People Get Ready

No, of course I’m not saying eradicate the Israelis — but that is among the most reprehensible things I’ve ever heard uttered on the public airwaves by Walton & Johnson on their show yesterday (11/27/07), broadcast in New Orleans on Clear Channel station 95.7 FM (note that I’m extremely uneasy even repeating such ignorance).

They were joking about the Mideast peace summit being hosted by George W. Bush. The offending remark was made by the Mr. Kenneth character on the show, who said (paraphrasing) that one or another of the Israelis or the Palestinians should just be eradicated from the face of the Earth.

If one were listening to the talk show options this morning, both Clear Channel 99.5 FM and the simulcast Entercom stations 870 AM/105.3 FM were simultaneously prompting discussion about whether or not the government has a right to regulate spanking. Really.

Hate-pandering and meaningless discussions, when more than 100,000 residents remain displaced, whole neighborhoods remain blighted, crime is out of control, wetland loss continues unabated, and the threat of sea level rises threatens the future of the New Orleans.

This is what media consolidation has produced thanks to the Federal Communications Commission. The options for local broadcast content are, with rare exceptions, pathetic in post-Katrina New Orleans.

And now, FCC Chairman Kevin Martin wants to allow for even more media ownership consolidation as an early holiday present for our democracy, so that we here in New Orleans, for example, will be provided with even more abysmal programming and information options, which might cross over into the realm of print and television media, with fewer options for input — this, at a time when we need a really meaningful source of information and investigative reporting.

Here’s my recommendation to the FCC commissioners — if the three Republicans on the Commission want to relax ownership rules, then provide citizens with meaningful mechanisms to control what they’re subjected to, and relax the rules governing how citizens can obtain rights to broadcast themselves, because in the end, when corporate media owners say they want LESS government regulation, what they’re really saying is they want MORE regulation which protects THEIR interests. For the libertarians out there, let’s be clear about something — the airwaves are not a private commodity; they’re a public good, like water, or streets, which private interests are permitted to use in a regulated manner, as long as they serve the public interest. Furthermore, since accurate information on public policy is essential for the functioning of a democracy, the delivery systems for that content should be subjected to regulation. Freedom of speech, and freedom to own, are completely divisible issues where access to the scarce broadcast spectrum is concerned.

How about this for a rule change: Every two years, citizens get to vote to confiscate the license of a broadcaster they deem to be using the public airwaves irresponsibly. The citizens can then decide to use that license themselves, or can reassign the license to another entity. The broadcaster whose license is confiscated, is then forbidden from broadcasting in that market for a period of ten years.

What’s that you say? You don’t listen to radio, or watch broadcast television, because it sucks? That only underscores the fact of broadcast corporations sucking the life out of our airwaves to the point that many people have already gone to other sources for their content — subscription-based satellite radio, iPods, the internet. It’s yet another case of for-profit entities mining all of the value out of a public resource until it becomes a noxious wasteland hazardous to the well-being of communities. If you don’t care about broadcast media, you should at least worry what it’s doing to the people who are exposed to it.

When the last FCC Chairman, Michael Powell, tried to relax ownership rules in 2003, the FCC was inundated with millions of letters in protest — the greatest number of comments sent to the FCC in its history.

Imagine Walton & Johnson in The Times-Picayune. That’s possible under Kevin Martin’s plan to allow cross-ownership of radio stations, television stations, and newspapers in the same market — however dubious you may think that possibility may be, corporate media owners have demonstrated over and over again that they’ll pander to salaciousness, melodrama, and hyped up controversy before fulfilling responsibility to the community.

December 11th is the deadline to crush this latest effort to expand the rotten business model of corporate media consolidation. Tell that bastard Kevin Martin that our communities, our minds, our democracy, ARE NOT FOR SALE!

Here’s what you can do:

1) Get more information at StopBigMedia.com.

2) File a comment with the FCC on Kevin Martin’s idea to relax ownership rules by using the StopBigMedia form (or the more complicated FCC form).

3) Voice your support for legislation moving through Congress (S 2332), the “The Media Ownership Act of 2007″ (summary), to force the FCC to address localism concerns and the dismal state of female and minority ownership before changing any rules to unleash more media concentration.

The American Zombie is pressing for action on this issue as well.