Here Comes Censorship--The FCC is Investigating News Media as First Step Toward Localism

The Lid/Various ^ | 2/15/2010 | The Lid

[Shellybenoit]

If you take a trip to the FCC's future of media website, one of the first thing you will read is:

That’s why FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski decided to launch a major new agency-wide project to make sure that citizens and communities end up with vibrant, diverse sources of news and information – information that enables them to enrich their lives, their communities and their democracy. These have always been key goals for the FCC and America’s communications policy. But we must make sure those historic goals are met in this new, digital era.

By the way, in a digital era, when we talk about “news and information,” we’re not only referring to journalism. It’s also about making sure consumers get the information they need from government and other sources about schools, crime, public health, natural disasters or other issues that affect them dearly.

Nice words till you have an understanding of what they mean. The Emphasis of the project is the "needs of the communities" which is just another way of saying "localism." Take a look at the questions they are asking:

[Army Air Corps]

My dislike of the FCC continues.

[Army Air Corps]

The only legitmate job for the FCC is to manage broadcasting bands and handle licenses.

[InterceptPoint]

[Touch Not the Cat]

.
Are there ways of measuring the vibrancy of local news and information flow and correlating such metrics to positive community outcomes, such as school quality, voter turnout, other forms of civic participation, improved public health, effective emergency responses, crime, reduced political corruption, or the development of social capital in general?

A steaming pile of big government gobbledygook. And particularly foul smelling gobbledygook at that.

[KarlInOhio]

With Internet streaming local broadcasts will matter less and less. There is a national broadcaster who syndicates on a local station, but the local station doesn't use the last hour of the show. I will often go to his home station's website and listen there.

[Protect the Bill of Rights]

None of us are smart enough to seek out the news which is relevant to our own lives, I guess.

[Jack Hydrazine]

You don’t need to dislike the FCC. Just dislike the Leftists who are mis-using and abusing the power of this bureaucratic institution into quashing free speech and free thought.

The two weapons that the Leftists absolutely hate the most are firearms and the power to speak with dissent against them and their ideas.

[blam]

Here comes the Diversity Czar,Mark Lloyd.

This crap must be stopped dead in it's tracks:

FCC Will Not Allow Diversity Czar Mark Lloyd to Speak to Press

"Lloyd, who cites the radical author Saul Alinsky as an inspiration, has argued that public broadcasting outlets in the United States should be funded on a level equal to the funding of private broadcasting companies–with the money coming from licensing fees levied on private broadcasters by the government."

[yefragetuwrabrumuy]

It truth, about the dozen or so media companies that have an effective oligopoly of *major* media, need to be broken up in antitrust actions.

But the devil is in the details of how to do this.

Some of these companies have vertical monopolies, such as Clear Channel Communications. With 900 stations, Clear Channel is the largest radio station group owner in the United States, both by number of stations and by revenue.

However, other companies lean more towards horizontal organization, such as Time Warner, which covers the spectrum of movies, TV, magazine-book-newspaper publishing, broadcasting, cable, etc.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_assets_owned_by_Time_Warner

This is the media oligopoly:

Disney, “New” Viacom (and its former parent CBS Corporation, the former “Old” Viacom), TimeWarner, News Corporation, and General Electric together own more than 90% of the media holdings in the United States.

[Army Air Corps]

No worries, Dear Reader will control the horizontal and the vertical. ;-)