From our Advisors and Supporters:

Media Mogul Maelstrom
Released 04 October 2005
by Johnnie L. Roberts -- Newsweek

Should media moguls refrain from endorsing presidential candidates? After all, their empires include television networks and other properties that provide news coverage of the campaign. And much?if not all?of their business is regulated by the federal government. The question has gained new urgency in New York and Washington after Sumner Redstone, who controls CBS-parent Viacom, enthusiastically endorsed President George W. Bush. From a ?Viacom standpoint, the election of a Republican administration is a better deal,? Redstone told an audience of CEOs in Hong Kong in late September, ?because the Republican administration has stood for many things we believe in, deregulation and so on.? In the widely-reported remarks, he added: ?I vote for what?s good for Viacom.? (Viacom also owns MTV, an assortment of other cable networks and Paramount Pictures.)

Broadcasters must be made to serve the public interest
Released 11 August 2006
by Chellie Pingree and Jonathan Rintels

With the encouragement of Federal Communications Commission Chairman Michael K. Powell, the country's broadcasters and cable operators have agreed to meet behind closed doors to decide what Americans will see on their televisions as the nation transitions from analog to digital broadcasting.

Representatives of the public interest were not invited. Neither were the commissioners of the FCC, nor members of Congress.

Why do we call the public's attention to this private meeting? Because these two corporate oligopolies that control television are meeting to decide what the public will see on airwaves that are not their property, but the property of the public.

Court Overturns FCC Media Ownership Rules
Released 26 June 2004
by Demetri Sevastopulo

The Federal Communications Commission suffered a stinging rebuke yesterday after a court overturned some of the media ownership rules it ushered in last year.

The FCC approved new rules last June that made it easier for large media companies such as News Corporation and Viacom to buy more outlets. The move sparked outrage in Congress and prompted such unlikely bedfellows as the National Rifle Association and the National Organization for Women to join sides in opposing the regulations. Yesterday an appeals court banned the FCC from implementing the controversial rules until the agency redrafted them or provided better justification for the limits it chose.

FCC Deal Won't End Dispute: Fine Called Minor for Big Radio Chain
Released 12 June 2004
by Annie Nakao

The record-setting deal in which Clear Channel Communications agreed to pay $1.75 million Wednesday to settle indecency complaints filed by the Federal Communications Commission is not expected to resolve the simmering debate over what's fit for the public airwaves.

"A $2 million fine is insignificant in this era of hyper-commercialism and mega-consolidation," said Henry Kroll, project administrator of the San Francisco-based Media Democracy Legal Project. "These are just token gestures by public officials whose feet have been put to the fire after decades of non- enforcement."