Thursday, June 01, 2006

Monopoly of the air

In a country that confuses a healthy economy with high corporate earnings it’s not surprising to find that the business of even the FCC has become business. There was a time when that organization served to coordinate use of the electromagnetic spectrum and to make sure license holders used that public property for the public good. Under our new Republican leaders public good means private gain and bigger salaries for CEOs through monopolistic practices.

The Federal Communications Commission under former director Michael Powell actively promoted a technology that lets the power companies use power lines to provide internet service to their customers. The downside was that power lines are not shielded and act as enormous broadcasting antennas for the high frequency signals riding on them. One would think that the function of that federal regulatory agency would be to prevent harmful interference to legitimate licensed users yet the scent of profit was enough to make them ignore complaints and allow the power companies to get into providing yet another conduit for the internet.

The FCC has been steadfastly ignoring documented cases of interference and has been letting users of BPL or Broadband over Power Lines technology jam signals that the Amateur Radio Service, among other beneficial things, uses to transmit emergency communications. The technology exists to effectively reduce interference, but the policy of the FCC is never to require anything of giant media corporations but that they hire retiring FCC employees. The jamming and interference have continued unabated and ignored for several years.

So it’s no surprise to hear that the next handout to the media Barons, now that the Republicans have a majority voice on the commission, will be to once again attempt to dump the policy that prohibited corporations from owning a television station and a daily newspaper in the same market. Americans seem to oppose media monopolies and it is not hard to understand that if one corporation owns the news, that corporation has immense control over public opinion. It’s not hard to understand that such things are another giant step toward putting a great iron curtain around America, but the new Republican majority on the commission have no interest in what the serfs believe or want.

To be sure, the last attempt at legitimizing media monopolies was shot down by the courts: another example of what they really mean when they talk about activist judges, but with the courts better corrupted than they were 3 years ago, they’re going to try it again. A Pew Research poll conducted in 2003 when the FCC last debated cross-ownership showed that Americans who knew about the rule were roughly ten to one against diluting it and there has been so much public disgust at this tactic that such strange bedfellows as the National Rifle Association and Common Cause are standing against it.

There was a time when I would have been energized to protest, to march, write letters and contribute funds, but I think we’ve lost America, we’ve lost the understanding of what it means to be a free and liberal democracy and we might just as well learn to goose step. The dream is dead.

4 comments:

Crankyboy said...

The dream of America is indeed dead.

"I dreamed a dream in time gone by,
When hope was high and life, worth living.
I dreamed that love would never die,
I dreamed that God would be forgiving.
Then I was young and unafraid,
And dreams were made and used and wasted.
There was no ransom to be paid,
No song unsung, no wine, untasted.

But the tigers come at night,
With their voices soft as thunder,
As they tear your hope apart,
And they turn your dream to shame."

Capt. Fogg said...

Um - I think it was Republicans, not tigers.

RR said...

The republican's simply believe - no matter evidence to the contrary - that free-market == democracy.

nothing could be further from the truth. Free markets give rise to riches -- and riches == power and access.

We need regulatory agencies staffed with publicly-minded people, but that will NEVER happen under the current regime.

Capt. Fogg said...

I also think they believe that a free market produces moral behavior and so any checks and balances are immoral.

If it makes money, it's good.