Politics: Mmmm. Media Consolidation.

Washington Post curmudgeon and utterly splendid mocker of reality TV Tom Shales vents about the Michael Powell's plan to allow all media to be controlled by Rupert Murdoch and a host of other execrable media moguls. The item is quite good, a rant in the style of Shale's best work from the past ten years. Read the whole thing here, but some choice excerpts are below:

The proposed changes are such a threat to First Amendment freedoms that even some Republicans on Capitol Hill have been brave enough to oppose them. And yet, a fat lot of good it does. FCC Chairman Michael Powell wants to plow ahead with his deregulation scheme no matter what. It appears he is trying to do more damage than any other chairman in FCC history.

Never mind that a diversity of voices -- voices with the ability to be heard -- is integral to the health and maintenance of a democracy. While Powell and his supporters claim that the existence of dozens, even hundreds, of channels on cable and satellite systems proves there's diversity unbound, Powell's critics note that the diversity is a mere illusion if only five fat companies own all those channels.
...
"I'm opposed to the changes," says Barry Diller, chairman of USA Interactive and nothing if not a media mogul himself, "but I'm much more upset that this has not produced enough conversation and dialogue. The way Michael Powell has gone about it is to hide the issue as much as possible, organizing it to avoid debate and hearings, and getting it done largely under the cover of night."

Diller calls the rule changes "dark and dispiriting -- on the merits for sure, but also on the method." He says he doesn't understand why Powell and his supporters won't stop for a moment -- even just a 30-day delay -- to give the public more input. "Why are they so afraid of a mere pause?" Diller asks. "It's not like there's a bridge on fire."
...
Bob Edwards, anchor of NPR's "Morning Edition," talked about the myth of media diversity in a lecture last month at his alma mater, the University of Kentucky.

"It's kind of a cruel, ironic joke," Edwards said. "The rise of cable TV and the Internet were supposed to democratize the media and give us many voices and numerous points of view. Instead, market forces and deregulation have clobbered diversity. The networks and cable channels have the same owners -- Hollywood studios, mainly -- and the most popular Web sites for news are those of organizations firmly established before the Web was spun."

Edwards used the example of the Dixie Chicks to show how monolithic media can manipulate public opinion. During that not-so-long-ago pre-war era -- before America "liberated" Iraq -- one of the Chicks uttered the now infamous opinion that as a Texan she was "ashamed" to be from the same state as Bush. There followed a huge tsunami of anti-Chicks protest. Or did there? Edwards said the supposedly populist "backlash against the Chicks" was mainly manufactured by Clear Channel Radio, a powerful and Texas-based corporation that owns 1,250 radio stations throughout the country. Songs by the Dixie Chicks, meanwhile, quietly dropped out of the playlists of many Clear Channel's country stations.

"Clear Channel loves George W. Bush," Edwards said. "Clear Channel would like the administration of George W. Bush to remove all remaining restrictions on the ownership of media properties. That is exactly what the Bush administration is considering."

Splendid.