FCC Votes to Relax Media Ownership [oh shit!]

Hold on to your hats--the consolidation of the media industry could soon pick up speed. In a polarizing 3-2 vote, Kevin Martin's Federal Communications Commission on Tuesday loosened a 32-year-old ban on cross-media ownership. The new rules allow newspaper publishers to expand their influence in the 20 largest U.S. media markets by buying television and radio stations.

Ignoring Congressional and public comments, the FCC voted to relax ownership rules that have prevented broadcasters from owning newspapers in the nation's 20 largest media markets. After holding several public hearings that overwhelmingly opposed the relaxation of the rules, and Congressional hearing where Democrats and Republicans (even Ted 'Tubes' Stevens) voiced opposition to the move, the FCC voted 3 to 2 to relax ownership.

http://yro.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/12/18/2148257
http://www.forbes.com/business/2007/...w_1218fcc.html
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/18/bu...rssnyt&emc=rss

I don't mean to sound alarmist, but what this basically means for you is that soon you probably won't be able to trust anything you hear because the large majority of news sources will be run by the same groups. Think Wag the Dog, a movie in which an entire war was fabricated by the media. That sort of event could become a reality even more easily now.