FCC Commissioners Adelstein and Copps Decry Proposals to Ease Caps on Media Consolidation

Opponents of media consolidation packed a hearing room at the Federal Communications Commission Wednesday to criticize plans to rewrite the nation’s media ownership rules. FCC Chair Kevin Martin has proposed to do away with a rule that bars companies from owning both a newspaper and a television or radio station in the same city. In 2003, Martin voted with the then-FCC chairman Michael Powell to lift the same media ownership rules, but the effort was overturned by the landmark Prometheus v. FCC decision. The FCC was ordered to justify the changes and their impact on diversity and localism.

The Rev. Jesse Jackson, radio broadcaster Bob Edwards and others testified at Wednesday’s hearing. Edwards warned that if the FCC relaxes its rules, radio station owners would “adopt a business model that shuts out local news and entertainment in favor of national homogenized programming.” Before the hearing started, the Rev. Jesse Jackson briefly addressed a rally outside the FCC.

• Rev. Jesse Jackson, president of the Rainbow Push Coalition.

We are joined here in Washington by two of the FCC Commissioners, Michael Copps and Jonathan Adelstein.

• FCC Commissioners Michael Copps and Jonathan Adelstein.

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