Roll Back the FCC Ruling

2003 September 8

This message was sent via MoveOn.org’s Stop The FCC campaign.  MediaReform.org also ran the campaign and had a form letter identical to MoveOn’s and the one reprinted below.  My “personal note” follows.

YOUR PETITION LETTER

TO: (Your Representative and Senators)
FROM: (Your Name and Email)
SUBJECT: Roll Back the Entire FCC Rule Change
__________

Dear (Senator or Representative's name),

(Your personal note)

I urge you and your colleagues in Congress to promote a diverse, balanced, and competitive media. Please roll back the entire FCC rule change, including the provisions which allow newspapers to own TV stations and vice versa ("cross ownership").

We allow media companies to use the airwaves in exchange for their assurance that they're serving the public interest, and it's the FCC's job to make sure that's so. Please hold the FCC to its mandate and oppose the rule change.

Sincerely,

(your name)
(your address)

This was my semi-coherent addition to the message (the “personal note”):

Please don’t reverse just a part of the FCC rule change millions of Americans have written in to oppose: overrule the entire change.  An overly-concentrated, commercially-focused media is already failing to provide the information our country needs to be a functioning democracy.  Preventing this change is essential to not take a further fall backward; to move forward more broadcast spectrum should be opened to community media and common-carrier requirements should be imposed on cable and sattelite operators in order to allow myriad options in those spheres, including non-profit community media operating in networks.  Such media hardly exists because it has no room to at the moment, but making room is critical so that people can develop their own agenda and have a media that reports on their ideas and what matters to them.