Round One of the fight against deregulating the media even further began last night in Los Angeles with the first "Public Hearing on Media Ownership" held on Thursday August 31 at the University of Southern California Davidson Conference Center. And what a round it was.
It began as a slow fight with conferences on how to personally testify to the FCC Commissioners but ended up to be a real slugfest. Before I get ahead of myself the event was organized by "The National Latino Media Council" in partnership with "Media Alliance" and "Free Press". It was an informal hearing not on the official schedule but all 5 FCC Commissioners were invited. The 2 Democratic commissioners Michael J. Copps and Jonathon S. Adelstein were the only 2 that could make it.
The important issues discussed were the effects of big media on diversity and local programming, children's programming, the number of viewpoints, the number of jobs, and pay. The web site containing information on the conference is:
link
The real knockout punch was delivered by perhaps 15 people who testified on the racism on KABC (I believe a Disney station) by Doug McIntyre, who with his racist talk angered his racist crazed listenership enough to threaten a Latino school with a bombing. The principal, several teachers, and several parents testified they felt endangered and had to be escorted to their cars. The unmistakable proof came in the form of portions of 2 radio broadcasts of the station that were played to the audience and 2 commissioners as proof of the stations racist policies.
The web site of the station is:
link
The web site of the organization fighting the racism of kabc is:
link
In addition to this shocking racist testimony other topics included the type of monitoring necessary to refute further consolidation. Individual opinions are not as important as statistical monitoring of the media by independent organizations. The FCC Republican dominated commission does its own biased survey which must be refuted by extensive monitoring of the media. The effects of deregulation on children's programming, diversity of opinion, and diversity of ownership must be documented.
Surprisingly, a librarian testified to the dumbing down effects of media deregulation on library content. Net neutrality is probably part of the struggle but it isn't clear if or how the bills will be grouped.
Several cameras were at the event and it may show up someplace like CSPAN, but I don't know. A DVD of the event can be obtained for $3. It is probably not high resolution. I am not affiliated with the videographer, but I do see him at every event and I feel like I know him. He passed out a card at the event and I am posting the information on it. It can be ordered from:
link
by clicking on "online order form" calling 213-747-6345 or emailing
ralph@justicevision.org I have not seen it. I don't know how long it takes him to edit it.
I am not selling anything just trying to fight media deregulation. The video is more convincing than I can ever be.You will learn something.