Timothy Karr of the Huffington Post wrote this: "It's not every day that you can celebrate a win for the public over big media. But a federal appeals court threw out an attempt by the FCC and industry titans to gut media ownership limits. The decision is a sweeping victory for the public interest. The court rejected arguments made by broadcast and newspaper giants while exposing the FCC's repeated failures to rein in runaway consolidation."
I generally support giving people more freedoms and more choices. So I would normally support media company's rights to do their business how they please. The problem is that I don't trust the media companies we have now to serve the people well, and because of all the regulations we already have, the cost to starting a new company and entering this market place is very high. Also, nobody has found a business model that works for delivering just the truth, or at least a balanced "all perspectives" view of the truth, that can compete with the current giants.
There either needs to be a lot more deregulation in a way that lowers the barrier to entry for new companies, or there needs to be a huge smack-down of the current media giants. The FCC isn't doing it's job because it somehow became a pawn of the bigger companies. Why would the FCC, in charge of regulation (some good, some bad) be in favor of removing limits on media ownership, limits that were set in place earlier to prevent the kind of monopoly that would allow a single organization to control a lot of the information that free people receive and trust as news? There's no benefit to the people or the government in that. It's definitely not worth lower prices which wouldn't come anyway since without competition and a high barrier to entry the media conglomerate would be able to raise prices quite a bit before it's worthwhile for a new competitor to enter the market and capture the lower end.
This is why I support the court's decision in this case against the large media companies even though normally I would be on the other side advocating more freedom.
There either needs to be a lot more deregulation in a way that lowers the barrier to entry for new companies, or there needs to be a huge smack-down of the current media giants. The FCC isn't doing it's job because it somehow became a pawn of the bigger companies. Why would the FCC, in charge of regulation (some good, some bad) be in favor of removing limits on media ownership, limits that were set in place earlier to prevent the kind of monopoly that would allow a single organization to control a lot of the information that free people receive and trust as news? There's no benefit to the people or the government in that. It's definitely not worth lower prices which wouldn't come anyway since without competition and a high barrier to entry the media conglomerate would be able to raise prices quite a bit before it's worthwhile for a new competitor to enter the market and capture the lower end.
This is why I support the court's decision in this case against the large media companies even though normally I would be on the other side advocating more freedom.
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