The Power Grab for Our Public Airwaves

By: Jim Hightower

You've got to love the Bushites' orchestration of Orwellian wordplay when they issue new edicts to gut the public interest.

Instead of simply admitting that they're rigging the rules to further enrich their corporate campaign contributers, they use poll-tested phrases to make a negative sound positive, such as "balancing environmental excesses" or "modernizing outdated labor laws". These Orwellian phrases always cover up a gotcha.

The latest example comes from the FCC, which is supposed to be our watchdog over the public airwaves. But Chairman Michael Powell is the lapdog of the big conglomerates that want to turn our airwaves into their private, for-profit plaything. He's now trying to ram through a rigging of FCC ownership rules that would let this handful of global media giants gain almost total control over mass-market news in your city... and throughout the country.

But rather than admit that this is a giveaway of an essential public asset - our airwaves - Powell plays wordgames, claiming that he's simply revising the rules of a bygone era.

Well, if he means an era in which a diversity of opinions, local news, free-flowing information, and real competition exist on our airwaves - that certainly will be long gone under Powell's "revision". For example, he wants to allow a single conglomerate to control the TV programming for 90% of the American people. He also wants to let a single corporation own the newspapers and practically all of the radio and TV stations in any city - or in any number of cities.

This isn't the marketplace at work, as the Bushites claim - it's forced monopolization, and it will destroy any democracy on our airwaves and in our news sources. This power grab is so outrageous that Powell allowed only one perfunctory public hearing on it and plans to ram it through in a rushed up vote.

This is Jim Hightower saying... To fight for a democratic media, call the Free Press Media Reform Network at 413-585-1533. Call now!"