FCC’s moves are a blow to our communications landscape

Ok, I will admit that I didn’t really think we had much of a chance to stop the continued deregulation of the federal communications landscape, particularly as it relates to the ownership of prime media resources, but then activists across the country started working on the issue and I started to let a little hope seep in. Sojourners has this wonderful phrase — “hope is believing in spite of the evidence, and watching the evidence change” — but I guess today is not the day the evidence changes. Yes, the FCC voted to ease back on the regulations governing media ownership. If you haven’t thought much about this issue, Moveon.org has a nice little “info bulletin” on it. I’m increasingly convinced that this is a kind of “root” issue that we need to be working on. If we can open up access to more people and more creativity, and more diverse news coverage, all sorts of other nice benefits likely follow. To date the Net has been one of the main things that has kept me hopeful, given the ability to find lots of diverse viewpoints. But there are reasons to be increasingly nervous there, too. AKMA comments on several blogs which are attending to these issues.