Submitted by Diane Farsetta on
U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) chair Kevin Martin has launched investigations into two reports on media ownership by FCC staff that were never released. One study found that local ownership of TV stations correlates with more news coverage. The other study found that "while there was a 5.9 percent increase in the number of radio stations in the country between March 1996 and March 2003, there was a 35 percent decrease in the number of radio owners," according to Senator Barbara Boxer, who recently made public copies of both studies. "I, too, am concerned about what happened to these two draft reports," Martin wrote Boxer. Martin launched his own investigation, asked the FCC's Inspector General to conduct a separate inquiry, and promised to include the studies "as part of the open localism and media ownership proceedings" addressing whether the agency should allow further consolidation of media ownership.
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jupiter replied on Permalink
It's our choice as voting
It's our choice as voting citizens as to whether or not we want a singlely-owned media to operate as our King.
I've heard it said by people who happen to have inside information on stories that come out in media news outlets, that every time they happen to have personal information about something, that the news got the main jist of the stories totally wrong. Sometimes the news seems to work in collusion with other outfits, such as someone situated in a governmental agency, to concoct an essentially fabricated story, such as using reports that are mere allegations that have been refuted, etc., as if they were be all, end all truth.
This can only get worse in a society with only one singlely-owned "megaphone."
I have now seen it for myself, at least twice, that the news outlets are not reporting the news so much as creating it. And it is quite rare that I happen to have inside information on anything in the news. IT STANDS TO REASON THAT ALMOST EVERYTHING THEY REPORT MUST BE RIFE WITH FABRICATIONS -- made to look as though they are something, and yet when all the facts are scrutinized, they are nothing.
To someone, this set-up (of only a very few people owning media megaphones) is very convenient for their personal uses and pleasures. Maybe they sit around and laugh every time they fool people and it actually works, and put another feather in their caps.
This is exactly how egomaniacs go off the deep end. They start telling themselves that they are somehow "better" (eg. smarter, or what not) than other people. Now I'm not saying that everyone should be in total love with total strangers. But more and more, they bypass their consciences with this excuse that they are better than other people (so what the hell with others), as they sink deeper and deeper into sociopathy.
SOCIOPATHY IS QUITE TRENDY THESE DAYS. And we have the media as our example every day, to set these trends for the rest of society and the naive crop of new youth, etc., for whom we have no time to socialize with ourselves or to bequeath our own experience/s.
Who the hell thought this was a good idea to allow only a few people to own media megaphones? Is it some marketeering ploy to monopolize markets? Someone afraid of being found out, because they have a shady past? This can only end in dictatorship, and that is just fine with those who think they are going to have the reins.
If they are justifying this to themselves for something like "in the name of God" --- well if that is some Christiany slant then I would like to remind them that it is one of the Ten Commandments to not bear false witness against thy neighbor, and that lying is really not that cool in the eyes of this God whose name they use for advantage.
I keep thinking of how Jesus was crucified with a thief, and that is exactly what these control freak sorts do today, too. They incriminate and bunch together anyone who does not kiss up to their drum as if they are something in need of crucifixion or the like. Our world is very very pathetic. Is it not strange, that in two thousand years, we cannot learn?