Now may be the best chance to stop media consolidation in Alabama and around the country.

The Senate introduced legislation earlier this week that would reverse the Federal Communications Commission’s decision to let the nation’s largest media companies swallow up more local and independent news outlets.

Congress has just 60 legislative days to pass this bill. By acting now, you can help make it happen, according to Alexandra Russell, Program Director for FreePress.Net.

“We have Big Media to blame for local news that’s steeped in celebrity gossip, corporate hype and sensationalism. If the FCC gets its way, you’ll see your local news get even worse,” Russell said in a press release.

“The FCC’s decision further consolidates local media markets, taking away the independence and diversity that comes from local ownership,” he said. “Simply put, this is a sweetheart deal for a handful of companies that have been breaking media ownership rules for years with impunity.”

In December, 200,000 people called on their senators to take action against the FCC. The Senate has responded with a “resolution of disapproval,” (SJ Res. 28) a type of congressional veto that would throw out the new rules. Now we need to get another 50,000 citizens on the record supporting the Senate’s action.

Tell Your Friends: Veto Big Media

Companies like News Corp. and Sinclair already have shown their willingness to abuse the public trust for political ends. During this election year, when diverse, quality and unbiased information is essential for voters, we cannot allow Big Media to silence even more independent voices.

It’s our turn to use our collective grassroots power to stop Big Media and make sure that our airwaves are used to better serve the public.

For more info, turn to:
FreePress.Net
StopBigMedia.Com

The U.S. Postal Service is about to implement a massive hike in its rates for magazines that would put diverse and free speech at risk. Postal regulators have decided to adopt a plan that favors the nation’s largest publishers, like Time Warner and Hearst, while unfairly burdening thousands of smaller and independent magazines with much higher postal rates, as high as 20 or 30 percent.

The plan to give Big Media lower rates was submitted by Time Warner, the nation’s largest publisher, according to Timothy Karr, Campaign Director for FreePress.Net.

“We were stunned when postal regulators chose the Time Warner plan - with little apparent hard research on how the plan would affect small publishers - instead of another proposal made by the Postal Service itself that would have imposed an equal increase on all publishers,” Karr said in a press release. “If implemented, the Time Warner plan could push many smaller publications to the brink of bankruptcy.”

America’s founding fathers understood that the First Amendment would be worth little without a postal system that encouraged broad public participation in America’s marketplace of ideas. To ensure that a diversity of viewpoints were available to “the whole mass of the people,” they created affordable postal rates that gave smaller political journals a voice.

The rate increase reverses this egalitarian ideal. It threatens the democratic discourse that our founding fathers fostered through the U.S. mail system.

FreePress.Net in urging postal regulators and Congress to convene public hearings, investigate how these rate increases were decided in what seems to be an unfair and unorthodox way, and reverse the ruling.

With help from the people, FreePress.Net says we can stop this decision and restore the postal system that has served free speech in America so well.

For more information, see FreePress.Net.

New York Times reporter James Risen illustrates in his new book how the CIA ignored information that Iraq no longer had weapons of mass destruction, according to the Associated Press.

State of War: The Secret History of the CIA and the Bush Administration describes secret operations of the Bush administration’s war on terrorism. The major revelation in the book, according to the AP, has already been the subject of SOME reporting by the New York Times: The so-called revelation that the National Security Agency eavesdropped on Americans’ conversations without obtaining warrants from a special court - at the behest of President George W. Bush.

In October 2002, the U.S intelligence community issued a National Intelligence Estimate that concluded Iraq was reconstituting its nuclear program, according to the book. Quoting extensively from anonymous sources, Risen says the NSA spying program was launched in 2002 after the CIA began to capture high-ranking al-Qaida operatives overseas and took their computers, cell phones and personal phone directories.

Full AP story

But the relevant story doesn’t stop there.

Byron Calame, the New York Times public editor, a recruit from the conservative Wall Street Journal, wrote a column on Sunday taking issue with the stony silence on the issue by Times Executive Editor Bill Keller and Publisher Arthur “Punch” Sulzberger Jr.

“For the first time since I became public editor, the executive editor and the publisher have declined to respond to my requests for information about news-related decision-making,” Calame wrote.

Behind the Eavesdropping Story, a Loud Silence

As we have reported here before, as a free-lance reporter for the New York Times national desk out of New Orleans in 2002, I personally tried to tell the New York Times their reporting leading up to the war in Iraq was on the wrong track. They listened to Judith Miller instead, and now the paper’s reputation has suffered yet another blow.

One of the things I learned about journalism in the first of four communications programs I have participated in over the past 25 years is that a reputation for accuracy is very important. These days, critics on the right and the left are attacking the credibility of the press like never before.

Of course it seems to be a fact about the world we live in today that everyone is a critic - whether or not they have any qualifications or facts to back up their attacks.

But it seems to me that the managers of major newspapers especially should seek out experienced help on stories such as these rather than hiding behind their office walls in New York and attacking bloggers.

Someone will eventually unearth and publish the truth, whether it is on newsprint or book paper or a Weblog online.

But as George Orwell once said, “In a time of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.”

The revolution has already begun . . . whether or not they like it or admit it in New York or Washington.

Watch for the C-SPAN segment on the press and national security under the rubric of a discussion of “confidential sources.” It’s on as I write this and a very depressing affiar, although there’s no link on the C-SPAN Web site yet.

The New Yorker’s Seymour Hersh and others are talking about the unprecedented level of secrecy in Washington under the Bush administration.

Meanwhile, several stories over the past couple of days highlight how American freedoms are being eroded at alarming rates.

For starters, in a story slated for the front page of the Saturday New York Times, the former national newspaper of record finally gets around to telling its readership about the government’s ability to track innocent citizens via cell phones.

Live Tracking of Mobile Phones Prompts Court Fights on Privacy

This was a story relegated to conspiracy theorists, until now…

The Locust Fork News ran a story Friday about the immigration reform bill moving quickly through the U.S. House of Representatives, which contains language requiring the Social Security Administration, the Treasury Department and the Department of Justice to study the concept of a machine-readable Social Security card with a photo ID.

GOP Immigration Bill Includes National ID Language

This was also the kind of story relegated to conspiracy nuts, although now we know the worries about such things are real.

Also, Yahoo News ran a story from the French news agency AFP yesterday which says there are 80,000 names now on the so-called terror watch list, including inevitably innocent American citizens.

Eighty Thousand Names on US Terror Watchlist

When will the rest of the national press corps and the American people wake up to the fact that American democracy is quickly slipping away under the presidency of George W. Bush? I’m sure Bush has already had his Xanex and is sound asleep tonight as I write this. Maybe he is not totally to blame. He probably doesn’t even know about these things, since he doesn’t read even one newspaper a day.

I’m wondering where he’s getting any of his news these days, with Condi Rice now abroad trying to stop the bleeding of countries turning away from supporting the United States of America.