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."

Comments

Memory hole

[Anonymous Coward]

Rather frightening that with every passing day, the US is getting closer and closer to Eric Blair's 1948 visions...

What a surprise

[Aexia]

The Bush administration disregards evidence contradicting their world view.

Re:What a surprise

[maynard]

Who appoints the chairman of the FCC? President Bush. Who sets FCC policy? The FCC chair. Ergo... you are seeing Bush administration policy in action.

Re:What a surprise

[maynard]

No, I don't realize that - because it's not factually accurate. Powell, as a member of the GOP, was appointed to the FCC board by Clinton in '97. Bush appointed him Chair to the FCC board in January of 2001. As a board member he was in no position to set or control policy. As the chairman of the FCC, under a president of the same political party, one can reasonably assume Michael Powell enacted policy as set by the Bush administration. These intellectual contortions to avoid that fact is just plain lame. Deal.

Re:What a surprise

[InsaneGeek]

I'd maybe go with that if he hadn't been so entwined with the whole content protection thought process that previous administration brought into play "DMCA, Sonny Bono act, v-chip, etc" along with the 5 dems that were the author of the DMCA2 (SSSCA/CBDTPA) which he was for as well. I will agree that Martin is not angel as the broadcast flag passed with no votes against it (which means he voted for it).

Earlier this year in regards to the broadcast flags hearings, 2 dems (Stevens & Inouye) stood up and basically said that "having no broadcast flag is a terrible thing content providers will stop providing, so we have to pass this as soon as possible". Which repub Sununu later said (I'll directly quote it because it is so good):

"The suggestion is that if we don't do this, it will stifle creativity. Well...we have now an unprecedented wave of creativity and product and content development...new business models, and new methodologies for distributing this content. The history of government mandates is that it always restricts innovation...why would we think that this one special time, we're going to impose a statutory government mandate on technology, and it will actually encourage innovation?"

The problem I see is everybody tries to pin *everything* on Bush, you trip on a crack and it's his fault, etc. Critize him for the correct things, and you will get people to listen, the witch hunt for trying to tie anything & everything to him is a problem because now people are tuning out because "the sky is falling" has been called and attributed to him too many times. I try to keep a little more of an open mind where I can then actually say "Bush is an ass because of this" and directly point to it, rather than say basically everything is his fault.

For the people... how quaint.

[CopaceticOpus]

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.

So?

[Doc Ruby]

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.

Re:So?

[Doc Ruby]

Moderation -1
    100% Flamebait

I quote Bush saying it's his job to keep expectations low. I point out that "news" isn't necessarily "surprises". I point out that the news here is Bush living down to low expectations.

Then I point out that we can do something about it in 7 weeks by voting.

Which part do the TrollMods mod down as "Flamebait"? Of course it's the part about voting, which scares the hell out of them. All these Republican TrollMods have is power abuse. No surprises, not even disappointing, not really news.

Take it away from their elected versions Tuesday, November 7.

Re:So?

[Doc Ruby]

There's a difference between "bad" and "worse". That stuff about Democrats taxing and spending is BS, when compared with Republicans. Reagan and Bush Sr/Jr have each spent more than every predecessor combined, with the intervening Clinton lowering spending. Reagan and Bush Sr raised taxes more than everyone else combined. Bush Jr has cheated by not even raising taxes as much as he's spent, creating a $45-65 TRILLION debt, which is even worse. While Clinton paid down the debt more than anyone ever before.

So since only Bush and Cheney are staring at being executed for treason, and then only hanged, we're faced with a different choice in a couple of months. Do you want to unacceptably bad Republicans, or the acceptably not so great Democrats? The real choice is obvious.

Re:So?

[Doc Ruby]

I think the problem is that people have Bush hatred coming out of our ears. Because Rove has got the system figured out to the point where our usual election system for consensus and letting off steam (such as it is) is totally inadequate. In many countries, the level of anger at the government, even reflected in Bush's relatively high (at about 35% "approval") would see the the officials resigning, or even riots in the streets. Especially with such high stakes, like the Iraq War and Osama bin Missing. In that context, keeping discussions on-topic is very difficult, when so many are so preoccupied with matters so much weightier than Ruby on Rails.

It's not professional, but Slashdot isn't a professional board. It's not even a geek board - it's a nerd board, and nerds are known for socially inappropriate behavior, like blurting out the truth.

As for metamoderation, it's a joke. I post those rebuttals to moderations so metamod'ers will have more context to judge whether the mod is un/fair. But I don't see any real dampening. It winds up being just a battle of my post frequency karma vs their team of downmod points. That seems to at least allow my free speech to fill the vacuum of their supression. Which seems more American, anyway, or at least familiar to me, a New Yorker.

Re:So?

[Doc Ruby]

I'm not a Democrat, and that's not their message. Of course their message is "Democrats are great!" You want a good president, you got Clinton. Not great, but good, and better than "not bad". Probably the best since Truman, or maybe Kennedy (Democrats), who were very good or great, depending on what you value.

Unfortunately, our elections don't let us choose "the good one", just "the better" (or "not the worse"). That's one reason why I often talk about Instant Runoff Voting (IRV), or "proportional voting". And why I often say how the parties (politicspeak for "conspiracies") are the worst defect in our system. Until we can vote in a way where everyone's votes count, not just the winners, we don't really have democracy.

But we have something that's acceptably not so great, and we can use it to make it better, even good. Saying "they're all the same", when they're not, just none good enough, makes it impossible to use what we've got to get what we want.

Re:FOIA

[wfberg]

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.)

Jamming With the FCC

[Doc Ruby]

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.

Who controls the present controls the past.

[HTH NE1]

"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.

Duh, duh, duh....

[Hap76]

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]

Re:The FCC was right to do so

[Floody]

An optimally efficient economy maximizes wealth creation and benefits all citizens to a much greater extent than having a group of bureaucrats decide which types of data are more important than others, and regulating commerce along those lines. The latter arrangement can only lead the type of social planning that ruined so many Eastern European economies.

See, this is where libertarianism drifts away from rationality. Don't get me wrong, I'm all for as much laissez faire as possible, especially when it comes to Big Brother staying out of people's private lives (excepting depriving someone else of their freedoms, including coercion and fraud). But this libertarian nonsense about the perfection of a Free Market economy is just silly.

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.

It's a new century. We don't need a nanny state to keep an eye on things.

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.