Political Quotes

“the issue that we are now going to be discussing, which is the concentration of ownership in the media and the implication of more media deregulation as proposed by the Bush administration and passed today by a three to two vote by the Federal Communications Commission, the FCC, is, to my mind, one of the very most important issues facing our country. The reason for that is very clear. Today, we have a handful of very large corporations who, to a very significant degree, control what we see, hear and read; and I think this chart tells the story, and it is a story that not a lot of Americans are totally familiar with. When people watch television they say, well, there is CBS, there is a company called CBS. Wrong. CBS is owned by Viacom, and Viacom owns not only the CBS network but UPN Network, MTV, Nickelodeon and many other television networks. Viacom owns Paramount Pictures, MTV Films, Nickelodeon Films. They own Simon & Shuster, Nickelodeon Books, Pocket Books, Scribner, Touchstone, heavy into publishing. Viacom owns not only television and film and book publishing, they own 180 Infinity radio stations; they own television stations. And that is the same story that we see with all of the major media conglomerates, whether it is AOL Time Warner, which is heavy into the Internet, cable TV, TV networks; whether it is Rupert Murdoch's news corporation, owning 22 TV stations, owning Fox, owning various other types of publications.”