media ownership, plus reinstatement of the Fairness Doctrine.
It's pointless to call the media; they are the creatures of their owners.
The ownership is the problem.
http://www.corporations.org/media/http://www.mediachannel.org/ownership/chart.shtmlhttp://www.stopbigmedia.com/http://www.monthlyreview.org/301rwm.htm — note, this article was first presented in 2000 so presumably summarizes the situation based on statistics from even earlier; I’d bet money that, overall, considerable further consolidation has occurred.
The following is from
http://www.savetheinternet.com/blog/2007/06/05/ed-whitacre-gone-but-not-forgotten/ ; see also
http://www.crooksandliars.com/2007/06/05/theres-a-problem-its-called-net-neutrality/ for partial text :
Ed Whitacre: Gone But Not Forgotten
AT&T chief Ed Whitacre handed over the keys to his replacement Randall Stephenson yesterday, but not before giving a rousing pep talk to fellow executives in the company’s San Antonio board room.
Watch the Video
“There’s a problem. It’s called Net Neutrality,” Whitacre told the heirs to AT&T’s telecommunications empire. “Well, frankly, we say to hell with that. We’re gonna put up some toll booths and start charging admission.”
This statement echoes those made in the press by Whitacre and Stephenson over the last two years.
Despite claims of poverty whenever pressed to offer better services, these AT&T execs are privately gloating over more than $35 billion in gross profits over the last 12 months. Moreover, Whitacre (and now Stephenson) are pressuring Congress to allow them to provide privileged Web access to their customers to companies that pay them a special fee.
The phone and cable companies claim that this sort of discriminatory “double dipping” — charging both consumers and content providers — is necessary to provide the high-speed services that Americans demand. But it’s a fundamental shift in the neutral way the Internet has always worked. In essence, it takes away user choice — the most basic tenet of the Internet — and hands it to AT&T.
“Will Congress let us do it?” Whitacre asks his colleagues. “You bet they will — cuz we don’t call it cashin’ in. We call it ‘deregulation.’ ”
‘Deregulation’: AT&T Code for More Handouts
It’s Whitacre’s brand of “deregulation” that has left the United States behind other nations in providing fast, affordable Internet to more people.
Recent broadband data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) had the U.S. slipping to 15th out of 30 nations in per capita broadband use. Our free-fall will continue as long as we allow phone and cable companies to dictate broadband policy in Washington and monopolize broadband access across the country.
* * *
Whitacre remains intent to defy public opinion, funnel cash into Washington and win over control of the Internet once and for all.
“With all of our generous campaign contributions, I’m quite certain that Congress will see it our way,” he said during his farewell speech. “Who else they gonna listen to? The public?!?”
http://c-cyte.blogspot.com/2007/04/free-nation-wide-wi-fi.html >
and last but not least, here’s my blog post with some add’l info about why we shouldn’t ignore threats to the openness inherent in our internet as currently structured and regulated:
http://c-cyte.blogspot.com/2007/06/no-end-in-sight-to-efforts-to-end.html
Again, I don’t know a total solution, but I think the following measures would go a long way toward solving the problem:
Restore restrictions on media ownership consolidation.
Adopt conflict-of-interest regulations to the effect you can’t directly or indirectly own more than a small percentage in any media business or serve in any senior management position in such a business if you are in or running for an elective office or if you also own more than a small percentage of any other kind of business or are a member of senior management in such a business.
Adopt the equivalent of anti-trust laws but concerned directly with control over information and the outlets for it, rather than with control over commercial resources.
Enforce existing anti-trust laws.
Updates: see http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2007/pulpit_20070810_002683.html
http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/agendas/att-may-have-censored-bands-political-speech-in-the-past-288236.php
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