I’m putting this out there as much to elicit other viewpoints (if they exist) as I am to let the community know about this eye-opening, Naked Capitalism must read from Roosevelt Institute fellow Matt Stoller. Stoller also served as a Senior Policy Advisor to Congressman Alan Grayson (D, FL-08), during his first term in the House, from 2009-2011.
I strongly recommend a full read of this post (the link is immediately below)…
Obama Administration Seeks to Strengthen Rupert Murdoch
Matt Stoller
Naked Capitalism
December 27th, 2012 6:09AM
Earlier this year, Obama Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski proposed relaxing media ownership rules to allow Rupert Murdoch to buy the Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune. It’s not something you’ll see discussed much, because Republicans like the fact that Murdoch is going to get more power, while Democrats don’t want to admit that Obama is helping the person framed as their arch-nemesis. This is part of a larger pattern – media consolidation is one of the many structural problems that Obama promised to deal with. And indeed, this is the real arena where the battle over free speech is being fought. Corporate control over our communications infrastructure is the free speech question of our time.
Backed by tech billionaires and consumer advocates in 2008, Obama argued for a dramatic restructuring of communications policy (versus Hillary Clinton, whose advisors were traditional telecom lobbyists). Candidate Obama made the right noises, from a strong stance on net neutrality to opposition to media consolidation to expanded broadband access...
However, once in office...
...as is consistent with Obama’s main policy arc, after winning, Obama neutralized the reform groups and quickly reverted to a model of policymaking that is slightly more pro-corporate than Bush’s. He appointed Genachowski, a law school classmate known as an intellectual and moral lightweight, to run the FCC, and ensured that Larry Summers in the White House would sideline any attempts to fight against media and telecom barons. Here’s the predictable outcome, in a Free Press filing.
There has been “a nearly 20 percent decline in the level of minority ownership since 2006, and a net loss of six minority-owned stations since the Commission last collected data in October 2011. In a nation where African Americans comprise 13 percent of the population, there are only 5 African American-owned full-power commercial TV stations, just 0.4 percent of the total. This is a 76 percent decline in just 6 years.
In other words, the record of the Obama administration and corporate free speech is terrible, with one significant exception, when the administration blocked the merger of AT&T and T-Mobile. This horrific record is largely because of the Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Julius Genachowski, a man who has managed to take a position renowned for corruption and somehow manage to make his predecessors look noble. Not only is he roundly despised by most consumer advocates, who consider him the worst FCC Chairman in history, but he’s also thought of as weak, stupid, and feckless by the corporate sector…
Again, here's
the LINK to the full piece, over at Naked Capitalism.