Richard Bennett

After watching the FCC ownership rules hearing on C-Span, and listening to as much of the commentary by folks like KKK alumni Fritz Hollings and Trent Lott as I could stand, I came away with the belief that the uproar over these rule changes is groundless.

Lawrence Lessig said: “The FCC will liberate the networks to consolidate because the FCC feels pressured by the courts” and some other stuff, but the rules expressly forbid mergers or takeovers between the Big Four TV networks, so that’s clearly hooey. The big changes were easing of the limit on local stations a network can own (which brought existing ownership into compliance) and relaxation of the rule prohibiting newspapers, TV, and radio from being owned by the same company in the same market. ClearChannel doesn’t gain by the rules, and may have to shed some stations.

So if the opposition to these rules isn’t rational – and at least some of it isn’t (Susie “Medea” Benjamin, trust fund activist, got herself arrested again at the hearing), then what’s it based on? A lot of folks were comfortable with the way things were in America when TV news came from the three networks plus CNN, the same stories with the same liberal/centrist spin. Then along came Rupert Murdoch and we got the Fox News Channel, the New York Post, and the Fox Network, and the traditional liberal agenda got some competition. Fox isn’t always, or perhaps even often right, but it is a counterbalance and a different point of view.

The opponents of the rule change are scared that people like Murdoch will alter the media landscape at the level of local print news and broadcast news, an area still controlled by the liberal oligarchy. I hope they’re right, because I’d like to have a TV channel or a daily paper in the Frisco Bay Area with a centrist or right-wing orientation, and it certainly appears that we’d never get one under the old rules.

I don’t believe for a minute that opponents to these ownership rules from the left care about diversity of opinion, which is sure to be enhanced by allowing Murdoch to buy more media properties in more markets. More power to him.

The news blackout of new FCC media ownership news continues apace. The only live coverage of the hearing itself will be on C-SPAN, starting at 9:30 AM EDT, and only available to people with access to cable TV, satellite TV, or the Internet. Obviously, the evil VRWC doesn’t want you to know what’s going on, right?

UPDATE: Howie Kurtz discussed the pending rule change today on his “Reliable Sources” show on CNN; he clearly didn’t get the memo. Shhh…..Howie, this is supposed to be a secret.

ANOTHER UPDATE: Lou Josephs blogged it live. Local radio ownership rules were actually tightened, much to the dismay of Clear Channel, and newspapers were allowed easier access to TV and radio stations. I don’t see why this was a big deal.

CNN finally breaks the blackout in the proposed FCC rule changes on media ownership:

WASHINGTON (CNN) – The Federal Communications Commission has received so many public comments on its Web sites regarding Monday’s vote on media ownership consolidation that the agency is having “problems” with its server, an FCC official said Friday.

And the messages aren’t just coming via e-mails. The official said the FCC is experiencing problems with their voice comment phone line, which has also been swamped.

The official said the agency is working to fix the problems.

As blackouts go, this one was pretty lame, but it does prove one thing: there are so many alternative sources of news these days, it doesn’t matter how concentrated media ownership is in the big cities. The news gets out anyway.

Jarvis reported on a complaint from NY Daily News columnist Zev Chafets on Maureen Dowd’s use of ellipses to alter the meaning of a statement by the president on Al Qaeda:

Here’s what she wrote:

“‘Al Qaeda is on the run,’ President Bush said last week. ‘That group of terrorists who attacked our country is slowly but surely being decimated … they’re not a problem anymore.'”

Here’s what Bush actually said:

“Al Qaeda is on the run. That group of terrorists who attacked our country is slowly but surely being decimated. Right now, about half of all the top Al Qaeda operatives are either jailed or dead. In either case, they’re not a problem anymore.”

The Times has now altered the on-line version of the offending Dowd column to restore the President’s actual quote, to wit:

“Al Qaeda is on the run,” the president said in Little Rock, Ark. “That group of terrorists who attacked our country is slowly, but surely, being decimated. Right now, about half of all the top Al Qaeda operatives are either jailed or dead. In either case, they’re not a problem anymore.”

This correction was done silently, so the reader has no clue as to what Dowd actually wrote in the first place. Somebody needs to give those folks an ethics course, and any number of bloggers could teach it.

But now that the Times is re-writing columns in response to emailed complaints, some major rework of the Krugman, Kristoff, and Rich oeuvre is surely in progress.

UPDATE: See comments by Robert Cox of The National Debate, who broke the story initially.

Hosting Matters is down, and with it a number of blogs such as Jeff Jarvis and Instapundit. There is an Instapundit backup site if you can’t live without your hourly fix of Professor Reynolds. Oddly, the Hosting Matters status page is silent about the problem, which has persisted for several hours. They must have pissed off Stacy Tabb, who would naturally destroy them for that offense.

On the plus side, the evil Vodkapundit is also down.

UPDATE: Jarvis is up now.