The FCC doesn't want you to hear the news

Michael Powell; he’s the former head of the Federal Communications Commission and the son of former Secretary of State General Colin Powell. I’m fond of calling him mellonhead both for reasons made obvious by the photo. Of course I wouldn’t insult the man that way but for the fact that his ties to big business tainted his chairmanship to a degree that hasn’t been seen since the 1930’s.

An emerging technology called BPL, or Broadband over Power Lines has been one of his pet projects. Although the laying of fiber-optic cable has been so overdone that some say there is more cable than anyone can use, he insists that the idea of using power lines to transmit internet service is so necessary, that protecting licensed users of the radio spectrum is not important. Powell was so enamored of this technology that he was seen by many as more of an industry lobbyist than a representative of an agency charged with protecting the public interest. Years of complaints and demands that the FCC enforce its own rules went ignored by Powells commission.

But far more than that, Powell seemed also to represent those who wanted to completely undo the historical prohibitions against near monopolies in the media. Attempting to prove that having the radio and TV stations in the hands of a few huge media conglomerates was not a detriment to the public interest, Powell commissioned a study in 2004 to prove the point. The Associated Press reported this afternoon that upon seeing the results, Powell ordered that "every last piece" of the study be destroyed. We don’t have to guess that the study showed that locally owned stations produced more thorough news coverage and we have recently seen how Disney owned ABC recently spent $40 million dollars clouding the public perception of what has gone wrong with our attempt to stop al Qaeda. We didn't hear much from anyone willing to expose the distortions, except the bloggers.

I was relieved when Powell stepped down as were many other licensed users of the spectrum, but Kevin Martin, the new chairman has made it clear that he intends to side with Big Media interests in the current rewrite of FCC ownership rules. Monopolies serve no one but monopolists and consolidated media ownership leads to censorship, corporate control of information and the end of a free press.

If you worry about Big Brother and fake news, take the time to put your comments on file with the FCC before November 21. Otherwise policy that hardly anyone is in favor of will be rammed down our throats by the Republicans once again.