January 29, 2010
Note that the Supreme Court decision in Citizen's United V
FEC is really a media reform issue.
In my film, Public Interest Pictures' Broadcast
Blues, (which was generously funded in part by the Streisand Foundation, thanks
Barbra!) I detail how 75% of politicians' time is spent fund raising, and how
all that money goes into TV/Radio Advertising. The SCOTUS decision will
exacerbate that situation. The winners are the broadcasters, who are licensed
to serve the Public Interest, but who are earning as much as 46 percent
profits. The losers are the public, whose interest is being co-opted by
Corporate Money and Corporate Media.
So media reform is a new front in the battle to
regain power for We the People.
Here's what is possible:
With a stroke of his pen, Pres. Obama could tell
the FCC to restore the Fairness Doctrine, which would require broadcasters to
provide time to political candidates, and to give equal time to all of them. It
wasn't until after the Fairness Doctrine was repealed under Reagan that money
began to pour into TV and Radio coffers. Some people don't like this idea
because they think it infringes on Free Speech; but let's be clear: Radio and
TV speech is not free, it is owned and managed by a few corporations who solely
decide which points of view to air. (See my post here at Sue Wilson Reports for
more on that issue.)
Congress could also enact free airtime rules, or it
could enact public financing rules. Either would take an act of Congress; any
bets on that happening anytime soon?
The single most important thing Congress must do is
to repeal those sections of the 1996 Telecommunications Act which stack the deck
against We the People.
President Obama made media an issue in his State of
the Union address. It is time for a revolution, this one to retake that which
is ours: the media that informs our democracy.
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