By Kevin McCauley
Exiting Federal Communications Commission Commissioner Michael Copps warns that media consolidation is even more dangerous today because the big money crowd is eyeing the world of broadband and Internet.
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He told the National Conference for Media Reform on April 9 that the same hedge fund, banking trust and private equity firm gang that nearly brought down the global financial system now have "visions of gated Internet communities" dancing in their heads.
The absentee landlords who put local programming on a "starvation diet and feed us instead monotonous homogenized music and mindless infotainment masquerading as ‘news'" are now working to consolidate and ‘cable-ize' the Internet under the control of corporate gatekeepers.
The rallying cry of "Don't regulate the Internet" keeps reformers at bay, but what big corporations really mean is "Don't let anyone but us control the Internet," said the Commissioner.
Noting that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned that the U.S. is losing the global information war, Copps believes defeat is present on the home front.
In his view, an informed electorate depends on facts, not talking heads hurling opinions at each other. It's the absence of facts, not the presence of opinion -- right or left -- that hurt us, said Copps.
The speaker recalled Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan's remark that each is entitled to an opinion, but not to one's own set of facts.
"That's where the problem is -- facts that never get dug up, stories that just don't get told. I'm not advocating taking anyone off the air -- I want to make room for facts on the air," said Copps.
"What we're dealing with here is a bad case of Big Media substance abuse -- and they just can't break the habit. These folks have no intention, even as the economy improves, of reopening shuttered newsrooms or rehiring laid-off reporters. They might even fire more, just to prove to Wall Street that they understand the bottom line still rules."
The FCC is readying a report that will assess the media landscape. If this report doesn't come filled with strong, hard-hitting, public interest recommendations, it won't be worth the paper it's written on," said Copps.
However, he believes the future of media is not an "inside-the-Beltway" issue.
"Winning the battle for America's media future is the single most important thing you and I can do to preserve this democracy of ours," he said.
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