A Doctrine By Any Other Name

Campus Report ^ | November 13, 2007 | Bethany Stotts

[bs9021]

A Doctrine By Any Other Name

by: Bethany Stotts, November 13, 2007

As reported earlier by Cliff Kincaid, the November 8th Senate Committee Hearing on “Localism, Diversity, and Media Ownership” likely precedes a concerted effort by Congress to reform digital, radio, and print media. Although not officially designed to resurrect the Fairness Doctrine, the hearing’s participants betrayed many of the same attitudes which could lead to greater government regulation of content, scalability, ownership—and now even ethnicity.

If Congress follows the advice of this committee’s carefully selected witnesses, a comprehensive reform agenda could soon sweep all areas of broadcast media. “[Congress] must keep all current FCC ownership restrictions and public service mandates in place...craft new FCC mandates to ensure internet freedom... institute a ban on cross-ownership of national print and national broadcast outlets as a companion to the local cross-ownership ban... push for limits on newspaper ownership,” urged witness Frank Blethen, the President and CEO of The Seattle Times.

Blethen has been lobbying against media consolidation since at least 2002, when he told a University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign audience that “if democracy is to survive we must change the course of this terrible trend toward media concentration, and invigorate a diverse and independent press whose primary mission is news and public service.” He proposes that Congress show strong, “bold” leadership to “save our free and local press.” “This is a historical moment. The American citizen needs your leadership,” he added.

[SunkenCiv]

Google Shuts Down Anti-Obama Sites on its Blogger Platform
Publius’ Forum | 6/29/08 | Warner Todd Huston
Posted on 06/29/2008 1:53:36 PM PDT by Mobile Vulgus
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2038256/posts
http://www.freerepublic.com/tag/fairnessdoctrine/index