fcc gets an earful at public hearing
Hundreds of citizens signed up to speak at last night’s Federal Communications Commission (FCC) public hearing on proposed relaxation of regulations on corporate media ownership. This was the last of six public hearings scheduled by the FCC on this issue.
One speaker, a reporter who claimed to have researched the public record for the prior five hearings, said that public comments were 99 percent opposed to the proposed changes.
Many speakers suggested that regulations were too lax already and the commission should strengthen, rather than weaken, the existing rules. A professor got a round of applause when he said that considering the short notice for the hearing, he assumed the decision to approve was already a done deal and the hearings were purely cosmetic.
When I signed up to speak I was number 227 on the list; we left before that number came up. But I was satisfied that my position had been eloquently and diversely represented.
You can examine the rules under discussion on the FCC’s website, here.