I'm Against It!

I saw Congressman Joe Barton interviewed on CNN on the subject of the FCC’s proposed new rules allowing cross-ownership of newspapers by television stations. When Barton was first elected to Phil Gramm’s old house seat, he resembled a geeky young Mickey Roonie, but 25 years later, this twice-married paragon of republican family values (Family? Pay them out of campaign funds.) looks more like Snowball from Animal Farm.

Barton was a beneficiary of Tom DeLay’s “K Street Project,” and received money from companies convicted of making illegal contributions to Tom DeLay’s TRMPAC. In fact his statements sound like they came straight from DeLay spokesperson Shannon Flaherty. When questioned about the FCC’s 70 – 70 rule governing cable providers, he admitted that he had had to ask his staffers the same question. He should stick to being a stooge for the oil companies and stay out of the newspaper business.

FCC Commissioner Robert McDowell suggests that the old rules are “a millstone around the neck of a drowning industry,” and quoted a Mark Twain quip about how “if you don’t read the newspapers you are uninformed, but if you read the newspapers you are misinformed.”

Funny that he quoted Twain, who was an employee and part owner of the Buffalo Courier-Express, which was crushed by the Berkshire Hathaway owned Buffalo Evening News in 1979, much as the Houston Post was blotted out by the Hearst Corporation’s Houston Chronicle in 1984.

Barton and other Republicans always couch these deregulatory power grabs in terms of conservative or market principles. I suggest rather, that these quislings are all ears when money talks. I oppose media consolidation because an educated and informed citizenry is essential to the exercise of democracy. That’s the American way, or should be.