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Archive for July, 2006

It’s Official … The Clock Is Ticking

Tuesday, July 25th, 2006 by Craig Aaron

More than a month after announcing its plans to revisit the nation’s media ownership rules, the FCC finally made it official last night.

The agency opened a new docket for 60 days of public comment, followed by a 60-day reply period. That means the first round of comments is due Sept. 22, and the second round will end on Nov. 21, a few weeks after the midterm elections. We’ve made it easy to file your comments here.

In the “Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking,” the FCC calls for “comment on how we should address the issues remanded by the court” in the 2004 decision in Prometheus v. FCC – which tossed out the agency’s last attempt to gut media ownership rules and hand over more control to giant media corporations.

The issues at stake are the local ownership caps and the longstanding ban on newspaper-broadcast cross-ownership. But the commission also specifically asks for feedback on “proposals to foster minority ownership.”

FCC Chairman Kevin Martin has pledged to actually include the public in the rulemaking process this time – though the official documents are woefully short on details about when or where his promised “half a dozen” public hearings might take place.

While the FCC is dragging its feet, nearly 30,000 people already filed comments opposing weaker rules after Martin announced his plans in June. (Rest assured that all of those filings will be counted on the record.) And we’ll soon announce a schedule of public hearings being put together across the country by members of the StopBigMedia.com Coalition.

If you haven’t yet made your voice heard, now is the time.

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Kevin Martin: Get in Bed with the Public

Monday, July 10th, 2006 by Craig Aaron
Martin in the Sack

FCC Chairman Kevin Martin offers a perhaps unwitting illustration of how media policy is made in the new issue of Details.

As part of its report on the 21 “mavericks who are secretly controlling your life,” the magazine prints a full-page picture showing Martin literally in bed with a media executive and an industry lobbyist. You can’t make this stuff up.

Some may wonder whether it’s appropriate for the “Harry Potter of the Beltway” (far right) to be snapped in the sack with those he’s supposed to regulate. But an FCC spokeswoman told the Washington Post: “We’re FCC bureaucrats. We were happy to be with Ashton Kutcher” – who was also part of the package.

But it’s the public who’s really getting punk’d here. When the FCC launched it latest attempt to undo media ownership rules two weeks ago, Martin promised at least “half a dozen” public hearings before the FCC moved forward. Yet details on a schedule, time or place for these events is still a mystery.

In fact, Martin turned down an invitation from Free Press and an array of local groups in his home state of North Carolina to come out for a Town Meeting on the Future of Media in Asheville on June 28.

FCC Commissioners Michael Copps and Jonathan Adelstein turned out for the event – and heard hundreds of concerned citizens from as far away as Tennessee to tell them that we need more local, independent and diverse voices, not bigger media.

So we were wondering: When might the chairman find time for a little pillow talk with the public?

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