Reply #21: OK, let's see here

[MadHound]

The '96 Telecom act essentially lifted the limits of how many local radio or TV stations a corporation can own, thus limiting diversity. An example is my own home town. Clear Channel owned two radio stations here up until this bill went through, but with the limits lifted, they now own six, in a town of 100,000. And if you remeber, after this bill there was a lot of media merging. The reason why is because there was now no legal constraint to owning many stations in one locality. While the general trend had been towards a more centralized media before '96, the '96 Telecom Act really opened the flood gates. Whereas in '95, twenty five corporations controlled the vast majority of the media here in this country, after the Telecom Act that number shrank rapidly to six, and now down to five. Media monopoly is just not healthy for a democracy, especially when that monopoly is held by corporations with direct interests in the war.

The Fairness Doctrine had been in place until the mid-eighies, until Reagan repealed it. The Fairness Doctrine essentially stated that a media entity couldn't present just one side of an issue, they had to give equal room and equal time to both. Thus, while you may have had stations running RW talk shows, they would have to balance their programming with the progressive POV. Reagan's elimination of this opened up the flood gates for modern hate radio. It simply wasn't possible for a radio station to run Rush, Hannity, O'Reilly etc, because they wouldn't have had the programming time to run the balancing programs fromt the left. But with the Fairness Doctrine eliminated, it was wide open for the RW media machine to go to work, and boy did they. Rush broke the ground, and was soon followed by Hannity, et al. In fact if it wasn't for the Fairness Doctrine being lifted, we probably wouldn't have Fox Television, at least not in the rabid RW "fair and balanced" version we have now.

Hope this helps. If you want more information, it is out there on the 'net. Just google the terms and a wealth of material will be forthcoming.