Washington, DC -- Today's decision by the Federal Communication Commission to weaken existing media ownership safeguards represents a devastating blow to diversity and competition--in both the media marketplace and the marketplace of ideas. "By allowing broadcast networks to amass even more power in the number of stations they can now control across the country," observed Jeff Chester, CDD's executive director, "and by setting aside the prohibition against a single company owning both a newspaper and a television station in the same community, the FCC has weakened the very fabric of our democracy. Fewer owners of the mass media means fewer voices will be heard, fewer opportunities for discourse and debate will be available, and ultimately fewer options for those who seek alternative and minority viewpoints. A handful of companies will gain from today's decision, but the public at large will lose."
If there is a silver lining to an otherwise ill-conceived policy decision, it is that in leading his deregulatory juggernaut over the past several months, FCC Chairman Michael Powell unwittingly galvanized legions of opposition forces, a diverse array of individuals and organizations on both sides of the political spectrum that recognized the threat posed by Powell's doctrinaire free-market philosophy. "With his high-handed attitude, neither brooking dissent nor even listening to the opposition, Michael Powell may have done more for freedom of the press than anyone since Tom Paine," observed Chester. "In setting the stage for conglomerate control of the media that amounts to tyranny of the minority, Powell has made all of us more aware of the importance of media policy to our democracy."
CDD will be leading an effort to secure new national policies requiring open, nondiscriminatory access to channel capacity from all broadband-based outlets, including cable-, satellite-, and telephone-based systems.