FCC Chairman Tries For More Media Consolidation 182
An anonymous reader writes "FCC chairman Kevin Martin wants to relax rules on how many media outlets one company can own in one market. Democratic commissioner Copps wants to rally the public to stop media consolidation. He says he's 'blowing a loud trumpet' for a 'call to battle' to stop the FCC from giving big media a generous Christmas present."
Media Monopoly Cartel (Score:5, Informative)
These media monopolies present our entire society through their filter of corporate priorities:
And of course that "info monoculture" dictates politics that can be rigged most easily by a single political party, so long as it is thoroughly corporatist. Which is why the US government is getting rid of the rules that protect a free market of consumers and diverse startups, in favor of corporate anarchy.
Diversity. (Score:4, Informative)
Right now the book is just a proposal - it will take much more time to empirically test the ideas put forth in it.
That's Western innovation, baby! (Score:3, Informative)
In the East they have official state news sources like Pravda or Xinhua, while in the West we have a vast network of ostensibly separate and independent news sources which are ultimately through various obscured financial ties effectively the same thing! Go capitalism!
Oh wait I'm sorry I'm being cynical. After all, the NYT did sincerely apologize for being credulous parrots of anything the government wanted them to say. I'm sure that's all in the past now. I must have gotten my scandalous anti-American ideas from the liberal media.
Contacting the FCC (Score:2, Informative)
libertarians and health insurance (Score:3, Informative)
healthcare/insurance corps have produced a "libertarian" hoax that is precisely wrong.
Neither healthcare nor health insurance were created by Libertarians in the US. The current health insurance industry was created by a Democrat, FDR. During WWII, because of wage and price control laws [time.com], employers couldn't pay employees more so to entice people to work in factories and other establishments the government allowed employers to pay for health insurance for the employees. And still today employer have an incentive to offer insurance instead of just paying employees more. If the laws favoring employer provided health insurance [becker-posner-blog.com], they pay no tax on it, were gotten rid of and employers were able to pay employees more so they could buy health insurance on their own healthcare would be cheaper and more people would be more keen to hold costs down. And by allowing people to buy and pay for their own healthcare they will be able to decide what sort of coverage they want, if they only want catastrophic coverage they can pay less for it versus another person who wants everything covered. Then with more people paying more out of pocket they will be more willing to shop for lower prices. That's called competition, you know, what many blame on driving workers pay down? Let competition drive cost down.
Falcon