FCC Media Ownership Workshop

DOES IT MATTER IF THEY'RE ALL THE SAME?

On May 21st, the Bay Area gets a chance to say no to yet more consolidation of news and information in the same old tired corporate hands.

The FCC (Federal Communications Commission) will be at Stanford University, to talk about plans to allow newspapers and TV stations to buy each other up in the same community.

***Public comment @ open mic at 11:45 am and again at 3:30 pm***

See schedule below

What: Media Ownership Workshop
Where: Dinkelspiel Auditorium, Stanford University
471 Lagunitas Drive, Stanford
When: Friday May 21, 2010. from 10am to 5pm.

Why: Because the willy-nilly sale of mass communication
outlets to the same speculators is bad for democracy.

The scheduled workshop asks whether selling off the existing broadcast infrastructure is okay because so many people now get their news from the Internet. It’s true – about 40% of Americans say their major source of information is the web ; it’s starting to catch up with the 50% who say it is the television.

Allowing cross-ownership is like saying half the population can subsist on a diet alternating between Mcdonalds and Burger King. Not much nutrition in that.

This is the 3rd of this recent series of hearings and neither South Carolina nor Florida made a strong showing. The Bay Area needs to be different. Mark your calendar and send someone, yourself, a friend, a co-worker, to speak for you on May 21st.

Whose media? Our media.

10:00 a.m. Opening remarks

10:15 a.m. Panel I-- Changing Distribution Channels

11:45 am public comments

1:00pm break

2:00pm Panel II - The Changing Financial and Business Model for Media in the 21st Century

Panelists include: multiple corporate media representatives, but also:
Jim Joyce, Vice President of Communications Workers of America and
Tiffiniy Ying Cheng of the Participatory Culture Foundation

3:30 to 5:00pm Public comment period