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Conason on FCC’s Powell in Salon:
- The driving forces behind Powell, in the White House and the Congress, are indeed highly ideological but hardly conservative in Safire’s sense. Their ideology is corporate conservatism, which treats democracy as a procedural formality that should under no circumstances interfere with the prerogatives of business and wealth. Powell is a corporate conservative who sees his job as the expansion of those same prerogatives for the media mammoths. He worries more about their profit position than about the protection of the public interest. He knows that the deregulation of radio has led to the same hideous situation (or “problems,” as he delicately puts it) that Powell promises won’t result from these rules.
On Wednesday, Sen. John McCain has scheduled a hearing of the Senate Commerce Committee at which all five FCC commissioners will testify on the new rules.
The obvious and central question is: how is the public being served by these rule changes.
