Obama’s FCC Honcho Genchowski Wants To Further Centralize News Outlets

America's Party News ^ | Nov. 20, 2011 | John L. Work

[EternalVigilance]

A few years back, in the early 2000s to be exact, my son was writing for a tiny monthly independent newspaper in Fort Collins, Colorado.  The tilt of the outlet was decidedly left, but nevertheless the paper was its own self-contained entity and answered to no one but its own publisher.  David told me several times during his early journalistic days that the greatest danger the country was facing was the growing corporate centralization of news control.  From twenty-four or so corporations that once owned news media outlets, the number had shrunken to seven, he told me.  At the moment, I can count four of them.  One is General Electric, which made some 14 billion dollars in profits last year and didn’t pay a dime in income taxes.

Comes now the FCC’s supreme director, Julius (Caesar) Genachowski to resurrect an arbitrary ruling, proposed once and thought to be dead and buried, which would eradicate the current limitations on corporations owning television and radio stations “in the same market”.  The story, published in Deadline New York, is rather deliberately nebulous in the consequences that will inevitably follow the implementation of the proposal.  It loses us in a lot of two-dollar words and ten-dollar  phrases.  Giant corporations, such as General Electric, with huge investments in political agenda and election outcomes, will be less fettered, thus enabling them to buy up more TV and radio stations – and market their political messages by proxy through select programming and partisan newscasters- seven days a week.  Thinks it’s bad now?  Wait until this one goes through.  Here’s the DNY story:

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski is prepared to junk federal rules that limit companies from owning TV and radio stations in the same market — and go half way in doing the same for TV stations and newspapers. He’s circulating a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking that would wipe out the TV-newspaper restriction in the 20 largest markets, trade magazine Broadcasting and Cable reports citing “a person familiar with the document.” But it would keep a test that could block a combo in smaller markets if it would result in  less local news, less diversity of voices, or too much concentration of economic power. Genachowski’s proposal sounds a lot like the standard that former FCC Chairman Kevin Martin, a Republican, pushed through in 2008. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit overturned those rules this past July, saying that Martin hadn’t given the public enough time to weigh in on them. Public interest advocates who want to preserve cross-ownership restrictions applauded the court decision. Newspaper and broadcast owners say that mergers are needed to preserve local newsrooms as their companies compete against a massive number of national news competitors on cable TV and the Internet. As part of the rulemaking process, the FCC will ask whether stations skirt the ownership limits when they use joint operating agreements to cooperate on news, ad sales, or retransmission consent negotiations. A coalition that includes Dish Network, Time Warner Cable, activist group Free Press, the Newspaper Guild, and the American Cable Association recently challengedthose practices — and the National Association of Broadcasters defended them.

The FCC isn’t expected to vote on Genachowski’s proposal until next year, giving advocates opportunities to voice their opinions. But B&C says that it already has the support of three commissioners.

Right.  Like our weighing in on the Obama-Care made a difference to the President or Congress?

At one time National Public Radio CEO Lillian Schiller had a similar idea for centralizing all the news under government control.  She had to leave after the Juan Williams firing dust-up.  But the TASS, Volkischer Beobachter, Pravda idea is alive and well, thanks to Julius Genchowski and his friend, Barack Obama.  These people just do not go away.

 

About John L. Work

John L. Work is a graduate of Cal State Long Beach. His background includes 20 years service as a Colorado Peace Officer and 2 years with the Colorado State Public Defender's Office as an investigator. He has written three novels and been a political writer since January of 2010.

View all posts by John L. Work →

 

 

[cripplecreek]

Some years ago I saw a drunken Ted Turner speech when he expressed a desire to have one global news network to get the news right so people wouldn’t be misinformed.

[FrankR]

So did hitler...

[South40]

This man likes the idea.

[bigbob]

No one thought a lousier adminstrator for FCC could be found than Bush appointee Kevin Martin, but then Obama managed to find Julius G.

There is a valid reason (spectrum management and licensing) for the FCC to stay in business, but it needs to be radically downsized to less than 1/3 of its current size, with a very narrow focus. Here we see the proverbial camel’s nose under the tent as the FCC is trying to involve itself in content. This agency needs an extreme makeover.

[EternalVigilance]

[EternalVigilance]

Interesting post. Thanks.

[BigBobber]

The article says government restrictions on private companies will be lifted.

Conservatives usually think that is a good idea.

[TLI]

426 days, 23 hours. .

[4rcane]

We wont actually see any difference in the quality of the news we get. Its already pro-government as a private industry. The industry probably like government control because they can see competition and poor news quality is reducing their job security and want tax dollars to subsidies their shoddy service

[ken21]

bump.

[EternalVigilance]

I don’t know. The founders of this republic were pretty set on preventing the concentration of all power into just a few hands, governmentally, knowing as they did the dangerous and corrupting nature of that sort of power.

And it matters little if the entity obtaining all power over the people is governmental or private, especially if the powerful private entity is in cahoots with a powerful central government like today’s mega-corporations are.

Don’t forget, that’s exactly the sort of socialistic, statist monopoly on power that led to the Third Reich.

[skinkinthegrass]

He got "quoted"...a very bad move.
A proposed, Minister / Ministry of the (Approved) Truth.

[DesertRhino]

“Conservatives usually think that is a good idea.”

Yeah,,, and conservatives also know that Obama is a single minded revolutionary socialist that is absolutely not advancing the cause of free enterprise.

So although the article thinks he is “lifting restrictions” on private companies, you can be sure that this is artfully written crap designed to kill private companies.

[DesertRhino]

This has nothing to do with deregulating private companies. This is either the product of bribery,,like solyndra, or a move to consolidate government control over the media,,,or both.
Period.

[Eureka_Lead]

Correct..

the birth, actually, the coming out of kindergarten of the Govt owned media we have today... to the One Party media of the Government we have now.. for YOUR tomorrow..

all hail the new order by media declaration

EL

[abb]

ping

[RedMDer]

All contributions are for the Current Quarter Expenses.
Git R Done!

[GeronL]

The fewer there are the easier they are for the left to control

[af_vet_rr]

Why not, they are already intent on making sure that we end up with only one telephone company...and those of us old enough to remember when there was one phone company are shuddering at the thought.