David Price: “a year ago I stood before this Chamber during debate of this same legislation and remarked that by increasing fines for…”

“a year ago I stood before this Chamber during debate of this same legislation and remarked that by increasing fines for indecency violations we were addressing the symptoms of a problem but not the underlying causes. One year later, despite all of the public outcry, despite the millions of citizens who contacted the FCC and Congress advocating for localism and decency standards and unbiased news, despite all of the politicians bemoaning what is on our airwaves today, not much has really changed. Last year we fought unsuccessfully for an amendment that would have addressed the true effect of media consolidation by commissioning a GAO study on the relationship between consolidation and indecency on the airwaves. This amendment was not made in order by the Republican majority. It should come as no surprise that we will not get a vote on this amendment again this year. Once again, the leadership has shown us that the concerns of ordinary people are trumped by the interests of media conglomerates and of the Bush administration. We should allow the GAO to study the consequences of media consolidation and we should turn these results into action, passing legislation to ensure that a handful of companies will not get to dominate our airwaves, be it with filth or foul language or political propaganda or anything else that viewers would opt not to see.”