"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""
Change for a Quarter -- Creative Voices' Quarterly Update
"""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""""
"Because original, independent, and diverse creative voices
enrich our nation’s culture and safeguard its democracy."
January 5, 2007
Contents:
* Annual Campaign Update
* Appeals Court Asks What the FCC Happened to Free Speech?
* AT&T Agrees Not to Take Away Our Internet -- Temporarily
* Media Consolidation and Concentration
* Change of Control in Congress
* Please Help
======================================================================
Annual Campaign Update
======================================================================
To those who have contributed to our Annual Campaign, many thanks for your generosity. To those who have not, please consider making a tax-deductible contribution to Creative Voices. As you’ll read, we’re doing important work to protect free speech and expression, helping to achieve some remarkable successes. There’s more on how you can help at the end of our letter.
=================================================================
Appeals Court Asks What the FCC Happened to Free Speech?
=================================================================
We wish you could have been with us in person, or via C-SPAN’s live coverage, on the morning of December 20 in a majestic New York courtroom, where three eminent judges of the US Second Circuit Court of Appeals heard the networks, and Creative Voices as an Intervening Party, argue that the Federal Communications Commission's recent indecency decisions are illegal and unconstitutional.
While the setting was imposing and the issues deadly serious - censorship, free expression, the First Amendment -- still, it was a courtroom scene that cried out for a Saturday Night Live parody. The able lawyer for Fox, Carter Phillips, strode to the lectern and didn't finish his first paragraph before unflinchingly firing "f***ing" and "cow sh**" at the distinguished jurists. [Alas, we can’t print the words, the spam filters will eat the email.]
With the words that the FCC claims are injuring America's youth now out of the closet, Judges Pierre Leval and Peter Hall joined in, unhesitatingly dropping the F-bomb as they sparred with both sides' counsel. Surely, this was the first time that word had been so strenuously invoked within that august courtroom. For those watching C-SPAN’s live coverage - including, no doubt, many schoolchildren home for the holiday break - often soporific "public affairs television" was suddenly appealing to a whole new demographic.
The judges repeatedly pressed the Commission's lawyer on what evidence the FCC used to support its sweeping assertion that children are harmed when seeing or hearing content on TV that some consider offensive. He could cite none. Nor could he defend the FCC’s arbitrary and inconsistent reasoning concerning what constitutes “indecency,” and in what context. The judges were also highly skeptical of the FCC argument that the Commission needs to censor speech because some parents allow their kids to have a television in their bedroom. If America's parents are willing to accept the risk that their children might hear or see something that others might consider offensive on broadcast TV, well, don’t parents have the right to make that choice? asked Judge Rosemary Pooler. The FCC’s answer: parents are unreliable and may be irresponsible; therefore, the Commission has a duty to be, in effect, America’s Uber-Parent.
We’re pleased to report that in the opinion of nearly all in the courtroom, the question was not if the Second Circuit judges would overturn the FCC, but how quickly. We expect a decision within the next few weeks. For the latest news, check our website and blog often.
======================================================================
AT&T Agrees Not to Take Away Our Internet -- Temporarily
======================================================================
With an end-of-year deadline looming to get Federal Communications Commission approval of its takeover of BellSouth, AT&T agreed at the last possible moment to significant conditions on the deal that will keep control of the public's Internet in the hands of the public, and out of AT&T's clutches - at least, temporarily.
While some believe these conditions are not sufficient to protect the public from the anti-competitive aspects of this mega-merger, given that the US Justice Department antitrust authorities irresponsibly approved the deal with no conditions whatsoever, there was little chance it could be stopped entirely.
Thus, AT&T's concessions on Network Neutrality, agreement to provide system-wide low cost stand-alone broadband access, surrender of valuable spectrum to competitors, and other competition-preserving conditions - all in all, this is likely the best outcome the public could hope for. Indeed, Professor Timothy Wu of Columbia, a Net Neutrality advocate and expert, hailed the agreement as “a milestone.”
Interestingly, AT&T’s cave in on Net Neutrality came just days after Time Magazine picked “You” as its 2006 Man of the Year for creating and distributing your own content over the Internet via blogs, YouTube, etc. This revolutionary innovation likely would have been impossible had AT&T and the other large phone and cable companies gotten their way and successfully shifted control of the Internet from “You” to “Them.” We’re gratified that Time’s story in essence retold our 2006 Internet story – that the public interest is best served when citizens can freely distribute their works over the broadband Internet, and freely choose from among those works, rather than have the cable and telephone broadband providers who overwhelmingly control the market for broadband deny those freedoms and dictate those choices.
This is the second stinging defeat in two months for AT&T, which spent hundreds of millions of dollars in an unsuccessful campaign to convince Congress to pass a bill full of holiday treats for the cable and telephone companies, including a thorough gutting of Net Neutrality. That campaign could not overcome the grassroots brushfire ignited by AT&T CEO Ed Whitacre, who threatened: "How do you think they're (websites like YouTube) going to get to customers? Through a broadband pipe. Cable companies have them. We have them. Now what they would like to do is use my pipes free, but I ain't going to let them do that... "
Kudos to FCC Commissioners Michael Copps and Jonathan Adelstein for their strong stand against approving this merger without these critical conditions. With their hand strengthened considerably by the Democrats' takeover of Congress, these Commissioners successfully held out to the very end to achieve some small measure of public interest in this deal.
Along with Copps and Adelstein, we also tip our hat to newly-appointed Republican FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell. Formerly a lawyer for small telephone companies, McDowell stayed true to his ethical commitment to Congress and the American people to not participate for one year in Commission deliberations that involved his former employer. Despite a hamhanded attempt by FCC Chairman Kevin J. Martin to persuade McDowell to abandon that commitment, and vote with Martin to break the Commission's deadlock to approve the AT&T deal without these important conditions, McDowell declined. By doing nothing, McDowell ended up doing everything to preserve some scrap of public interest in this merger.
Yet, the Net Neutrality and other conditions in this merger are not permanent, but temporary, and only apply to AT&T. Thus, CV’s efforts now shift to Congress to make these conditions permanent, and prevent the big telephone and cable companies from using their monopolistic chokehold over broadband to seize control of Your Internet.
=============================================================
Media Consolidation and Concentration
=============================================================
As we reported in our last update, on October 3 in LA, the FCC held a well-attended hearing on media consolidation and concentration, as the Commission considers whether to loosen or entirely toss out its few remaining media ownership limits. The five commissioners of the FCC heard "Rockford Files" producer Stephen Cannell, "Thirtysomething" co-creator Marshall Herskovitz, WGA, west President Patric M. Verrone, R.E.M. bassist Mike Mills, and many other creatives, testify that independent and diverse voices and visions must be restored to today’s excessively-concentrated, conglomerated, and homogenized broadcast television and radio.
After the tremendous success of the LA hearing, Creative Voices filed two sets of comments with the FCC - one on its own, and one as a member of the Media and Democracy Coalition – urging the Commission to not relax existing limits, and to establish safeguards that allow original, independent, and diverse voices to return to the nation’s broadcast airwaves. These comments are available on our website.
On December 11, the FCC held a second public hearing in Nashville, where many musicians told stories echoing those told to the Commissioners in LA. Country music star Porter Wagoner testified "If you relax ownership rules more than what they are today, you will not only strip the airwaves away from the American public, but also continue to change the way we will do business in the recording industry which will be bad for not only recording artists, but also for the very companies who seek to ease these ownership restrictions."
George Jones, another legendary Country/Western star, sang the blues to the Commission: "[T]he consolidation of the radio industry has kept me from being played on the radio. It has kept me from earning my full potential as a country artist and has denied my fans and the American public the opportunity to hear my music. Corporate-based decisions in the music industry are nothing more than the opinions and decisions of a few people at the top, but their opinions dictate the operations of thousands of radio stations and that of the American public."
This proceeding is ongoing and the Commission is still taking comments from the public. These are your broadcast airwaves, tell the FCC what you think! To easily file your own comment with the FCC, visit www.stopbigmedia.com
=============================================================
Change of Control in Congress
=============================================================
Creative Voices is a nonpartisan nonprofit organization. But it is not a partisan comment to say that after the November election, with legislators sympathetic to Creative Voices’ views on media ownership and Internet Freedom/Net Neutrality now in key committee chairmanships and leadership positions, we have an exciting opportunity to achieve real progress. We eagerly look forward to working with the new Congress on these critical issues, and to educating legislators on the importance to our nation of preserving and promoting original, independent, and diverse voices in our nation’s media.
=============================================================
Please Help
=============================================================
With the change in Congressional control, the court appeals to defend free speech, and the FCC’s ongoing media ownership proceeding, this is an extremely exciting -- and challenging time -- for Creative Voices. Our resources and capacity are stretched beyond the breaking point, and we need your help. Your contribution to Creative Voices is tax-deductible. Donations can be easily and securely made on our website. Or you can snail mail a check to our address below. Either way, be assured that your contribution will be put to good and careful use. Contributions of $100 or more receive a really cool gift.
And see why the press is writing about our Free Speech Store. Where else can you buy a Woman’s Top that warns “Do Not Remove Without Permission of the FCC”? Or a “What the FCC Happened to Free Speech” mouse pad and coffee mug? Or a “Murdoch: It’s Australian for Monopoly, Mate!” shirt? Wear your support for free speech and media reform on your sleeve! You can reach the store from our website or blog, or go directly to it at www.cafepress.com/creativevoices
As always, we welcome your comments. And please forward this newsletter to others who might be interested in learning more about our work.
Many thanks for your support, and Happy New Year.
Best regards, Jon
Jonathan Rintels
Executive Director
Center for Creative Voices in Media
www.creativevoices.us
www.creativevoices.typepad.com (blog)
Center for Creative Voices in Media
1220 L Street, N.W., Suite 100-494
Washington, DC 20005
(202) 747-1712 (voice)
(202) 318-9183 (fax)
jonr@creativevoices.us
Creative Voices 4Q Newsletter
