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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."
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.
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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 Has our house and senate been replaced by aliens?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.
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
No it doesn't, appropriations bills can include policy for the entire commission. The FCC is barred, as a condition of it's funding, from violating the rule.
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.
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.
The article says that they only rejected funding for FCC programs that allow consolidation of this type... a slight difference
"Rejected funding" is really just a code word for using a budget bill to eliminate something mostly unrelated to the allocation of specific amounts of government funds. The effect of this bill is that the FCC cannot spend even one dollar of government money to implement their plan, but rules that are already in place say that things like the FCC's plan cannot be privately funded. Therefore, they have $0 to implement the plan. Thus, the plan is void and will be replaced with whatever plan the funding has been allocated to (in this case, the old FCC rules before the recent change).
It's the same effect as making a gun legal, but outlawing the specific ammo for it. Sure, you can legally own and use the gun, but if they've banned its ammo, then they've effectively banned the gun. If you're hellbent on owning a projectile weapon, then you'll have to buy whichever one you can legally buy ammunition for.
And yes, as I'm sure you're thinking, politicians really DO play some damned stupid games. The mating rituals of various brightly colored birds and amphibians are simple and logical by comparison.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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
I just found the stat. Over 2 million people called or emailed the FCC concerning their decision.
Time makes more converts than reason
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.
he urged Americans to send him, the other commissioners, and members of Congress their thoughts via post, telephone and email. According to the FCC's Adelstein nearly two million people have done so. And by the FCC's own calculations, over 99.9 percent of these citizens demand that the FCC keep the existing media ownership rules, or tighten them.
It's funny how you claim an independent magazine is a "lunatic fringe news source" because it holds views that you do not. The Nation is a liberal magazine but "by the FCC's own calculations 99.9 percent of these citizens (the two million that contacted the FCC) demand that the FCC keep the existing rules or tighten them.
Time makes more converts than reason
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
They can stip us of our rights and throw us in prison for downloading some files, but when our cable bill is in danger of going up, by God our Congress acts!
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Can be found here.
This is an article about the US media fawning over private Lynch despite the fact that she was injured by US military incompetence, not Iraqis, that she was captured without a fight, not firing her weapon valiantly to the end, that the US met no resistence in the hospital during her rescue and actually fired on a doctor trying to bring her out and hand her over.
Luckily for the rest of the world the actual facts have not been totally obscured because non-US media outlets have managed to get hold of the story... but the fewer outlets there are, the less would actually be known about this. As it is it sounds like half of America is still swallowing the 'enhanced' story whole... must be the same half that thinks Iraq used chemical weapons in the war and that the September 11 attacks were linked to Iraq.
In fact, when you look at it the media is already basically concentrated by virtue of the fact that it is ideologically concentrated. Once an 'accepted' version of a story is selected by someone, it becomes gospel and is repeated throughout the land.
Read Pynchon.
Never forget the guy's a freakin' moron. Americans need to offer a gift to all mankind in 2004 by kicking this pathetic braindead out of office.
/. than be a living flamebait myself like Bush is.
And yes, you can consider this flamebait if you please ; I'd rather get modded down on
United States of America, good ol' backers of world peace.
Yes, I partially agree with the other reply to this post, saying no one will put off voting for Bush for vetoing this bill, but on the other hand, that's not quite the point. If he does veto a bill, particularly one that has had such a heavy majority, the political backlash will be huge. By the time all the politicians have jumped on him for that, and the press have had their say on a President vetoing a bill, again with this kind of majority, it would have far more effect on the party than you may assume.
Also, "A veto override is a political catastrophe for a President"... Yes, when has something being a political catastrophe had any sway in changing Bush's mind?
I swear, that man scares me more than Reagan!
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.
This 2002 ruling criticized the FCC for the "arbitrary and capricious" 35% national ownership cap and told the FCC to reconsider it. Though he probably enjoyed doing it, Powell thus had very little choice in the matter of changing the cap, despite what everyone likes to believe. In fact, he has referred to this fact over and over again.
It may be possible to justify the 35% cap somehow. The judge did not destroy the cap, he basically just vacated it. On the other hand, he did wipe out the cable-broadcast cross-ownership rule completely because he didn't think that it could be justified. The same logic is easily applied to the other major part of the June 2003 rule changes: newspaper-broadcast cross-ownership. There is no point in arguing that point of the rules, as the Judicial Branch would throw it out the window immediately.
So, if you are all looking for someone to verbally crucify, look towards the judicial bench that prompted this rather than the FCC.
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.
Much of this is froufrou. While I take some sort of glee in the fact that the *partial* rollback measure was attached as a "rider" to a spending bill - just like how Congress screwed LPFM back in 2000 - similar legislation must still be passed by the Senate, and then survive a conference committee, a veto, AND an override, in order to actually happen.
Symbolically, this is a very good thing (as well as being somewhat historic in a political sense), but in the real world it will likely get axed in the dead of night by the real string-pullers in Congress, and what the FCC did will stay in place.
That is why just ignoring the FCC to begin with makes for more fun. (viva microradio!)
Seriously tho, if you want the scoop on the politics you can get near-daily updates from media reform lobbyists working the Hill. I don't know if they keep archives of their reports, but I do remember seeing that more than this rider was in play at one time. One other proposed amendment (sunk before getting to the floor, I believe) would've rolled back most if not all of the FCC's changes, but the one that made the cut was the weakest of the bunch.
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.