John Hope Bryant: “this is one area in which we do not need to argue about what would happen if we did not adopt the Markey amendment and…”

“this is one area in which we do not need to argue about what would happen if we did not adopt the Markey amendment and left the bill as it is, because there was a time only about 25 years ago when that was the situation in America. What happened? There were not any rules, and we saw these enormous conglomerations of ownership of media arise all over the country. The rules that the bill is trying to change were rules that came out of the early 1970's, under the Nixon-Ford administration. These were not some wild-eyed liberal scheme. They were designed to deal with the fact, and particularly the fact that in Atlanta, GA, one company owned every single type of news media. I think it is astonishing that we Democrats complain about the way in which the national media ownership fosters violence on television, and you Republicans talk about how the liberal media is nothing but trouble, yet all at the same time both sides are busy trying to give the same guys that own all of these stations more and more power to own more and more and control more and more. For goodness' sake, either we are both being hypocrites with our complaints, or else we should not be in favor of this bill unless it is amended. Vote for the Markey amendment and stick up for localism.”