And here we also have the everyday man’s access to the Internet under seige by lobbyists in Washington who are wining, dining, and sixty-nining our congressional representatives while showering them with campaign contributions (and a lot more).

If “Big Business Media Conglomeration, (i.e., BBMC)” (i.e., Rupert Murdoch (owner of Fox News, etc., etc., etc.) is allowed to buy up more and more of the local and regional news media and independents as easily and as cheaply as they want to, much news as we know it will be lost, curtailed, and changed for the worst with yet more mouthpieces of the BBMC in one way or another, decreasing independent media that we need!

We’re in front of this storm a bit, but it’s not a storm just yet. That’s where our voices come in. What follows is an e-mail I sent to one of my US Senators from NC, Elizabeth Dole, voicing my opposition to the FCC changes. In my experience, such things are not very influential because everyone starts too late or sends them for only a short period of time. That’s where our new Wurlitzer Effect comes in. In starting a lobbying campaign now via calls, e-mails, letters to editors, etc.; we can grow grass from its roots until it reaches an unignorable anit-big media message.

I hope some of you will be able to use the letter below to help begin this grassroots approach in your area to compliment our counterparts in Washington. Use it as you will! Change it as you will! Write your own! Just begin the hum of discontent now and let’s work it up into a roar.

Yours,
JR

Attached:

To the Congressional Office of Senator Elizabeth Dole,

I am a student at Appalachian State University and a life-long resident of North Carolina. Recently, it has come to my attention that the FCC is reviewing its policy regulating the ownership of media companies. In 2003, the last time this review took place, the FCC attempted to severly loosen regulations on company ownership, resulting in Prometheus v. FCC (Case no. 03-3388). The deregulation was overturned, but the FCC is making a second attempt.

The core of my stance against this move is that the consolidation of media sources puts a stanglehold on the flow of information resulting in economic imbalances of knowledge, power, and independence detrimental to our nation. As any economist will tell you, the more information the market has, the better its resource distribution. However, when one agent, organization, or side of the market has more information than another; they are able to exploit the comparative ignorance of their opponent causing an inefficient distribution.

In the case of the FCC’s deregulation of media ownership, the anticipated mergers and acquisitions it will license will choke information off from the audience. In the name of economic efficiency; news will increasingly be recycled at every level and medium, more reporting will be done by free-lance writers, and local news will disappear. Not to mention the conflict of interest of marrying news to business. The resulting potential for information hegemony will leave the general public less able to be democratic (by being less informed); more exploitable as consumers, laborers, and entrepreneurs; and less able to critique and actualize themselves.

Because of these things, I feel that is essential for the good of our community, state, and nation that this particular form of deregulation be stopped. As my honarable representative to United States Senate, I am asking you to act on my behalf and on the behalf of the people of our great state.

Sincerely,
Jason Radford