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Senate Approves Measure to Undo FCC Rules
fortheloveofjava writes "The Washington Post says here that the Senate voted 55 to 40 today to wipe out all of the Federal Communication Commission's controversial new media rules, employing a little used legislative tool for overturning agency regulations. If you signed the MOVEON.org petition, an image of part of it is visible here with sponsoring senators Senators Byron Dorgan (D-ND) and Trent Lott (R-MS)."
On the other hand, I believe such diversity will only be strengthened by allowing the people with the most resources free rein to develop channels/media as they see fit. You get duplication of effort now (CNN, FOX, MSNBC), where later we could perhaps have two or three media giants offering a broader spectrum (CNN Politics, CNN Music, CNN Sports).
So in a way I wonder if we should be upset about this.
Try not. Do or do not, there is no try.
-- Dr. Spock, stardate 2822-3.
If all the people who signed that petition had voted in the first place, there wouldn't *be* anything to overturn today!
Remember folks: **AA = all kinds of American Apathy...
There was a quote in the article that mentioned that even if the bill does go through, it basically just rolls back the legislation to June 2, which isn't a bad deal for most involved. This doesn't repeal everything that the FCC wants, it is just giving them an option to "try again." I wouldn't worry too much about Bush vetoing it, even if he does, with this much of congress against the FCC in this case, I think they'll revise the bill of their own accord.
The anti-salmon
Doesn't this mean that they're effectively impotent from this point forward, or am I misreading it? I'm English... if parliament vetoed something like this it would spell the end of the agency.
And that surprises you? This is Bush we're talking about. He's hardly been a shining example of fairness, intelligence, and respectability so far.
A white house veto isn't necessarily the death of it though.. it can still go back for a vote and get passed if it gets a 2/3 vote in each Chamber. That bastardized version of a president we currently have isn't all powerful just yet...
Alito: A vote for Alito is a punch in the eye to put that bitch back in her place!
Typically, a bill that doesn't get the 2/3 majority the first time around won't have it the second time if needed to override a veto. It'd take having the political environment shift during the time in between to make several Senators who voted "no" the first time to vote "yes" the second time.
The new FCC rules were championed by FCC Chairman Michael K. Powell, who argued that consolidation was less a threat now than when the rules were enacted because consumers have many more choices for their news and entertainment.
Sure, there's ClearChannel-Affiliate-1, ClearChannel-Affiliate-2, ClearChannel-Affiliate-3... Really, is there that much more choice out there? Internet broadcasting, maybe, but the folks who run their own stations are still being harassed by the tax-hungry powers-that-be.
In essence, the FCC, part of the executive branch, is being given equal status to Congress. To override the FCC, Congress has to pass a new law (which the President has threatened to veto). Congress would then have to override that veto.... requiring a supermajority to regain *their own lawmaking power*.
Which is as it should be. The FCC is an agent of the President. It is the executive branch in this particular domain. The congress wants to override the executive branch. The president doesn't want this. Therefor, it takes a supermajority to override the president. Pretty much like every other situation where the congress wants to override the executive.
Pretty much since 1783, the executive and legislative branches have been co-equal. Huh, imagine that.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
I don't really think we have alot to be worried about. This will get overturned and all semi-right with the world (in regards to FCC policy) will be returned.
PS: For the record, I support Bush. Full disclosure or whatever.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
Of course he'll veto it. He needs to control the media to win the next election. He needs to make sure that we have glowing pictures of Iraq on the tube every night.
Also, it never hurts to also control the voting machines.
Sickening.
there's no place like ~
I think you missed the point. They do dress like the people the represent. They just don't represent the people you think.
That's the whole point of the separation of powers! That the FCC is directly answerable to the president, and can't be trivially overridden by Congress, just because Congress is "more important" than some federal regulatoru commission.
What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
The FCC is in charge of administering and setting regulations of the communications industry by act of Congress. The FCC, like many regulatory agencies, makes unpopular calls sometimes. This is one of them, though not with me. The deregulation of radio in terms of the old Fairness Doctrine allowed an explosion of talk radio and saved the AM stations from ruin. The prinicpal reason so many liberals are afraid of these new regs is that for generations, they have controlled the media, and with these new regs, they are afraid that conservatives will push them farther to the margin. (Couldn't happen soon enough for me...)
No, their primary concern (the most discussed issue on the senate floor) was the effect this would have on local political coverage.
Right now, your local NBC affiliate can decide that they're not going to run some reality-TV show tonight, instead they're going to run local political debates. If NBC owned every local station, the local decision making would be removed, and you'd decrease the amount of airtime that each congressperson received for campaigning.
Congress has always been unnerved about the implications of this latest FCC change, but not for the same reasons you and I were. If the FCC comes back with a way for consolidation to occur while preserving the current type/amount of political coverage, I'm sure it would go through without any fight at all.
The public backlash just lets those two pricks try to look like heros.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
That's not entirely true. Courts frequently make their own laws as well. And just like the FCC, the judges are appointed, not elected. For a recent example you only have to look to yesterday's 9th circuit ruling on the California recall.
and you wonder why there is no good new music coming out these days. because executives in board rooms decide what you will like. and it will be based on what they own and promote.
so now everything you watch on tv, listen to on the radio, see in a movie theatre, or hear on the street will be based on what one set of executives decides you need to know.
all it takes now is for someone to buy favor with these executives and we have something we are already starting to see. its called media manipulation.
news brought to you by the highest bidder.
LW-
...the original decision would have allowed the equivalent of a Clear Channel situation nationwide for television and newspapers, as well as outright crosspollination between the two. Which could mean you'd get the Fox News Washington Post and the CNNew York Times, and lead to an even greater polarization in news reporting between the moderates and the right. (There's no real 'liberal press' anymore.)
There's no real impetus to create that broad spectrum of events - the general intent seems to be to create a single nationally-acceptable product and show it everywhere, in order to sell more ad time and make money.
The only place we're really getting any 'diversity' is in the pay channels, which aren't dependent on commercials and therefore can take chances. So if they want to make something different like 'Queer as Folk', or 'The Sopranos', or 'Dead Like Me', they can, and if people watch it, it was a good experiment.
The more diversity in channels, the better it is. If you have three news channels like CNN, Fox and MSNBC, you have three different points of view, and therefore possibly a better chance of getting an idea about what's REALLY going on.
Brazil has decided you're cute.
Congress created the agencies to handle the nitty-gritty of writing regulations that they wouldn't have the time to do, nor the qualifications to do. The FCC rule-making would take up all of Congress' time alone. Also, I wouldn't want some clueless Congresscritter making rules about the airwaves, airspace, drugs, etc...
There is no spoon or sig.
They've always hated the fact that free media means that people won't listen to them. Now they're taking this change to get back at the media moguls for decades of doing good business. Read Clay Shirky's article on media regulation. The basic thesis: Diverse. Free. Equal. Pick two. Frankly, I'd much rather free diversity with no equality than controlled diversity.
Note that 55 voted Yea, and 5 weren't present... including 4 Dems, who overwhelmingly voted Yea.
That's almost certainly 59 Yeas -- 67 would need to Yea to override the veto. It isn't likely for the Dems to find 8 Pubs to override a Republican POTUS veto, but it is possible, especially if the grassroots efforts by folks like Move On continue to be effective.
Of course, a veto that isn't overriden is just one more thorn in the side of Bush come election time, although it's unlikely to be an issue that will swing many voters.
Support a few technologists in Washington.
What are you even talking about? What the hell does "equal" mean in this context? And how exactly does media consolidation lead to "diversity"? And Trent Lott is a liberal?
I'd be happy to see a coherent argument against this, but what you said doesn't even make any sense!
-- It only takes 20 minutes for a liberal to become a conservative thanks to our new outpatient surgical procedure!
they will glue an "Anti-American" label to your forehead.
-- Repeat with me: "There is no right to profits".
You'll never see it unless you have internet access or buy a magazine.
TV has ZERO diversity. Sad. It's unwatchable.
Your missing the entire point of this.
Consolidated media is a step towards tyranny. Imagine the picture of the world you would have if FOX news owned every single other news network. How much could you trust the content of Slashdot if Microsoft owned it? The media is out to make money like everybody else, and when there are no longer enough of them to keep tabs on each other you are left with a single view point. If SONY music owns every radio station, what hope does an artist that isn't signed with Sony have?
Monopolies are not capitalistic; they are an unfortunate side effect of the times and letting the media fall into such a small number of hands is a terrible possibility.
On Wall Street they say "buy low, sell high" On the pad we say, "buy high, sell high" Isn't that somehow better?
Actually, this is contrary to seperation of powers. The executive's primary purpose, to which the president belongs, is to enforce law, not create law. The legislative's primary purpose, to which Congress belongs, is to create law. So when a body like the FCC creates new laws and it answers to the executive branch then you have moved law making from the law makers and given it to the law enforcers, thus decreasing power seperation by turning the law makers into "law vetoers". The chief executive can override Congress' veto with his own veto, thus saying "You are not allowed to stop me and my branch from CREATING a new law even though the Constitution says only the legislature should create law."
A more appropriate approach to preserving seperation of powers would be for the FCC to propose regulations, going through the nitty-gritty details of analysis and so forth like they do now, and then put it before Congress for approval. If Congress did its duty then it'd defer to the FCC except in the most aggregious abuses, recognizing the FCC's generally greater expertise on the complex matter. And if Congress didn't do its duty, it would at least stop unaccountable and unelected officials (the FCC) from usurping Constitutional powers. You can unelect bad members of Congress. You can not unelect the FCC members.
"The State is that great fiction by which everyone lives at the expense of everyone else." -Frederic Bastiat.
I realize that its popular to pick on the Republicans at the moment, but this sort of redisticting happens every few years (I forget how many at the moment, and am to lazy to look it up for a /. post) Which ever set of aristocrats are in power at the time use this redistricting to help themselves (gee, suprise). This is a normal function of our federal govenment. Is it right, and/or benificial to us pesants? Probaly not, but please don't pretend its new, or one sided.
Move along nothing to see here...
Necessity is the mother of invention.
Laziness is the father.
Riiight... that explains why Clinton was ripped apart for a freakin' blowjob while Bush was the media darling even though he still hasn't presented convincing evidence for his decision to move in on Iraq; a decision which has resulted in the deaths of thousands of Iraqis, the complete destabilization of an entire nation, and all to the tune of hundreds billions of American taxpayer's dollars. And all this while the economy was crumbling and Bush was racking up the largest federal budgetary deficit in US history...
Oh yeah... the media sure favours the Democrats...
I was surprised to see this up on FCC's website so quickly..... It's really nice to see Congress trying to prevent a train wreck that had more to do with the courts than anything started in the legistlative or executive branches.... And we all know which political party has few friends in and around the benches.
there goes my media monopoly
Say WHAT?
In case you didn't notice, the ruling does NOTHING to create a media monopoly. What it does is increase, to 45%, the potential audience that may be reached by stations owned by a single network entity.
This does NOT say that a nework can own all the stations in a market. It does not even say they can own ONE station in every market. They can't even own ONE station per area where the aggregate of all the stations they own reach even HALF the people in the country!
This is simple a change in the balance of power and money flow between the networks and the privately owned local stations affiliated with the networks, allowing the networks to directly own and operate a somewhat larger fraction (though still less than half of the potential audicnce worth) of the stations, rather than licencing their feed to a station run as a separate business by a separate owner.
Can you IMAGINE the government applying a similar rule to newspapers, or printers? "One entity can only own enough newspapers to reach 45% of the potential newspaper readers (i.e. voters)!" "One can only own enough printing presses to print manefestos for 45% of the population!"
Or how about this: "One entity can have network connectivity to reach no more than 45% of the population!"
Free speech advocates would be screaming about censorship!
(And then there's the tie-in with newspapers - where the same entity can't own a paper and a news station in the same city.)
THIS is why your networks are run by conglomerates, (all spitting the establishment / politically-correct party line) while alternative views are restricted to cable channels and syndicated talk-shows (when they appear at all): Nobody can buy up little radio or TV stations and set up a national-reach alternative.
I really want to see the Supreme Court rule on whether the FCC should be able to impose such a rule at all, or if the whole limitation must be struck down as incompatabile with the First Amendment.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
I agree with the other poster about gerrymandering and also agree that the Dems have been doing it in Tejas (just as both parties do it wherever possible).
The difference is this: redistricting has been done every 10 years, following a census. This isn't law, but it was a reasonable choice. A new census should require redistricting -- it's the most recent, most accurate measure of where people live. The decision to not change things in between was for a number of reasons, including: efficiency, time constraints, and that if not done every two years or five, it wouldn't divide the 10 year cycle at identical intervals in the election cycle -- and doing it every 5 years would mean recarving up the districts months before an election... not a good idea either.
So, historically, its been every 10 years. Both parties have adhered to this tradition because it just makes good sense in the big picture. For the pubs to do it now, after two years, arbitrarilly, and without proper justification*, is downright arrogant.
* The justification "the state voted Republican for president/has more registered Republicans and yet there are more Democrats elected to the US House" is not a valid complaint. People vote, not parties -- and the people are not beholden to vote for parties. Both Pubs and Dems have spent this whole saga arguing about seats for the Dems and the Pubs... nobody has talked about what best serves the will of the people. Plenty of sleaze to go around.
Support a few technologists in Washington.
Read this salon article for more information.
It was for populist 'spin'. In this case, the spin is 'we represent the people's interests, not some unaccountable corporate-loving bureaucrats' [the irony of this coming from Trent Lott (R-Disney) should be lost on no one at /.]. I have seen pictures like this one several times come out of Washington from Congress, the White House, AND federal agencies numerous times in the last 30 years. Think of it as standard component of U.S. political "vocabulary".
Besides, its not THAT much paper. Heck I've worked in offices where 5 people would generate that much or more documents in a day (hint: phased-array radar & telemetry data dumps).
Redistricting every 10 years doesn't hurt democracy. In fact, fair representation depends on fair districting. One of the reasons the U.S. Constitution mandates a national census every 10 years is to provide accurate data for use in congressional districting. Unfortunately, political parties have used gerrymandering to gain a vote advantage over their opponent parties since the beginning of the U.S. (and probably before).
I don't know what you read on moveon.org, but the current issue of Democratic state legislators from Texas fleeing to other states to prevent redistricting is an interesting political situation. The Texas legislature did its constitutional duty and redistricted the state in its 2001 session. However Republican leaders at the national level, particularly House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-TX) wanted to again redistrict the state in order to apportion more U.S. House of Representatives seats to the Republicans. This would provide a clearer Republican majority in the U.S. House of Representatives and provide a buffer against anticipated 2004 electoral 'backlash' against the Republicans. It would also provide a clearer Republican legislative majority in the House(hard to push your agenda when you have to rely on 'enemy' swing votes).
At Delay's and Gov. Rick Perry's prompting, the Republican leadership in the Texas State Legislature in its 2003 session changed the administrative rules governing redistricting. This allowed them attempt to vote to redistrict the state again, but this time according to Republican majority guidelines and oversight. It was thwarted when several Democratic legislators bolted across the border to Ardmore, Oklahoma to prevent a legislative quorum and "run out the clock" on the legislative session. Gov. Perry sent several Texas State Troopers across the border (illegally) to retrieve the legislators. They failed and the legislative session ended. This effectively blocked the redistricting attempt.
Undaunted, the Republicans tried again. Gov. Rick Perry called a special legislative session specifically for redistricting. A different group of Democratic legislators took off, this time to Albuquerque, New Mexico. It worked until one of the Democrats got tired of the mess and came back to Texas. The remaining Democratic legislators have since returned to Texas, and are currently going through a court case concerning their failure to report for legislative duty.
They did block the second redistricting attempt this time, but Gov. Perry has vowed he will keep calling Special Sessions until they successfully get to redistrict the state, no matter the cost.
I'm an Independant because I don't like anyone's party politics, particularly the Democrats and Republicans. However after the 2000 Presidential fiasco and the obvious autocratic stunts like the recent Texas redistricting attempts, I REALLY dislike the Republicans.
This "keep counting the votes/changing the rules until we get the result we wa
"These laws they're passing won't even compile anymore, let alone execute." - anon
As far as I'm concerned, that's a good thing; these rules are stupid in an age where barriers to becoming a content distributor are virtually nil (maybe $10/month in web hosting costs).
Isn't reading a web site while driving in your car considered reckless endangerment? There's a lot of things you can do while listening to radio that you can't do while reading a website. Similarly thre are a lot of people that can easily listen to a radio/TV but don't have net access. Allowing too much centralized control over media threatens the democratic process.
these rules are stupid in an age where barriers to becoming a content distributor are virtually nil (maybe $10/month in web hosting costs).
Riiight. And its so easy to get on the air too, you can set up your licensed radio transmitter on... wait, sorry, it looks like clearchannel just bought all the radio frequencies in your city.
Oh, and that web site? AOL and road runner have both decided to redirect their users to Time's own sites. You can have all the speech you want, but nobody will ever listen to you.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
I think there is a bit of a differnece between being able to reach a certain percentage of the population and having control of a scarce resource that provides you access to some percentage of the population. I can buy the New York Times in just about any city but there is no fundamental limit on the number of newspapers that can distribute anywhere they choose. The airwaves are different in that there are only a limited number of channels available, and so the FCC has been delegated to ensure that the public interest is served by those who are given license to use this scarce resource. The public interest is not necessarily served by the entity that can make the most money, the entity that runs most "efficiently." Broadcasters view radio stations as a means for delivering listeners to advertisers. How does this serve the public interest?