Conscious Choice: Rescue Your Right to Know

June 2005 | Editor’s Note

Rescue Your Right to Know

Listen up people. You need to know this. It’s very important. Not so long ago you could take for granted that everyone understood that Constitutional rights such as free speech and press safeguards play a critical role in keeping our government functioning in the best interest of everyday folks like you and me. Ask yourself why we don’t see more stories questioning why we can spend billions of dollars for a war that is destroying families on both sides, for the benefit of a few fat cats. Meanwhile, budget cuts are closing schools and transit lines and slashing veteran’s benefits, while millions of Americans are slipping into poverty and others have to work two and three jobs and even then can’t afford health insurance? And now, something chilling could happen to your access to movies, music, the Internet, cable, broadcast and satellite networks.

Some Federal Communication Commissioners (FCC) have been trying to change that agency’s rules to deregulate the media industry. For us, that translates into fewer choices for more money, and we won’t be able to change what we don’t like because we won’t be informed.

You don’t have to just take my word for it. A Washington delegation, that included current and former FCC commissioners, as well as Congressional representatives from coast to coast, were all at a recent media reform conference in St. Louis to ask the approximately 2,500 people from each of the 50 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico for our help. They included California Congresswoman Diane Watson, Vermont Congressmen Bernie Sanders and New York Congressman Maurice Hinchey.

Hinchey is so upset with what he labeled as “the shameful process” in which the FCC tried to sneak through policy changes, that he has convinced 20 other lawmakers to join the newly-formed Future of American Media caucus, and is re-introducing his Media Ownership Reform Act. Among other things, it would require the FCC to hold at least five public hearings across the country before changing rules. In addition it would roll back to 25 percent the portion of the national audience that a single party may reach through broadcast television ownership, (the FCC tried to raise it to 45 percent). It would also prevent any single entity from owning more than five percent of the total number of AM and FM broadcast radio stations nationally and reinstate the Fairness Doctrine. That’s the policy that would require broadcast licensees to, in Hinchey’s words, “afford reasonable opportunity for the discussion of conflicting views on issues of public importance.”

So, here’s what you need to do:

1. Keep on eye on the Supreme Court in June. That’s when the high court is expected to decide if it will hear the controversial FCC case and/or possibly throw the issue back into the lap of the very commission that messed with the rules in the first place. If that happens you need to immediately call, write or e-mail the FCC commissioners and your Congressional representatives. Don’t underestimate this. It’s because three million people did this the first time around that this isn’t a done deal yet. Incidentally when you write, give props to FCC Commissioners Michael Copps and Jonathan Adelstein. They are the reason we know about this whole mess in the first place after blowing the whistle on three other colleagues who tried to hurry these new rules through without telling us. Copps and Adelstein are true public servants along with former FCC commissioners Gloria Tristani and Nicholas Johnson. All four were at the conference.

2. Contact your Congressional representatives now to urge support for Hinchey’s bill. And, if they promise to do so, pledge to help them in the 2006 elections. While you’re at it, also check in with Illinois Congressman Dennis Hastert. As Speaker of the House, Hastert has a big say in what bills make it out of committee and onto the floor. Tell him that even conservative Republicans should be concerned about First Amendment Constitutional rights and you want him to not only to release Hinchey’s bill, but to vote for it as well.

Visit www.freepress.net for more information. And if you don’t know your Congressman you can find out by simply calling 202-224-3121 or 202-225-3121.

— Marla Donato

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