Posted on 06/02/2007 8:58:01 PM PDT by RWR8189
AS a member of the Federal Communications Commission, I often hear how fed up Americans are with the news media. Too much “if it bleeds it leads” on the evening news and not enough real coverage of local issues. Too little high-quality entertainment and too many people eating bugs.
It doesn’t have to be this way. America lets radio and TV broadcasters use public airwaves worth more than half a trillion dollars for free. In return, we require that broadcasters serve the public interest: devoting at least some airtime for worthy programs that inform voters, support local arts and culture and educate our children — in other words, that aspire to something beyond just minimizing costs and maximizing revenue.
Using the public airwaves is a privilege — a lucrative one — not a right, and I fear the F.C.C. has not done enough to stand up for the public interest. Our policies should reward broadcasters that honor their pledge to serve that interest and penalize those that don’t.
The F.C.C. already has powerful leverage to hold broadcasters to their end of the bargain. Every eight years, broadcasters must prove that they have served the public interest in order to get license renewal. If they can’t, the license goes to someone else who will. It’s a tough but fair system — if the commission does its job.
The problem is that, under pressure from media conglomerates, previous commissions have eviscerated the renewal process. Now we have what big broadcasters lovingly call “postcard renewal” — the agency typically rubber-stamps an application without any substantive review. Denials on public interest grounds are extraordinarily rare.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
What a load of rubish. The assault on free speech continues. We need to abolish the FCC.
Does this guy by any chance come from Venezuela?
“Every eight years, broadcasters must prove that they have served the public interest in order to get license renewal. If they can’t, the license goes to someone else who will.”
What exactly is the public interest? I’ve yet to heart that one explained. It would be in the public interest to throw you and all of you thieves out on the streets and use the tax dollars saved towards the American military, or better yet stop taxing the airwaves in general. Bastards.
With the majority of radio and television programming EXEMPT from the FCC, it really is ridiculous.
If ever there was a reason to strip networks and affiliates of their licenses, it was when Dan Rather held up forged government documents on the eve of an election and presented them as “truth” for a solid week refusing to acknowledge questions that were raised as to the authenticity even though they quickly did not pass the smell test.
The public interest would be clear support for the president and troops in war time. Can all the networks that oppose presidente Bush and the GOP. < /s >
Let the government have ONE of the airwaves and the rest should be unregulated.
bump
better yet the government can have one half of an airwave. freerepublic will have the other half and we’ll comment on everything the government says. Also we’ll probably show some anime japanese dub english subtitles.
This isn’t an attack on the first amendment because we’re not going to call it that. Have a nice day. :)
(/sarcasm)
I’m not sure about this “public airwaves” crap.
Washington is crawling with commies who want to kill the Constitution in favor of a repressive, all-controlling socialist government with THEM at the helm of course.
Kill the Fairness Doctrine then start getting rid of those that created it, and supported its repressive, First Amendment killing content and purpose.
Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." -Manuel II Paleologus
And, what does he propose when candidates from one party snub a network and minority caucus due to pressure from outside advocacy groups?
And the B.I.A., F.A.A., Education Dept, A.T.F., Interstate Commerce Commission, United Nations and a whole load of other useless govt agencies.
Oh yeah, and especially the I.R.S.
Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer “aggressively pursue” reinstatement of the Fairness Doctrine
“The decision to press for re-establishment of the Fairness Doctrine now seems to have developed for two reasons. “First, [Democrats] failed on the radio airwaves with Air America, no one wanted to listen,” says a senior adviser to Pelosi. “Conservative radio is a huge threat and political advantage for Republicans and we have had to find a way to limit it. Second, it looks like the Republicans are going to have someone in the presidential race who has access to media in ways our folks don’t want, so we want to make sure the GOP has no advantages going into 2008.”
http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=11427
Satelite radio and internet broadcasts are the medium of the future. However, a power-hungry government can’t wait to “regulate” those mediums too. They will find some excuse to get their fangs into all means of expression and clamp down on anyone who deviates from officially-approved PC talk.
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