Political Quotes

“in my view the issue that I and some of my colleagues are about to discuss, which is concentration of ownership in the media and the implications of more media deregulation as proposed by the Bush administration and FCC Chairman Michael Powell, is one of the very most important issues facing this country. One of the ways that we can know how important this issue is is precisely by how relatively little media attention has been paid to it. The growing concentration of corporate ownership of media in the United States is in fact one of the least discussed major issues in this country because the media itself is in a major conflict of interest and chooses not to discuss it. As bad as the situation is today, and when we examine this chart we will find out how bad it is, how few major multinational conglomerates like Viacom, AOL Time Warner, Disney, Clear Channel, News Corporation and a few others, to what degree a few major corporations control what we see, hear and read, as bad as it is, it is likely to become much worse, much more dangerous for the future of democracy in this country if, as is proposed on June 2, the FCC votes for further media deregulation, regulations that have been on the books for years to protect localism, to protect diversity of opinion, to protect the clash of ideas.”