On Monday night, we had a great discussion about the media consolidation efforts at the FCC. Check out the conversation and take your comments, thoughts, and ideas out into the rest of
the Free Press Action Network.

As the New York Times reported last week, the FCC is moving quickly towards a vote on media ownership issues. Many believe that the agency is moving too hastily—and I share their sense of concern. The process so far has been accompanied by FCC-commissioned studies, some of whose conclusions and methodologies have been called into serious question. The required peer review process to accompany those studies appears deeply flawed. Not enough hearings have been held. And the time for public comment has been seriously truncated. The rush to judgment is on. It must be slowed.

As I’ve said time and time again, we can’t afford to take shortcuts when it comes to an issue as important as the future of our media. The process needs to involve the American people, even if they can’t afford those big-time lawyers and K Street lobbyists the way Big Media can. It needs to be transparent and based on solid social science, not just studies that are put together in a slapdash way just so someone can say that the FCC has done some studies.

We know what can happen when government gets media regulation wrong. Closed or amputated newsrooms. Entertainment passed off as news. Homogenized entertainment, national music play lists, no coverage for local talent, local music, local creativity. Get in your car in Los Angeles, California, turn on the radio and drive to the East Coast, and you’ll probably here the same 20 songs. What we have here is too much of media using us, not enough of us using media for the common good. And your country and mine is paying a dreadful cost for this quarter century fling with government abdication and media irresponsibility.

So why the rush now to further loosen the ownership rules? We have public interest proceedings that have been languishing at the Commission since 2000. We haven’t even talked about what public interest responsibilities should accompany our upcoming transition to digital television. When it sent the Powell rules back to us in 2004, the federal court told us we hadn’t adequately considered minority ownership and how it is affected by consolidation. Listen to this: in a country now over 30% minority, people of color own 3.26% of all full-power television stations! How’s that for failing to reflect the diversity of America? And there’s anther proceeding on localism pending—how can we vote on ownership if we don’t understand what’s happened to localism under our current rules? So Commissioner Adelstein and I are saying we just simply must not have an ownership vote until these are other fundamental problems are addressed. It’s irresponsible to vote on ownership right now.

Now that we are on the eve of a new decision, it’s high time for Americans who have concerns about media consolidation and the process at the FCC to make them known. We need your help. I hope you’ll get involved. I hope you’ll go out and talk about it. Write about it. Blog about it—new media is just as threatened by all this as traditional media, and maybe we can talk about this in our discussion in a minute or so. If you can sing, sing about it. March about it. Sign up everyone you can. Let the FCC know how you feel about it. Tell your elected representatives how much this means to you. Act like your future depends on it—because it does!

I’m an optimist. I’ve seen citizen action work. I know there is grassroots concern about this because I have attended dozens of hearing on media consolidation all cross this land of ours. And I think there is a new spirit struggling to be born in America, a time when reform and the better angels of our nature will once again guide our destiny. So at the end of this great debate, I believe we can end up with something truly precious: airwaves of, by and for the American people. Media democracy. I like the ring of that. I hope you’ll join hands and join forces and help make it happen.

I’ll be back online Monday at 7:00 p.m. ET to respond to your comments and questions.
Please respond to this post and share your thoughts with me on media consolidation and how the FCC should
respond.