As Big Media is pushing the FCC to relax ownership rules, Bill Moyers Journal reports on the real-world consequences of media policy through the lens of how it affects minority media ownership in America.
Big Media is pushing the FCC to relax ownership rules again to give conglomerates more control over what Americans read, see, and hear. What most Americans don't know is that the FCC plans to fast track the rule changes and cut off public comment in December. Who wins and who loses? On Friday, November 2, at 9 p.m. on PBS, Bill Moyers Journal reports on the real-world consequences of media policy through the lens of how it affects minority media ownership in America. "We have got to ... believe that what we bring to our listening audiences everyday across this country is real," says Melody Spann-Cooper, who runs WVON, the only black-owned radio station in Chicago, a city with more than one million African-Americans. "Because we said it was real, not because Fox said it was real or Clear Channel said it was real." The program examines how critics say media ownership rules have shut minorities out of the media and looks specifically at the current moves in Washington to adopt rules that could further diminish any accountability that broadcasters serve the public interest and their communities. "I personally think that more media concentration and further deterioration of localism is the wrong way to go," says Senator Trent Lott (R-Mississippi). "If the [FCC] chairman [Kevin Martin] indicated that he intends to do media ownership by the end of this year, there is going to be a firestorm of protest, and I am going to be carrying the wood," says Senator Byron Dorgan (D-North Dakota).
