{"id":339304,"date":"2017-12-13T22:16:37","date_gmt":"2017-12-13T21:16:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/trumps-fcc-has-spent-the-year-waging-war-on-democracy-and-the-press\/"},"modified":"2017-12-13T22:16:37","modified_gmt":"2017-12-13T21:16:37","slug":"trumps-fcc-has-spent-the-year-waging-war-on-democracy-and-the-press","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/newswire\/trumps-fcc-has-spent-the-year-waging-war-on-democracy-and-the-press\/","title":{"rendered":"Trump’s FCC Has Spent the Year Waging War on Democracy and the Press"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"ActivistsActivists 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)<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

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\u00a0released his plans<\/a>\u00a0to decimate net neutrality, which will\u00a0be voted<\/a>\u00a0on Thursday, December 14.\u00a0Advocates<\/a>\u00a0and the\u00a0public<\/a>\u00a0rightly decried\u00a0the fact that Pai tried\u00a0to lessen the blowback<\/a>\u00a0from this aggressive and\u00a0unpopular<\/a>\u00a0action by releasing the plan at that particular time.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\u00a0an equally worrying statement<\/a>\u00a0on the FCC’s website about “reviewing” ownership restrictions for corporate media giants.<\/p>\n

The word “review” is a little misleading. In reality, the statement “seeks to allow even greater media consolidation. Ignoring federal law…,”\u00a0said<\/a>\u00a0FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn, a Democrat.<\/p>\n

This is a frightening proposition, given that, thanks in large part to Bill Clinton’s\u00a0Telecommunications Act of 1996<\/a>, the ownership rules are already so relaxed that\u00a0about 90 percent of the country’s major\u00a0media companies are\u00a0owned<\/a>\u00a0by 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…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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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 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":339305,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[519],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-339304","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-newswire"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/339304","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=339304"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/339304\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/339305"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=339304"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=339304"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=339304"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}