Senate to FCC: You Went Too Far
From: Jon Bartholomew, Common Cause <CauseNet@commoncause.org>
Date: May 16, 2008 8:29 AM
Subject: Senate to FCC: You Went Too Far
To:
Dear --------
The tide is turning.
Last night, the Senate voted almost unanimously to throw out the FCC's flawed rules that would allow for more media consolidation. This is a tremendous victory, and it wouldn't have happened without the tens of thousands of activists like you contacting your Senators and saying "Enough is enough."
Now it's time to take that momentum to the fight in the House of Representatives. We need the House to act fast to join the Senate in passing a Resolution of Disapproval of the media consolidation rules. Please take action right now.
www.commoncause.org/VetoBigMedia
To remind you why this is so important, I'm forwarding one of the first messages we sent to you about the effort to rollback the FCC's giveaway to Big Media. Please take a moment to re-read it, and then contact your Representative.
Thanks for your help convincing the Senate to do the right thing. Now, let's win in the House!
--Jon
________________________________________
From: Jon Bartholomew, Common Cause [mailto:CauseNet@commoncause.org]
Sent: Thursday, March 20, 2008 10:10 AM
Subject: Let's do something about media consolidation
Dear Common Cause Activist,
It's no mystery. Six major companies control the majority of the media in our country, giving Americans only one point of view, one attitude, and one voice.
The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) took a good look at this situation, weighed all the options, and said: "More media consolidation couldn't hurt."
Well, we here at Common Cause we disagree. And we're going to do something about it. We're asking Congress to disapprove, and thereby overturn the FCC's decision to allow a single company to own both a television station and the local newspaper.
I hope you'll join us as we urge Congress to pass the Resolution of Disapproval of media ownership rules. We've got to do everything we can to secure a strong coalition of members of Congress who are committed to fixing those rules – and we can't do it without you.
If we don't fight this till the bitter end, these new media ownership rules will get us:
• Increased censorship of diverse views
• Fewer jobs for media workers
• Less community-oriented programming, independently-produced programming, and political discussion
• Fewer minority- and women-owned broadcast stations
So far, we've got nineteen cosponsors of the Senate Resolution of Disapproval, and six cosponsors of the House Resolution of Disapproval. But we're going to need more people on board than that if we want to be certain that the media represent all of our voices.
I don't know about you, but I've had enough of the FCC ignoring public input and deciding time and again that "more media consolidation couldn't hurt." Let's work together to overturn this dangerous rule and send a strong message to the FCC.
Thanks for all you do,
Jon Bartholomew
Media & Democracy Campaign Coordinator, Common Cause