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from: Washington Times

FCC’s Three-Ring Hearing

November 1, 2007
By Kara Rowland

The nation’s media regulator wants to relax limits on ownership of radio, television and newspaper outlets, but the Republican-led Federal Communications Commission was greeted yesterday by a gale of testimony overwhelmingly opposed to the idea.

Chairman Kevin J. Martin supports repealing a media cross-ownership ban that prevents a company from owning a daily newspaper and a broadcast TV station in the same market. He has cited the emergence of new technologies as evidence of healthy competition in the media market.

But a panel of civil rights organizations, public-interest groups and small broadcasters spent four hours begging to differ at a public hearing at FCC headquarters on 12th Street Southwest. The hearing was disrupted by circuslike protests from members of the liberal activist group Code Pink.

“If you further deregulate media in this country, networks, broadcast stations and newspapers will continue to consolidate, resulting in fewer voices heard by citizens,” said NPR host Bob Edwards, testifying before the agency on behalf of the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists. “If you permit this consolidation, television stations and newspapers … will adopt a business model that shuts out local news and entertainment in favor of national homogenized programming.”

The FCC’s three Republican commissioners favor relaxing ownership rules, but the agency’s two Democrats warn that deregulation would harm prospects for women and minority owners — a view that was seconded by minority groups yesterday.

“Media diversity is a civil rights issue,” Wade Henderson, president and chief executive officer of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, told commissioners.

“Consolidation is the total opposite of diversity,” said the Rev. Jesse Jackson, whose Rainbow/Push Coalition demonstrated outside the agency’s headquarters before the hearing.

The FCC is required to hold hearings on its media ownership rules every four years. So far this year, the commission has spent more than $150,000 on five hearings across the country and $700,000 on economic studies, Mr. Martin said. About 162,000 people have filed public comments on the issue.

Yesterday’s public hearing was the first one held in the District and, not surprisingly, it drew a swarm of protesters.

“I’m dressed today as a corporate media whore because I feel that our airwaves have been sold to the highest bidder,” Samantha Miller, a young woman dressed in a risque French maid outfit, told commissioners. The names of media conglomerates were scrawled across her arms, and fake money was stuffed in her dress.

Other Code Pink protesters, sporting blue cheerleader uniforms emblazoned with the letters “FCC,” performed sarcastic cheers about consolidation.

Despite some minor disruptions — including one incident in which a guard apparently asked Ms. Miller to leave because of her attire — Mr. Martin maintained control of the hearing.

Separately, the commission approved a ban on exclusive contracts between cable providers and apartment buildings or other so-called “multiple dwelling units.” Such contracts insulate incumbent providers from competition, Mr. Martin said.