Last week, Senator Boxer exposed a cover-up: the FCC suppressd evidence it didn't like about media consolidation.
SanJoseLady had a great diary about the issue, with links to the Youtube clip of Boxer exposing the study and nailing current Chairman, Kevin Martin, with the study.
The Washington Post reports that the the FCC buried a second study...
Free Press is all overthis and even has a link to the report.
Here's what the Washington Post says:
Sen. Barbara Boxer on Monday made public a second Federal Communications Commission study on media ownership that she says was shelved by agency officials.
Turns out that the FCC studied radio ownership. From March 1996 through March 2003, the number of commercial radio stations on the air rose 5.9 percent while the number of station owners fell 35 percent.
Well, yeah Clear Channel bought over a thousand stations...
Curious the Commission didn't want to make this public.
The report, apparently prepared in 2003, was never made public, nor have any similar analyses followed, despite the fact that radio industry reports were released in 1998, 2001 and 2002, said Boxer, D-Calif.
So Boxer has asked the obvious question: is this the FCC way of doing business? Make up and bury evidence to suit big corporations...
On Monday, she asked that the circumstances surrounding the failure to release the radio industry study be added to the investigation and that he "examine whether it was then or is now the practice of the FCC to suppress facts that are contrary to a desired outcome."
It's good to know that media companies want even more consolidation.
Clear Channel is lobbying the FCC to increase the number of stations that can be owned in the nation's largest markets.