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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.
Minitruth has determined this information to be doubleplusungood. Please deposit all copies of this report to the memory hole immediately.
Sometimes I doubt your commitment to Sparkle Motion.
Can someone get a FOIA suit going fast enough to beat the shredders to those docs?
The FCC is kinda frightening. It does a lot of good, but it does a lot of harm as well. It's on my top 3 list of government agencies to not piss off.
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.
Seriously.. every other redaction or witholding of important perspective/evidence posted to slashdot as a story prompted people to post links of the supposedly stifled documents.
So.. who has em!.. where's the link people ; ).. don't let me down!
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
FCC Head: "Can you get me a line to Bill Clinton"?
FCC Operator: "Bill Clinton? Why do you want to talk to that no good lying sonovabitch with a cunt for a wife and who likes to get blown by fat ugly chicks who look nothing like Ann Coulter"?
FCC Head: "Because I hear he knows of good paper shredding services. I've got some hot docs here that need to be completely and totally destroyed before they make it out to the public".
FCC Operator: "Ahhh... all is clear to me now boss. Sure thing sweetie".
FCC Head: "By the way, can you head up to my office in fifteen? Remember to dress comfortably and don't forget the donkey".
FCC Operator: "Sure thing boss! I can't wait! Imagine the nerve of that Clinton asshole fucking that fat pig of a woman in the Oval office. At least we Republicans know it's far better to fuck REAL farm animals".
FCC Head: "See you in fifteen".
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
Fascinating.
The draft report and FCC Chairman Kevin Martin's response to Senator Boxer are linked on the
FCC's website.
See... I have mod points, but for the life of me I can't find "-1, Retarded" in the available mods....
You can mod your friends, you can mod your nose, but you can't mod your friend's nose.
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.
.
If this signature is witty enough, maybe somebody will like me.
Isn't she precious. Gonna push for an investigation. How cute.
Listen, hon, the horse left that barn behind a long time ago. Congress has made itself pretty much irrelevant. President breaks the law? They just pass a new law making whatever it was legal. They threaten to actually do their jobs and enforce some oversight? President claims he can do whatever he wants anyway. (When there was some talk about the USA PATRIOT act not getting renewed, Bush just came right out and said he could do whatever he wanted anyway as C and C. Rather than challenge that assertion, they just passed the law.)
And they gave away the store long ago with these agencies. Agencies like the FCC enact and enforce regulations without all that pesky oversight and due process they have to deal with down in congress. Better yet, agency heads don't have to worry about elections. Regulations are so much easier than laws.
What are they gonna do about it now? What did they do when all those energy executives lied to them? What did they do when all those baseball players lied to them? Mrs. Boxer and her colleagues are gonna do whatever they think they need to do to get reelected. Nothing more. They're certainly not going to do anything to anyone at the FCC.
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
RS
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
Surely a populace informed by a free press with a diversity of editorial leadership will provide aid and comfort to the enemy!
When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.
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.
That report was paid for with taxpayer money, which means they have no right to destroy it. Where is the ACLU the one time I might actually want them?
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
From global warming and EPA report cutting.. To fmr Treasury Paul O'Neil, who after showing that income taxes would need to double in order to support the aging baby boomers, was rewarded by the report being axed before he was fire err before he resigned.
This has got to be the most hand over the eyes administration in history. History books will not be kind. Especially when taxes must be raised in the future to cover the huge US debt or when there is only one entity controling all media. At some people it will be obvious what a terrible administration this is, right now it's not so clear.
2 years and no mod points. Join reddit. Because openness is good.
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.
http://www.hearusnow.org/fileadmin/sitecontent/mis sing_localism_report.pdf
:-)
Spread it around
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.
Seriously, what color is the sky on your planet?
(From their website: http://www.fcc.gov/contacts.html)
How to Contact the FCC
To Contact the Commissioners via E-mail
Chairman Kevin J. Martin: KJMWEB@fcc.gov
Commissioner Michael J. Copps: Michael.Copps@fcc.gov
Commissioner Jonathan S. Adelstein: Jonathan.Adelstein@fcc.gov
Commissioner Deborah Taylor Tate: dtaylortateweb@fcc.gov
Commissioner Robert McDowell: Robert.McDowell@fcc.gov
United States Postal Service First-Class Mail, Express Mail & Priority Mail
Federal Communications Commission
445 12th Street, SW
Washington, DC 20554
Big industry can buy politicans who decide, or those that enforce - or both!
Welcome to the United States of Clear Channel and News Corp.