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FCC Orders Anti-Monopoly Report Destroyed
jagger writes "According to an article on MSNBC a report, written by two economists in the FCC's Media Bureau, showed local ownership of television stations adds almost five and one-half minutes of total news to broadcasts and more than three minutes of 'on-location' news. The conclusion is at odds with FCC arguments made when it voted in 2003 to increase the number of television stations a company could own in a single market. Senior managers at the agency ordered that 'every last piece' of the report be destroyed."
We are surprised by this why?
Rather frightening that with every passing day, the US is getting closer and closer to Eric Blair's 1948 visions...
The Bush administration disregards evidence contradicting their world view.
It really aggravates me that decisions keep being made to help a few big companies at the expense of everyone else. It seems obvious that keeping more local control over TV stations is in the viewer's best interest, and yet the decision was made to let these stations get taken over. It seems it's only getting easier and easier for big money to grease the wheels of government.
The fact that this report was ordered to be destroyed only goes to show that someone's best interests other than the public's are being defended here. How far will this sort of thing go? How much are people going to take before they push back, or are we pretty much screwed to slide down this slope to a place where we have no voice and no control? I sure hope not.
Who says we're surprised? Or even disappointed, strictly speaking, since Bush's job is to keep expectations low.
Slashdot isn't "Surprises for Nerds". But living down to abyssmal expectations when handling telecomm policy is important news. Especially when the Republican Congress is facing losing reelection in only 7 weeks, on November 7, 2006. It's your chance to surprise them for a change.
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make install -not war
This is not the "free market" vs "regulation" problem you are framing it as. Although I generally lean towards libertarian, I do not agree with your argument in this case. The study in question showed that PRIVATE ownership of stations by local networks provided a better level of news coverage as opposed to PRIVATE ownership of stations by huge media corporations. The only regulation in question here is an attempt to loosen anti-monopoly measures dictating how many stations a media corp can own. The study in question supposedly provides hard evidence showing that there is no benefit to consumers in such an action.
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If this signature is witty enough, maybe somebody will like me.
I want to know what good you think the FCC does?
* managing the spectrum. Not what goes over the airwaves, but who gets to use them for what purpose. (You don't want your local HAM interfering with TV or emergency services frequencies)
* regulating the crap out of telcos, preventing much telco rapage (they're doing this less and less, regretably)
* certifying electronic shit so it doesn't interfere with your other electronic shit
Those are pretty much the good things. The bad things are
* trying to be the thought police (nipplegate!)
* being big and slow and bureaucratic (we want more free-for-all spectrum weeeeh ultrawideband weeeh)
* failing to regulate industries despite huge whopping monopoly abuse (media ownership, ADSL/net neutrality, etc.)
SCO employee? Check out the bounty
Nah, the DEA's gotta be one of them.
ResidntGeek
The FCC's job is entirely based on the need for a central registry for radio broadcasters, so sufficiently powerful signals don't interfere with each other. Along the way that leverage in denying access to the "public airwaves" turned into government control of broadcasters. Along that way the requirements to "serve the public good" were dropped. These days in favor of "protecting the propaganda of the government".
New phased array tech lets multiple transmitters share a frequency, but are distinguished by their spatial separation. So the FCC's central mission is coming to an end. A lot of their worst moves to sell off any public benefit and protection, and to merely regulate content on "obscenity" (or other culture war buzzwords) is mere desperate grabs for power.
I hope that phased array stations arrive well before the FCC can help the corporate broadcast cartel lock out entry to the media sphere. If we can make it past that dropping sword, we might be fairly home free.
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make install -not war
If you were not serious, please disregard the rest of this response. But that's just hilarious! Why don't you compare the ratings of Nova and American Idol and see if your theory holds up? Wise observers of history would more likely note that unregulated free markets tend towards monopoly and exploitation.
You note that news, science, and educational programming in general are of immense value, and yet you call the privileging of them "arbitrary". Market forces do not recognize value; they recognize profit. Better products certainly do not always win in the marketplace. Really, the "free market" does not exist outside of government regulation. Without governments and the rules, regulatons and structure they bring, all we have is a primitive barter system. That is the only true free market; trading milk for eggs.
"What the American public doesn't know is what makes them the American public." -Ray Zalinsky (Tommy Boy)
"It exists!" [Winston Smith] cried.
"No," said O'Brien.
He stepped across the room. There was a memory hole in the opposite wall. O'Brien lifted the grating. Unseen, the frail slip of paper was whirling away on the current of warm air; it was vanishing in a flash of flame. O'Brien turned away from the wall.
"Ashes," he said. "Not even identifiable ashes. Dust. It does not exist. It never existed."
"But it did exist! It does exist! It exists in memory. I remember it. You remember it."
"I do not remember it," said O'Brien.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
If you want something to go away, you don't jump up and down saying, "Burn this immediately! IMMEDIATELY!", because then everyone knows that this is important and one of your employees/minions/servants might save it anyway, either because you're evil and they want to screw you or because they think that you're shortsighted enough to want it gone now and back later and so they want to save you from yourself. Duh.
Of course, this is an argument for DRM - if this report had been DRMd (competently), there would probably be very few people with both the knowledge of the report and with the ability to circumvent the DRM so that if someone had wanted it gone, it likely would have been.
That's a good thing, right? [crickets chirping]
One issue is speech, another is abuse .
can you see the difference?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Is it government policy to author a document using a computer, print it out, then scan it, then convert the scanned image to PDF?
It should be for redacted documents (see first page). And probably for any text they want to bury by making it unsearchable. Instead some agencies think they can electronically redact by drawing black rectangles atop non-graphical text, as repeatedly reported on slashdot.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
Libertarians are quick to point out that monopolies are almost always government mandated. Well, duh. Of course they are. It's no accident either.
When corporations reach a considerable size, it only makes sense that the best way to ensure continued growth and desired stock performance is to manipulate some (or all) of public policy. Sure, great product ought to be enough, but what if something goes wrong? What if a competitor suddenly pulls the rug out from underneath you? Why not hedge your bets? Sound business planning really; a little insurance to cover those "unforseens."
To those at the very top of the market ladder (corporations, not people), fascism is a utopia, as long as its fascism they are in control of (or at least benefit from). It's perfect; reduces corporate risk to practically nothing. Fortunately, there are other pressures which, so far, in the US, have kept it relatively under control. But to many it seems like its slipping every day.
See, that's just the thing. You're afraid of Big Brother being a little too big and a little too controlling. What you have to understand is the megacorps want to be the nanny state, not so they can have some sort of Comic Book Evil totalitarian control over you, but to make sure you only buy products from them or their partners.
The FCC rejected long-distance telephone service competition in 1968, banned Americans from buying their own non-Bell telephones in 1956, dragged its feet in the 1970s when considering whether video telephones would be allowed and did not grant modern cellular telephone licenses until 1981--about four decades after Bell Labs invented the technology. Along the way, the FCC has preserved monopolistic practices that would have otherwise been illegal under antitrust law. All of this has cost Americans billions of dollars.
After the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which removed some barriers to competition, there is even less of a need for the FCC. Local phone customers don't need to worry about the Bells' monopolistic practices, because they effectively aren't monopolies anymore. Cable customers don't need to worry much about monopolistic practices because of satellite TV. Eventually, fiber connections will transport every kind of data.
Before 1934, there were conflicts, but the courts were working with the common-law method of creating rules for the new medium. And such would have worked great, except The Radio Act of 1927, followed by the Communications Act of 1934, gave the FCC unlimited power to assign frequencies, approve broadcasters' power levels and revoke licenses on a whim. The FCC already enjoyed the power to regulate telephone lines and eventually would accumulate the authority to regulate cable as well.
We could abolish the FCC today and not cause any problems whatsoever. What it would mean is returning to bottom-up law instead of top-down, as it is now and has been for the past 80 years or so.
Not only would it prevent any more economic cost of missed opportunities caused by regulation, it would also save taxpayers over $300 million a year.
Now this may be too Libertarian and Free-Market for some people to understand, but that's just me. I've been a Libertarian since before I was able to vote, and I've been in IT and Telecomm since I got my first job. I believe in freedom and the free-market. I also believe in accountability in government, ie, allowing the people of the US have a say in what the government does, as well as answer for their actions. since the FCC is unelected, and given near limitless regulatory power, I have an extreme dislike of them.
now you can see why the "good" in the above post isn't that good, and the bad is, well, not good either.
the FCC has no right regulating them anyhow... but thats more of my free-market philosophy.
That's silly, we all know that few owners would help local t.v. coverage. Just like having fewer political parties helps the people. Imagine if we had one person own all the news networks. That would be like having one political party, and we all know how easy it is to vote when we have no choices. We just listen to what they say and blindly believe everything they say.
I think most Slashdotters believe in freedom and diversity of information. When the government censors culture, this restricts the freedom and diversity of information. When a small handful of big businesses own all the major media outlets, this also restricts the freedom and diversity of information.
Big industry can buy politicans who decide, or those that enforce - or both!
Welcome to the United States of Clear Channel and News Corp.