If the media see themselves as under siege from all sides - government, Wall Street, and public opinion - there is relief at least on one front: the courts. At least in the arena of libel and privacy law, the pressure seems to be steadily easing. According to a new study by the Media Law Resource Center -- news media outlets successfully defended themselves against libel and privacy charges four out of five times in 2002. Bob speaks with Sandra Baron, the Executive Director of the MLRC.
Ever since the FCC voted to relax media ownership rules, congressional opponents of deregulation have been working to reverse the changes. But because the leader of a key House committee opposed the effort, nobody thought it would get very far. Undaunted, deregulation opponents took an alternative tack, and were vindicated this week in a vote by the full House. Cable World Senior Editor Alicia Mundy fills Bob in on the latest in the FCC saga.
Criticizing the FCC's recent loosening media ownership regulations has become something of a new sport recently. The Senate Commerce Committee is getting into the act, proposing legislation to essentially undo the FCC's ruling. The bill has earned praise, but whether it has any chance of passing is another story. Bob talks to Cable World Senior Editor Alicia Mundy.
There were few surprises when the FCC finally voted this week on the relaxation of media ownership limits. But the commission's two dissenters were somewhat vindicated two days later at a Senate hearing in which lawmakers delivered a bipartisan spanking of the FCC decision. Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein talks to Bob about being in the minority on Michael Powell's FCC.
Now that the (de) regulators have acted, some members of Congress are taking it upon themselves to re-regulate the media industry. Republican Senator Conrad Burns tells Bob why he is co-sponsoring legislation that would roll back some of the changes that the FCC approved this week.
On the eve of perhaps the most important FCC vote in decades, opponents of media deregulation are flooding the commissioners with mail. But is anybody listening? Apparently not, wrote Eric Boehlert recently in Salon.com. He joins Bob to discuss the responsiveness - or lack thereof - of the FCC to the public comment process.
While people still argue about the successes and failures of the war in Iraq, there's no disputing that the Fox News Channel emerged from the fighting as a clear victor over its cable competitors. In a recent issue of The New Yorker, Ken Auletta profiled the relatively young channel, and its founder, Roger Ailes. Auletta takes Brooke behind the scenes.
The Federal Communications Commission is poised to make sweeping changes to its restrictions on media ownership. The rules were created to promote a diversity of voices on the airwaves and in the papers, and many fear that the changes, should they pass, could undermine that goal. OTM's Paul Ingles reports on what's at stake in next month's FCC vote.
