Coming Soon: The End of a Free Press. Just like Powell's son wishes! Next stop: shutting down the Internet.
I Want My BBC
Dyke, who is generally seen as an ally of Blair, admitted that he was "shocked while in the United States by how unquestioning the broadcast news media was during the war." He added that, while in the US, he was "amazed by how many people just came up to me and said they were following the war on the BBC because they no longer trusted the American electronic news media."Sincere criticism from abroad - along with the unprecedented abandonment of US news outlets for foreign sources - ought to make this a point at which US journalists, regulators, politicians and citizens pause to reflect on whether too few owners are running too much media in too greedy and irresponsible a manner.
Instead, with a strong push from the Bush White House, Federal Communications Commission chair Michael Powell is moving to enact ownership rule changes that will allow big media companies to get dramatically bigger. Promising the Newspaper Association of America convention last month that the FCC would eliminate the 1975 rule that prevents owners of newspapers from buying up radio and television stations in the towns where they publish, Powell told the newspaper executives, "We have finally taken this by the reins."
If Powell and the other commissioners pull those reins tight and enact the proposed rule changes - a step the chairman wants the FCC to take by June 2 - the vast majority of American newspapers could become as vapid and unquestioning as American television and radio. If that happens, Americans who want to know what is going on in the world will have to import British newspapers to read while listening to their morning BBC reports.