Activists supporting net neutrality protest against a plan by Federal Communications Commission head Ajit Pai, during a protest outside a Verizon store on December 7, 2017, in Los Angeles, California. (Photo: ROBYN BECK / AFP / Getty Images)
On Tuesday, November 21, media advocates were incredibly busy. Just as they were packing up and logging out for the coming Thanksgiving holiday, Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman and former Verizon attorney Ajit Pai released his plans to decimate net neutrality, which will be voted on Thursday, December 14. Advocates and the public rightly decried the fact that Pai tried to lessen the blowback from this aggressive and unpopular action by releasing the plan at that particular time.
Yet, choosing this timing was not even Pai’s most slimy, deceptive act that day. Also on November 21 — while media advocates were trying to respond to Pai’s plans to hand the internet to cable and telecom companies — he released an equally worrying statement on the FCC’s website about “reviewing” ownership restrictions for corporate media giants.
The word “review” is a little misleading. In reality, the statement “seeks to allow even greater media consolidation. Ignoring federal law…,” said FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn, a Democrat.
This is a frightening proposition, given that, thanks in large part to Bill Clinton’s Telecommunications Act of 1996, the ownership rules are already so relaxed that about 90 percent of the country’s major media companies are owned by six corporations. Further consolidation poses an existential threat to the capacity of media to serve a civic function (as opposed to simply a source of profit). However, the consolidation statement received little attention — a reality that holds true for most of the numerous and consequential actions taken by Pai this year. With the exception of net neutrality, which itself received much less coverage than it warranted, FCC actions tend to be ignored by…