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

The FCC was right to do so

[Anonymous Coward]

People need to realize that we live in an information economy. For this economy to function at maximum efficiency, we cannot be arbitrarily priveleging certain categories of information such as "news", and then have government regulation interfere on behalf of such categories.

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.

To be sure, such categores of information as "news", "science", and "educational programming" are of immense, value, but any wise observer of history will be aware that market forces will recognize this value and favor production of these types of information accordingly.

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

Hypocrisy wrt Government Interference

[adavies42]

I love how the average /.er is against the FCC when they're censoring Howard Stern or Janet Jackson, but in favor of their cracking down on "big business".

Re:What a surprise

[voice_of_all_reason]

He's in charge. Isn't the definition of responsibility being blamed when stuff you control fucks up?

Re:So?

[Doc Ruby]

I think the main factor in the USA is that Bush is financing his crimes by sending us $45-69 TRILLION into debt while cutting taxes. That makes it a lot harder for Americans to see how these crimes are screwing us, as opposed to just Iraqis, or people who volunteered for the National Guard or military because they needed the benefits.

Germans were suffering though a postwar depression in the 1920s, then even worse in the 1930s. While that pit of despair spawned a lot of the "nothing to lose, everything to gain" attitude, it also kept a lot of Germans connected to reality. Americans have little reality but "reality TV". And we're trained to believe that our political system lets us solve differences without revolutions, while most of Europe is new at that game.

I'm really not enjoying the USA learning the lessons of fascism that we just watched during the mid 20th Century.