Coalition Protests Against Proposed Media Ownership Rules

CWA members were among the crowd of 150 citizens outside the Federal Communications Commission headquarters in Washington, D.C., on Oct. 31 protesting proposals that would enable a few media companies to control even more outlets. Inside at a public hearing, union, civil rights and community leaders urged the FCC not to make rule changes that will allow media companies to own a newspaper and several radio and TV stations in the same community and result in even more consolidation of media ownership.

The hearing followed Commission Chairman Kevin Martin's proposal to again ease media concentration and ownership rules.

Veteran radio journalist Bob Edwards, a vice president of the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists, told the Commission, "Mark my words. If you further deregulate media in this country, networks, broadcast stations, and newspapers will continue to consolidate, resulting in fewer voices heard by citizens? Television stations and newspapers will behave as commercial radio owners behaved when they were largely deregulated. They will adopt a business model that shuts out local news and entertainment in favor of national homogenized programming. If commercial media are given the unfettered right to abandon their obligation to serve the public interest, they will do just that."