Media reform?
: Next month, there’s a National Conference for Media Reform with all sorts of odd bedfellows: FCC censor-freaks Jonathan Adelstein and Michael Copps, Al Franken, Seattle Times owner Frank Blethen, David Brock of Media Matters, folks from Fair and the Newspaper Guild and Consumers Union, and so on.
This is the left-wing media-haters club, not to be confused with the right-wing media-haters club. The right-wing club hates the media because they think it’s left-wing; the left-wing hates media because they think it’s corporate (and thus right-wing).
Here’s the dangerous part about this one: They want to “increase informed public participation in crucial media policy debates, and to generate policies that will produce a more competitive and public interest-oriented media system with a strong nonprofit and noncommercial sector.”
The keyword there: “policies.” Policies come from government. Government media policies equal government media control. I hate that.
First Amendment, you know: “Congress shall make now law… abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press…”
Government media policies are all about government regulating media. It’s dangerous when government tries to regulate what we say or who can own what.
Don’t forget that media is now us: If you want government to regulate that media you open the door for government to regulate this media.
