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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."
NPR sez he's promised to.... how can he justify that with such an overwhelming nay vote in the house?
Feh.
What I haven't quite figured out is -why- congress is so pissed. They were out for a piece of Powell during that hearing where he defended the decision.
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. Is this a case of public opinion being strong enough that they thought they couldn't get away with going with the corporations? Has our house and senate been replaced by aliens? :-)
[discuss]...
Please help metamoderate.
This is the guy who is saying that it's perfectly OK for a small number of companies to gobble up even more media outlets.
I don't think Mr Powell has learned very much about antitrust.
When all media is controlled by large corporations, it really precludes any involvement of the general populace.
This is left as an exercise for the reader.
Take a look at the bill and its amendments if you are truly worried about your freedom.
If you live in a state that is even considering legalizing the medical use of marijuana, your state's federal funding may be axed.
An amendment that would prohibit unlawful search and seizure of personal data between government agencies pertaining to records of suspected terrorists was struck down.
And finally Sheila Jackson Lee's amendments were unanimously voted down (hooray).
This FCC crap is the least of your worries.
Here's what I'd like to know: It overturns the 45% rule, but does it still prohibit cross-ownership of TV and newspapers? That would be the major problem... as much as I have a problem with the Gannett chain, they're still a newspaper company, run by newsmen who primarily report the news... while TV is increasingly run by entertainment companies run by entertainment moguls who turn the news into 'infotainment.' -- Funksaw
Which is why he won't veto if it gets to him. A veto override is a political catastrophe for a president. Plus in this case, if his evil FCC machinations went over so poorly that even his own party shut him down on the issue, he'd never hear the end of how he's bought and sold in the next election. Which he shouldn't anyways, but nobody has the brains or balls to make an issue of it.
If the voting was so incredibly biased, as 400-21 shows, and if the Senate has similarly significant differences with their vote, it would be foolish to veto this. The population is against the media consolidation, and our representatives seem to actually get it, so I hope that the President isn't going to be dumb and try to stop it. He's already unpopular enough...
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
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.
I agree. So far as I can tell, the only independent news organization on the web is Salon, and it has barely been able to survive, let alone prosper enough to buy other organizations. Every other news site with original content is just an extension of some other, offline version: newspapers, cable news channels, etc.
In short, Powell's argument that there are more choices today rings hollow. The Internet has much to be said for it, but levelling the playing field of the media isn't something it has been able to accomplish.
The Senate vote is going to be the one that counts.
The House can't overturn a Presidental Veto, the Senate can. However if the President decides to fight this if there strong anti-FCC feelings in the Senate it could get ugly for him.
If the Senate can get 50-60 votes for the bill, the President would be wise to sit on his hands and just let it go, there are bigger fish to fry.
Nope, I'm one of those pathetic people who actually studied history and learned how bad it was before unions formed.
Are unions perfect? Absolutely not. They can, and must, be improved. However a bad union is infinitely superior to no union.
Go read up on what life was like pre-union. It sucked damn hard. The Rockerfellers of the world were able to pretty much do what they wanted to and no one could stop them. Unions are the only thing that has a proven track record of putting a check on corporate power. Come up with a better idea and I'll back it, but unless you can I'll keep trying to improve unions, not destroy them.
I will definately agree that *some*, not all, unions have been failing in their primary duty to serve their members. This can be corrected fairly simply through regulation and oversight, it is not necessary to dismantle unions in general.
My main argument in favor of unions is simple: Where I live (Texas) unions don't have much clout, and wages here are around 20%-30% lower than they are in the average union state. It doesn't get much simpler than that.
"Mission Accomplished" -- George W. Bush May 1, 2003
It's not a problem with media consolidation. It's plainly a problem with the press's inability to function without government insider leaks.
If the news source goes too far with their reporting, the leaks stop and they end up with far less news. So the military sets up Lynch as a war hero to give the troops and public something good to focus on at a time that the military campaign was in the doldrums, the press is going to print that story as told because it would cost the reporter, station, and network too much in future news leaks to research and print the actual story.
The problem is that the stations are too close to the government, not too close to each other.
No, but a Veto override shows three things:
1. The President's whips at the capitol are not sharp enough to keep his people in line. This puts out the word that pressure from the White House isn't the be all end all. A veto-override literally opens to the door to other bills that normally would be DOA because of Veto-threat.
2. The President's grip on Congress is weak, or non-existant. The President uses his bully position to get congress to do things. Everyone knows who the President is. But it takes weeks of concerted effort for Senators and especially Reps. to get a point across. POTUS is the most quoted person on the nightly news. But a veto override shifts this balance more towards Congresscritters.
3. The President's advisors and calculators took a bad risk on something that should be straightforward. Few veto overrides are razor thin. This means that either the Administration is ignorant, arrogant, or capable of miscalculating remedial details. All of these things are bad, and are hammerred on by major media outlets.
I predict that Bush won't veto the bill. Congress has been getting enormous pressure from its constituents to overturn the recent FCC decision. I'm pretty sure the bill will also be passed by the Senate. If Bush then vetoes the bill he'll be putting members of his own party in a difficult position and risk giving his opposition another issue on which he can be attacked in the next election.
Rather than do that he'll probably back off on his threat to veto the bill, sacrifice the current FCC Chairman Michael Powell, have the next Chairman sabotage the enforcement mechanisms via administrative fiat and creative legislative re-interpretation. And then he'll vow to Big Media to make a full-court press to reinstate the changes...after his re-election.