April 16, 2012: Media Ownership Response

Public to FCC: We Don't Want More Media Consolidation

On Thursday, December 8^th, Free press gave a petition to the FCC chairman Julius Genachowski to convince him to make the public, jobs, and journalism priority in review of media ownership rules. With 30,000 signatures, the petition pushes to eliminate cross-media ownership protections as well as address ownership by women and people of color. It also was signed to strengthen rules to prevent over consolidation. Congressional leaders had urged the Commission to preserve the rules that are in place to encourage things like competition, localism, and diversity in the media. Free Press Policy Counsel Corie Wright made a statement that claimed how people in the country want public interest to rank higher than corporate interests, wanting diverse and competitive local media and how media consolidation impacts the news and information that they get from the local news.

When I read this article the only question that I really thought of was whether or not a 30,000 signature petition would really get a lot done with the FCC. This interests me mainly because I like to hear about people taking a stand and fighting for what they want to get done. This fits into our media ownership discussion because it talks about whether or not different people think it is good for a few big companies to have the most control over the media. People should know that, right now, the media is something that is controlled by only a couple of major corporations and that this number of people in control seems to be decreasing as the years go on.