FCC Sells Out

Despite opposition from Congress and the public, the FCC has decided it’s in the nation’s best interest to relax decades-old ownership rules that prohibit media giants from owning newspapers and broadcasts outlets in the same local market. The idea behind the old rules, crazy as it sounds, is that it’s probably not a good thing to get all of your information from the same place.

The FCC’s three Republicans and America’s media conglomerates disagree.

New York Times:

Michael J. Copps, a Democratic commissioner who has led a nationwide effort against relaxing the media ownership rules, said the rule was nothing more than a big Christmas present to the largest conglomerates.

“In the final analysis,” Mr. Copps said, “the real winners today are businesses that are in many cases quite healthy, and the real losers are going to be all of us who depend on the news media to learn what’s happening in our communities and to keep an eye on local government.”

“Despite all the talk you may hear today about the threat to newspapers from the Internet and new technologies, today’s order actually deals with something quite old-fashioned,” Mr. Copps said. “Powerful companies are using political muscle to sneak through rule changes that let them profit at the expense of the public interest.”

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