FCC hears calls for more diverse news
Thursday, June 29th, 2006
By Chris Fitzsimon
By Dale Neal
DNEAL@CITIZEN-TIMES.COMASHEVILLE — Speaker after speaker at a public hearing Wednesday made their voices heard for more and diverse news coverage.
FCC Commissioners Jonathan Adelstein and Michael Copps got an earful for more than four hours at Asheville-Buncombe Technical Community College, from anti-war activists to Christian ministers wanting to promote more low-power radio stations.
The commissioners were in town for a public hearing sponsored by Free Press, a media reform group, in the wake of the FCC’s renewed look at guidelines on how many media outlets can be owned by large companies.
A review of media ownership rules is required every four years by federal law. The 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals suspended all the changes the commission made in 2003 and sent most of them back for re-evaluation on grounds that the FCC compiled an insufficient record to justify them.
“I’m not afraid of additional voices being heard, I’m afraid of additional voices not being heard, so I can make an informed decision,” said Scott Duncan of Asheville.
Amanda Rodriguez of Asheville spoke of a “epidemic of silence spreading across the land that blocks out rural voices, people of color, people who need to be heard. I don’t see my politics, my culture reflected in the media. I’m terrified what it would look like if media grew any bigger.”
In a panel discussion, a variety of media owners and other advocates outlined their views on how the community gets its news.
Virgil Smith, president and publisher of the Asheville Citizen-Times, which is owned by Gannett Corp., the nation’s largest newspaper chain, said that decisions for news coverage and editorials are made locally, not at a corporate level. “The idea that a big media headquarters makes decisions about local content is a myth. That’s not the way it works in the real world.” (more…)
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