John Nichols: A Political Fight Brews Over FCC Rule Changes

[marmar]

from The Nation:



BLOG | Posted 12/18/2007 @ 08:55am
A Political Fight Brews Over FCC Rule Changes



No matter what the Federal Communications Commission does today with regard to media ownership -- and it is likely to do the wrong thing -- members of Congress are ready to push back. And that sets up a clash between Congress and the White House that will be a vital fight over the future of American democratic discourse.

The Bush-Cheney administration wants FCC chair Kevin Martin and the Republican majority on the commission to approve a rewrite of media-ownership rules that would allow big media companies to own daily and weekly newspapers, radio stations, television stations, cable systems and key internet news sites in an individual community.

There is no longer any question that Martin, a Republican operative with close ties to President Bush and Vice President Cheney who has been talked about as a likely GOP candidate for the governorship of his native North Carolina, is moving at the behest of the White House.

Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez has already written Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid expressing the administration's aggressive opposition to efforts by key senators to delay the FCC vote. The Senate Commerce Committee has approved the call for blocking the vote until the FCC actually does serious research into the harm that would be done to diversity of ownership, local news coverage and the quality of the discourse in communities across the county and by extension to the national debate.

Gutierrez told the senators that the "the current ownership rules are significantly outdated in the modern media marketplace" and argued that Martin has "crafted changes that appropriately take into account the myriad of news and information outlets that exist today." ......(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.thenation.com/blogs/thebeat?bid=1&pid=261097