Deregulation

Fox is leading the charge for FCC deregulation backed by such media giants as Sinclair and Clear Channel. In a statement to the FCC Fox contends that "opponents of relaxing the media ownership rules continue to advance the spurious claim that deregulation is some sort of 'threat' to democracy" and "their argument is unsupportable, because it wholly ignores the power of the Internet - without doubt the most democratizing technology in the history of human invention."

Let us disregard the several statements of FOXNews conservative so-called journalists who regularly display open disdain for the very idea of plurality in the United States and consider the statement at face value. FOXNews disparages the "spurious claim" that relaxing ownership rules on media "is some sort of 'threat' to democracy" and suggest that the argument that plurality will not be preserved is "unsupportable." This flies in the face of the FCC report in 2004 whose study "suggest that locally owned television broadcast stations air more local news than network owned-and-operated and non-locally owned stations" possibly because "economics of scale in program distribution favor non-local content." Those same economics of scale "induces a smaller owner to favor local content."

Of course, this report was never made public.

Fox is attempting to convince the FCC to not listen to their own publicly funded study on media consolidation. Not to mention that Fox suggests that the claims against deregulation need support while not offering any support of their own to the contrary.

The internet is certainly "the most democratizing technology in the history of human invention." However, the idea that we should give up avenues for affecting democracy simply because new avenues open up is simple beyond the scope of logic. We would still be giving up an avenue that has a great influence over the public. We won't even mention that there should never be an occasion when we feel restful enough to let any avenue for democracy close. Nor will we mention the new war major communications corporations like Verizon, AT&T, and BellSouth are waging against "net neutrality" which could dull the teeth of this new "democratizing technology." Nor will we mention that Fox owner Ruppert Murdoch has already gained a foothold on the internet with the purchase of the wildly popular MySpace.com. And we most certainly need not mention that self-appointed FOXNews spokesman, uninformed pundit, and all around windbag, Bill O'Reilly, constantly rails against this "democratizing technology" with truly spurious claims that bloggers, the most succinctly vocal users of the internet, "are hired guns..." and "...these are people hired — being paid very well to smear and try to destroy people." The Big Business sentiment for "democratizing technology" is quite clear.

Public support for media ownership regulations was made abundantly clear three years ago. After Michael Powell led the partisan decision to deregulate the public outrage was so loud that the FCC had to back down.

Fox, in the tradition laid down by it's "Fair and Balanced" cable news network, continues to push forward an agenda regardless of public opinion and the facts.