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Make Media Reform an Election Year Issue - - Support the Reappointment of FCC Commissioner Adelstein
Submitted by jboyer3 on Wednesday, September 29, 2004 - 23:08
Time is running out for the public to tell President Bush and Congress they want Federal Communications Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein to be reappointed to a full five-year term after being held up for a year and a half. Adelstein is a rare public interest advocate at the FCC who, together with FCC Commissioner Michael Copps, has done everything he possibly can to inform and involve the public in the media policy process affecting the most important matters facing our nation: peace, economic justice and democracy itself. Copps and Adelstein lead the national grassroots uprising in 2003 against the controversial 3-2 FCC ruling to allow even greater concentration of media ownership and industry consolidation. It is not unusual few people have heard anything about Commissioner Adelstein's reappointment. Important questions of media policy profoundly affecting how average citizens perceive major issues facing our country are rarely covered by commercial television news, the primary medium most Americans rely upon for news and information. A recent study by the American Journalism Review thoroughly documented the nearly total blackout on commercial TV news of the unprecedented opposition to the media ownership Adelstein and Copps tried to stop that would permit greater media consolidation and reduce diversity in our national discourse. That historic public protest happened largely because, for the first time in the 70 years history of the FCC, not one but TWO FCC commissioners actively tried to involve the public in important matters of media regulation, serious reasons this major story should have been covered by TV news but wasn't. If FCC Chairman Michael Powell's rosy view that citizens have more information than ever before were true, why did polls show more than 70 per cent of the public completely ignorant of the media ownership ruling? Or that 750,000 citizens complained to the FCC about the ownership ruling, more than twice the number who protested Janet Jackson's Super Bowl breast baring stunt. In this election year filled media smears and gross distortions, media reform has become a critical issue. If enough act between now and November 2nd, perhaps the dwindling number of responsible journalists left in America will cover this important story and make media ownership the critical election year issue it should be. Few people realize both Kerry and Edwards oppose greater media ownership. Like the war in Iraq, media reform is a vital issue we can and must bring to national attention. For more information, go to the Media for America website and get involved: http://www.mediaforamerica.org/
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