The FCC totally ignored millions of Americans and a 70-year anti-monopoly tradition of broadcast regulations when it voted along party lines — 3 Republicans to 2 Democrats — for more megalo-media consolidation. This will further nudge out the general public from access to the already highly privatized and restricted airwaves. Remember, the airwaves have traditionally supposed to ultimately belong to the public, but now they’re controlled mainly by eight monolithic media conglomerates, (Fox, Viacom, Disney, GE/NBC, AOL Time Warner, Clear Channel Radio, New York Times, and Washington Post). This FCC vote is tantamount to one more step toward fascism, as big corporations control the government and render the people’s voice irrelevant. We know that these media conglomerates have made huge campaign contributions (which I call “legalized bribes”) to the Bush campaign, so we know the vote was bought, and I thought you were in favor of campaign finance reform, yet you do not seem to be doing anything to change this. Also please let me know why the changes were kept so secret, that made it look even more suspicious.
-Richard Lee
Continue to pressure McCain to stop these FCC changes, it is not too late: mccain.senate.gov/

Other related article links:
www.nytimes.com/2003/06/02/business/media/02FIRM.html
WASHINGTON, June 1
Nearly 30 years ago, a young Republican lawyer named Richard E. Wiley led the Federal Communications Commission as it approved a landmark regulation that restricted a company from owning both a newspaper and a broadcast station in the same city.
On Monday the F.C.C. is expected to repeal that rule in more than 100 cities as part of the most significant overhaul of media regulations in a generation. The change would be the culmination of a long campaign by the nation's biggest media conglomerates, which are intent on entering new local markets and expanding in those where they already have a presence. And it would come despite objections from an array of politically liberal and conservative critics who fear broad consolidation in the news and entertainment businesses.
But those objections were no match for big media, whose top lawyer and chief Washington strategist is none other than Mr. Wiley, now 68 years old, and by all accounts the most influential media and telecommunications lawyer in the country.
To critics who would accuse him of selling out the very public-interest safeguards he helped put in place as F.C.C. chairman during the Ford administration, Mr. Wiley says simply that his policy views are now different because the industry is different.
"The world has demonstrably changed since then," he said in a recent interview at his law firm's offices on K Street. "I think my earlier handiwork is outmoded. It was a good rule for 1975. We were concerned at the time that newspapers would dominate television, which people forget had only really been created 20 years or so earlier. It's almost been 30 years later and many things are different."
But his vantage point, as the managing partner of Wiley Rein & Fielding for the last 20 years, has changed as well. The firm has the most enviable list of clients in the field. It has supplied more lawyers to the important telecommunications posts in the Bush administration than any other firm, and it is perceived to be the best-connected law practice in the field.
Over sandwiches in a conference room outside his 11th floor office last Thursday, Mr. Wiley said that he had taken a consistent approach throughout his career.
"Generally speaking, I'm on the side of free speech, the First Amendment and robust competition," he said.
Others take a different view.
"Dick Wiley is very gracious and very tough and basically his office is the most well-lubricated office in Washington," said Reed E. Hundt, a chairman of the F.C.C. during the Clinton administration who has been at odds with Mr. Wiley on various policy issues and has been critical of the sweeping deregulatory measures expected to be adopted Monday. "If you want to buy access, that's the place to go. People generally retain Dick to oppose progressive initiatives."
The firm's golden Rolodex of clients in recent times has included Viacom, AOL Time Warner, all four of the regional Bell telephone companies and a number of cellphone operators, major newspaper chains, broadcast affiliates and equipment manufacturers, including Zenith and Motorola.
The clients sometimes have conflicting agendas. The television networks, for instance, are often at odds with the local affiliate stations. AOL Time Warner, which operates a huge cable company, has found itself on the opposite side of issues from the telephone companies.
At the proceedings on Monday, which F.C.C. officials say will result in a widespread relaxation of the most significant media regulations, Mr. Wiley and his firm represent no fewer than eight clients that have been directly involved in trying to rewrite the rules. They include the Gannett and Belo newspaper holding companies; the radio giant Clear Channel Communications; the midsize media conglomerates Emmis Communications, Morris Communications and Gray Television; the Newspaper Association of America; and Bear, Stearns, the Wall Street firm that has supported the loosening of the rules and expects the changes to result in potentially lucrative media deals.
In the last five months alone, Mr. Wiley and his partners have held at least 34 meetings with F.C.C. officials, including recurrent meetings with all of the commissioners and top staff aides over the new rules, according to agency records. That is more than any other law firm lobbying the agency during that period.
With his long list of clients and their potentially conflicting agendas, Mr. Wiley has had to negotiate carefully which issues he will take up for each, in order to avoid alienating other clients. And Mr. Wiley says he has stayed out of some aspects of the rule-making, such as the fight over whether to allow the networks to own more television stations, because his clients — CBS on one hand and the affiliates on the other — have competing interests.
He dismisses criticism that he ventures too close to the bounds of accepted conflict-of-interest practices, saying he is assiduous in making sure that he does not damage the interests of any clients.

By Danny Schechter
As judges wrestled with these issues in one part of the capital, the FCC across town was launching a second front in a stealth effort to transfer more media power to a relative few. Under the chairmanship of Michael Powell, son of Secretary of State Colin, the FCC scheduled a "proceeding" to weaken the rules if the courts did not choose to throw them out. Policy wonks know about this but most of the public does not, because big media rarely cover issues in which their own financial interests are at stake.
Jeff Chester of the Center for Digital Democracy explains why this issue is so important: "The ownership rules on the FCC chopping block have been developed over the last fifty years. They have been an important safeguard ensuring the public's basic First Amendment rights. The rationale for these policies is that they help provide for a diverse media marketplace of ideas, essential for a democracy. They have not been perfect. But the rules have helped constrain the power of the corporate media giants."
What's The Connection?
Although the media usually like to speculate about government intent, this official comment period on cross-ownership has gone largely uncommented upon on TV or in the press, perhaps because many newspapers also own television stations.
It reminded me of a similarly unexplored story 10 years ago, when George W's dad was gearing up for the Gulf War. The media at that time reported on a public debate that included many peace sentiments, much to the displeasure of many in the administration. The vote in Congress to authorize the war was very close (in what were clearly different circumstances).
At that time, the broadcast industry was lobbying the FCC hard for a change in financial syndication rules that would enormously bolster its bottom line. They ultimately won those changes and much, much more when the Telecommunications Reform Act passed in 1996. Those changes promised big money, as do the rule changes proposed today.
When the Gulf War erupted, some aggressive questions were raised by journalists at Pentagon briefings, especially because of the restrictions imposed on media coverage in the Gulf. Network bureau chiefs in Washington, D.C., had originally agreed to those restraints but later, after the war was over, complained that they'd been had and denounced the largely successful efforts at censorship.
This spectacle of the press doing its job in 1991 infuriated some in the FCC, especially commissioner James Quello, who was seen as the TV industry's voice on the commission. Quello gave a high-profile speech to the Indiana Broadcasting Association questioning the patriotism of TV journalists for demanding hard information about the war. Here was a veteran in the television business turning on the very people who report news. His speech sent a worrying signal to the suites of media power. Later, CBS anchor Dan Rather would characterize TV journalism during the war as playing the role of "lap dogs, not watchdogs." Most TV coverage soon was marching in lockstep with government policy. The networks, and especially CNN, enjoyed high ratings and profits when they turned the Gulf War into a TV newsathon. (I tell this story in more detail in my new book, News Dissector: Passions, Pieces and Polemics, 1960-2000," from Akashic Books).
After the war, I spoke to Quello, who was pleased as punch at the networks' performance. I later spoke to a respected producer at CBS's news magazine "60 Minutes," who insisted on anonymity. He told me he had wanted their coverage to feature more debates. Higher-ups asked him to propose a plan to do it. He did, but, to his surprise, never received a response. I quoted what he said happened in a piece I wrote for "Spin," namely that a "prominent network fixer" was in the White House regularly during that period lobbying for the FCC rule change, and that there was no way the administration could be confronted when the networks had such an important economic agenda under consideration in Washington. There is no way to confirm this story but other journalists I've told it to say it sounds plausible.
What's Happening Now?
Fast-forward to the present. The FCC is, in effect, holding out the possibility of freeing the networks from restrictions on buying up more stations. At a time when the industry is hurting financially, big bucks are once again being dangled in front of media moguls. Who among them would challenge the government now on the current war effort? I think it is safe to predict the media will be chilling, in a time of more killing.
Already an executive (who I know and respect) at NBC has counseled journalists there to be wary of reporting anything that can help the enemy. This is the same network news division that fired freelancer Jon Alpert when he brought back pictures showing the pain of Iraqi civilians in the aftermath of Desert Storm. NBC refused to show them.
We have experienced waves of media mergers, amidst a merger of news biz and show biz. Is a military-media merger in the offing because of economic and political forces that seem invisible to many in the media, or is it in place already? It is not naïve to fear the emergence of a new media-military industrial complex taking shape as Americans enter this next round in our quest for "Infinite Justice"?
— Danny Schechter is the executive editor of MediaChannel.org. His latest book is "News Dissector: Passions, Pieces and Polemics, 1960-2000," from Akashic Books.. He is writing daily about media coverage of the current situation in his MediaChannel weblog.
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