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Senate Commerce Committee Votes to Prevent Nation’s
Largest Media Conglomerates from Growing Even Larger
The Senate has begun to reverse the FCC’s vote to relax
media concentration rules, but the legislation faces an uphill
battle in the House.
Zimbabwe’s Top Court Orders Opposition Leader Morgan
Tsvangirai Freed After Spending Two Weeks in Prison
The Zimbabwean ambassador to the U.S. debates critic Patrick
Bond on Mugabe’s rule, free speech and land reform.
White House orders EPA to Remove Global Warming Conclusions
from State of the Environment Report
Original draft concluded that global warming is caused in
part by rising concentrations of smokestack and automobile
emissions. The final study does not.
Senate Commerce Committee Votes to Prevent Nation¹s
Largest Media Conglomerates from Growing Even Larger
The Senate Commerce Committee yesterday voted to prevent
the nation¹s largest media conglomerates from growing
even larger.
The Senate legislation would reverse a vote the Federal Communication
Commission took just two and a half weeks ago, to relax or
scrap the government¹s media ownership rules.
Specifically, under the Senate legislation, media conglomerates
would not be allowed to own television stations that reach
nearly half the nation's viewers, after all. Nor would corporations
be allowed to own a newspaper and a television or radio station
in the same city.
In addition, Senate Commerce Committee Chairman, Republican
John McCain, narrowly won a vote to require companies that
are over the new FCC radio ownership limits, including Clear
Channel Communications, to sell stations after one year.
And, the bill would require the FCC to hold at least five
public hearings on future ownership rule changes before voting.
The quick Senate action was a clear a rebuke to FCC Chair
Michael Powell, son of Secretary of State General Colin Powell.
Michael Powell pushed hard to relax the media ownership rules,
and refused to make any serious attempt to involve the public
on the issue. But he thoroughly consulted industry lobbyists.
The non-partisan Center for Public Integrity found that FCC
officials met with top broadcasters behind closed doors more
than 70 times to discuss the rule changes.
The public was not to be silenced. Activists organized hearings
and press conferences all over the country. Members of the
National Rifle Association sent in three hundred thousand
postcards. The Washington Post reported the FCC received more
than 9,000 email comments through its website, and of those,
only 11 were in favor of the changes. The activist group Moveon.org
collected 170,000 signatures on a petition. Common Cause launched
a $250,000 ad campaign, and placed ads in the Washington Post
and The New York Times. And Senators began to speak out.
The legislation will now go to a full senate vote. It faces
an uphill battle in the House.
- Jeff Chester, executive director of the Center for Digital
Democracy.
Related link:
Center for Digital Democracy - www.democraticmedia.org
Zimbabwe's Top Court Orders Opposition Leader Morgan Tsvangirai
Freed After Spending Two Weeks in Prison
Zimbabwe's top court has ordered opposition leader Morgan
Tsvangirai to be released on bail.
The leading critic of President Robert Mugabe¹s government
had been in jail for two weeks. He faced separate charges
of both plotting to overthrow Mugabe, and plotting to murder
Mugabe.
Tsvangirai heads the opposition group the Movement for Democratic
Change. The MDC staged five days of mass protests and a national
strike in an attempt to force Mugabe either to step down or
to negotiate a settlement. Tsvangirai's lawyers say he was
simply advocating peaceful protest.
The MDC blames President Mugabe for creating the country¹s
worst economic and political crisis since Zimbabwe became
independent in 1980. Seven out of every ten people are unemployed.
The country now suffers from 300 percent inflation, one of
the highest rates in the world.
Tsvangirai¹s group blames the economic crisis in part
on Mugabe¹s policy of seizing white-owned farms for redistribution
to landless blacks. Last year, Mugabe set off a storm of controversy
when he allowed his supporters to forcibly, and in some cases
violently, evict white farmers from their land.
President Mugabe says he is determined to redraw the colonial
map. Up until last year, a tiny white minority controlled
more than half of Zimbabwe¹s fertile soil. But critics
say Mugabe is handing away the best land to his friends.
Last week, Mugabe told a crowd of supporters the government
will never allow MDC to hold a mass action again and accused
them of being in league with the British. Mugabe also said
whites had never accepted Zimbabwe as an independent country
and told them to go live in Rhodesia. Rhodesia was the name
for Zimbabwe when it was a British colony. It was named after
Cecil Rhodes.
Meanwhile, the United Nations yesterday issued a report stating
that large-scale commercial farming has dropped by 90 percent
in recent years.
The report said 400,000 farm workers have lost their jobs.
And half of the country¹s 11 million people are now in
need of food aid.
- Simbi Mubako, Ambassador of Zimbabwe to the United States.
He is participating in a forum called Up Close Zimbabwe
in Atlanta on Saturday.
- Patrick Bond, professor at the University of the Witwatersrand
in Johannesburg and author of the book, Zimbabwe¹s
Plunge: Exhausted Nationalism, Neoliberalism and the Search
for Social Justice.
White House Orders EPA To Remove Global Warming Conclusions
From State Of The Environment Report
"Climate change has global consequences for human health
and the environment."
That was one of the conclusions originally included in a
forthcoming report by the Environmental Protection Agency
of the state of the environment.
But that conclusion appears nowhere in the final report.
The final wording read: "The complexity of the Earth
system an the interconnections among its components make it
a scientific challenge to document change, diagnose its causes,
and develop useful projections of how natural variability
and human actions may affect the global environment in the
future."
The New York Times yesterday exposed that the White House
ordered officials at the EPA to delete several sections that
concern global warming and climate change.
The EPA also removed all references to a 2001 report on climate
change that was conducted by the National Research Council
-- the research arm of the National Academy of Science.
- Jeremy Symons, Manager of the Climate Change and Wildlife
Program at the National Wildlife Foundation.
For a copy of today’s program, call 1 (800) 881 2359.
Our website is www.democracynow.org.
Our email address is mail@democracynow.org.
Democracy Now! is produced by Kris Abrams, Mike Burke, Angie
Karran, Ana Nogueira and Elizabeth Press. Mike Di Filippo
is our music maestro and engineer.
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