Michael Powell must Die
Well, shit happened. The FCC has voted for media deregulation.

Can you recall a time when you have ever felt more useless in a country that always preaches its democratic values? I realize that technically, America is a republic, but even that doesn't excuse the crime that the FCC committed today. The FCC received thousands of letters about media deregulation, and only 11 of those letters were in favor of it. Do you realize what that means? Most of the media you see, hear, and read is already owned and controlled by just six large corporations who all favor media deregulation, and it took a grassroots uprising from activists just to keep this story from being sweep under the rug. Before leaving Cincinnati, I listened to the local Clear Channel station, that had a syndicated Clear Channel show on the air, with the host very propagandistically denoucing those who are opposed to media deregulation as being unpatriotic. As we all know, Clear Channel couldn't get enough deregulation of the radio markets, and as soon as the FCC relaxed radio deregulation rules, Clear Channel went from owning 40 radio stations to having over 1000 under their belt. And they are supposed to report about media deregulation objectively?! Like fuck they are!

Your senators and congressional representatives received thousands of letters and phone calls protesting media deregulation. The FCC said that they received 9000 letters, and only 11 supported the vote the three Republican commissioners on the FCC board rammed down our throats today. That's it, 11. That's less than 1% of the people who registered their opinions. I think one can safely say that today, the FCC went against the wishes of 99% of this citizens in this country that they are supposed to serve. Pair that with the fact that our current president was never elected, and can you honestly say to yourself that you live in a democracy? Or a republic? This is facism.

And I love the fact that the FCC commissioners received all expenses paid vacations, excuse me, business trips, and media corporations picked up the tab. Nope, no corruption there, not one bit. Those vacations didn't influence the FCC at all, nope. Nothing to see here folks, just go away.

Colin Powell's son, Michael, the current head of the FCC who just changed the media landscape forever told us that these new deregulation rules will help to "localize" the media. Nevermind the fact that deregulation of the radio market consolidated it more and that corporations are hungry to gobble up a few more companies, nope, the media won't even question Powell this comment. Why couldn't one reporter ask, "So Mr. Powell, if you are for localizing the media, how come you are against small, low-powered community radio stations?"

But the reporters who give us our news are already owned by six large corporations. Now that these corporations can own more television and radio stations, and newspapers, all in the same market, just expect things to get worse.

(On the topic of Indymedia or Salon being bought out, I don't think that would ever happen. In the case of Indymedia, they are an autonomous collective of media organizations, very decentralized. Since it's not a single company, there is nothing to buy out. Of course, when Big Media also owns all the ISPs, they could just block Indymedia. Salon, on the other hand, is a centralized corporation with stock on the OTC market, a market which I have no knowledge about. But I don't see a situation happening to Salon like what happened to, for a non-media company example, Ben and Jerry's. B&J were offered a buyout by Unilever (Unilevel?) that they had to take because if they didn't, their stock holders would have been pissed, dropped the stock, and there would have been a lot of layoffs in Vermont. They basically didn't have a choice. I don't think Salon is large enough of a company to be in that situation.)