion that most of them are on the fringe, expensive to break into and maintain, and have yet to prove themselves viable. Why should big-biz media interests be allowed to further control the media that is already established and has a wide audience, while the independent interests would be force to assume take all the risk to develop new channels? Especially when those new channels would probably get swept up (by another FCC gazelle-style roll over) by the big-biz outlets once they were established as viable?
Go House. I'm surprizingly proud.
GMFTatsujin
400-21? That is 95% of the House voting for this bill, way over the 2/3rds needed to overturn a veto. We just gotta get the Senate to pass this with over a 2/3 vote (67 out of 100 votes should do it I think if my math is right) then the President has a PR problem on his hand (like he needs another one). If he veto's it, then it will get passed anyways most likely and if he votes for it then he changed his mind which will piss off his ClearChannel donors.
I recommend Eric Alterman's What Liberal Media as a resource (from a left-wing perspective) on media bias: it's not the whole truth, but it's probably the best thing written on the subject.
I'd have to disagree. Allowing huge media conglomerates to own more media outlets is not a good thing. The media has been, from the beginning of this country, the watchdog of government. It's changed, for the worse, into more of a cheerleading outfit these days and that's not a good thing and consolidation can only make it worse by allowing for less diversity and less opposing opinions. The media is supposed to keep the public informed and keep the government in check but that is less likely to happen with local issues and opposing views when the media becomes more national and less diverse. This is bound to happen when a small number of corporations own most of the media outlets across the country.
The media as a watchdog is much more important than the media as a business.
Time makes more converts than reason
or is anyone else wondering if the real reason many lawmakers voted for this bill was to prevent a single corporation from being able to control the politicians' access to tv ad space? The result is the same, so I guess i'm not really complaining. But it would be great to see if lawmakers were taking media conglomeration into more serious consideration than their own ad space.
Why would the president veto this? It's in the best interest of the citizenry. I propose a new law:
Any politician that takes more than a certain amount of campaign contributions (say, both an absolute threshhold of $10K and a certain percentage of their total fundraising) from a corporation (including individiuals that work for that corporation) or organization has to wear a sticker, clearly visible both from the front and the back, with the logo of the company or organization on it whenever they are in public in an official capacity. Think of those stickers pasted all over racing cars.
I wonder how many stickers Bush would have.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
Not necessarily. If it wasn't for diverse and independent media we might not even hear of some of these things that you mention. I believe the consolidation of media is a very important issue. We need to worry about this because it will affect all of us.
Time makes more converts than reason
I know this is a flame but those guys at cato are nuts.
The FCC has already decided that it will allow companies to own much more than they can now. The FCC director stated that this oh so important decision does not need any debate. He tried to shut down the debate by refusing to fund town meetings around the country debating this and informing the general public. He has definitely been bought by the likes of Clear Channel. This will further erode democracy in this country, and if you now hate DMCA and its ilk, wait until the next pass. Laws like DMCA and PATRIOT 2 get passed because there is a lack of healthy debate. It has been shown time and time again that Clear Channel refuses to report on such items. If you don't believe me, when was this particular debate even mentioned on any of Clear Channel's stations? The only time that I saw this reported was on a PBS program called "NOW with Bill Moyers". This was an excellent program that tried to look at the issue from all sides. You can find an in-depth discussion here Little by little our rights are being taken away from us. Just look at all of the recent laws implemented, DMCA, copyrights, PATRIOT act etc.
We need to act now, before the decision has been rendered. Once it has, there is very little chance of getting it changed. What's at stake is the very nature of democracy in this country. There is no way to rectify this if a bad decision is made. How do we rectify this in 10 years from now, once Clear Channel has bought up the few remaining independent stations? Do we really expect that at that point, a healthy debate about breaking up Clear Channel will be allowed by Clear Channel?
Clear Channel says it needs to be allowed to buy the remaining independent stations in order to become profitable. If they haven't become profitable at this size, what makes us believe that will become profitable when they have taken over the rest? Lets face it folks, these guys are lying to us saying that they are not profitable. They are quite profitable now, and what's really driving this is pure greed at the expense of this country's core values. They are destroying this country at the expense of a few bucks. Enough is enough.
It does not mean that "the population is against" the media consolidation.
It means that House members are tired of arguing over the bill in question and are ready to call it a day and vote for whatever the bill has in it.
Appropriations bills regularly pass by very large margins.
This is not a sound argument. First of all most of those "500-plus" channels are all owned by a few conglomerates. There is FOX, FOX NEWS, FOX SPORTS, and there are 5 HBO's and 5 Showtimes, and then there is AOL Time Warner and so on and so forth. There were only a few stations in 1973 because the technology was still in its infancy and the demand was not as high as it is today. It is important to notice that those stations were all owned by different companies so in that respect it was more diverse not less. More stations != more diversity.
Time makes more converts than reason
Lets face it- almost everything our politicians do now is either in the interests of business, stripping our rights, or pork-grabbing for votes come next election(some all of the above). This is, if I ever saw it, some seriously anti-corporate stuff.
Fortunately, this issue is one where the interests of politicians (their interest being themselves) and the general public (their interest also being themselves) intersect. With Fox News' rise to the top of the cable news ratings with a wide margin behind them, as well as an even wider one during events that interest the general public such as wars and terrorist attacks, left-leaning politicians have come to realize what many of their Republican colleagues figured out while the "Big 3" networks were at the top of the heap: a healthy variety of opinion in the media is a good thing, because it stops one side or another from having their character assassinated on a daily basis. One would logically assume that the right wing politicians would be in favor of greater media consolidation now that Fox News is in the lead, but years of left wing network TV media have convinced the older politicians that homogeneous media of ANY kind is a bad thing, so they're voting against consolidation, too.
Savor it while it lasts...
I think it might be because both sides are afraid of the other (or some third party) wielding too much power in the media.
When you look at it there are large swathes of both sides of politics who would oppose this on principle. On the left, anyone with a serious civil liberties, free speech type agenda will surely be opposed to this. On the right, anyone with a small government/libertarian type agenda will naturally oppose the concentration of media power as contrary to their aims.
It's really only the chumps in the middle - Bush with his corporate pals and neocons, Lieberman and the member of the New York/Washington set of big government Democrats - who are going to want to allow this.
Is it possible that, just for once, this is a case of politics actually reflecting what people want irrespective of partisan allegiance? What's going to be really interesting is to see if Bush is game to use his veto, and if so if the house will vote again to overrule him. So far he has basically put the veto stamp away and signed anything that's been put in front of him... kinda like a trained monkey.... (ahem).
Read Pynchon.
Regardless of what your politics are, do you really think vetoing this would be a "political catastrophe"? You actually think there are people who are going to go into the voting booth in Nov 04 and say to themselves, "Gee I was going to vote for Bush, but after vetoing that media ownership bill over a year ago I'm just going to have to vote for Sharpton"
Try to keep tinkgs in perspective.
It's changed, for the worse, into more of a cheerleading outfit these days . . .
I think that inferrs that the media and the goverment are in alignment. I don't think that's so much true as the fact that both of them have basically turned into ratings whores - The media for ratings, the goverment for votes - neither caring for the actual welfare of the people.
The media as a watchdog is much more important than the media as a business.
Sort of applies to the goverment as well (assuming a positive sense of "watchdog").
NPR sez he's promised to.... how can he justify that with such an overwhelming nay vote in the house?
Maybe because Bush is our bizarro president? Bush had fewer votes than opponent, so he won the election. Now he does everything that the majority doesn't want. Bush must always be backwards. To bring about peace and stability, he adopts a policy of preemptive strikes. To leave no child behind, he cancels education funding. To protect a forest from wildfires, he cuts down the trees. To protect U.S. from terrorist attacks, he pisses off the entire world as much as possible. Bizarro President is as good an explanation as any. Either that, or it's some kinda bet between all those rich guys.
The Republicans plan to pull this wording out of the bill during the committee process when bills are reconciled with the Senate wording.
In the report on CNN they mention that Republicans are going around seeking member's signatures on a pledge to vote to sustain a veto. Since it requires a super majority(2/3rds) to override a veto, they only need 145 votes to defeat this measure.
This was a political game and it's largely symbolic, Republicans vote to support this so when they go back to their constituents they can't be attacked. Then the ones who are in solid seats with no reasonable opposition can vote against it to override the veto.
If you want to make sure that doesn't happen, write your congress critter and let them know how you feel and make it clear you'll be mad enough to start a grassroots campaign against them if they vote against this.
Cable is our circus. TV Dinners and Pizza are our bread.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
It's to prevent the tyranny of the mob.
What's the difference between the broadcast networks and organized crime? The broadcast networks (all of which except NBC are owned by Hollywood movie studios) elect officials because I'd estimate that at least 90 percent of the registered voters just do what the networks say.
Will I retire or break 10K?
One major problem with relying on labor laws is that they can be changed at the whim of a corporate donor behind a couple of politicians. For example, see the recent change in federal labor laws that make it easier to screw over exempt employees (i.e. non-union) on overtime. Sure, union leadership can and has been bought too, but if that happens too blatantly somebody ends up wearing cement boots. Congressdroid gets too blatant and they just get a cushy corporate golfing, er lawyer, job after being voted out of office.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.