The Making of a Movement (Page 3)

All the organizing in the world won't amount to a hill of beans, however, unless there is something tangible to fight for, and to win. That's why we need reform proposals that can be advocated, promoted and discussed. Media reform needs its equivalent of the Voting Rights Act or the Equal Rights Amendment--simple, basic reforms that grassroots activists can understand, embrace and advocate in union halls, church basements and school assemblies. And there has to be legislation to give the activism a sense of focus and possibility.

Fortunately, there are several members of Congress who are already engaged on these issues: Senator Fritz Hollings has emerged as a thoughtful critic of many of the excesses of media monopolies; Senator John McCain has questioned the giveaway of public airwaves to communications conglomerates; Representative John Conyers Jr., the ranking Democrat on the House Judiciary Committee, has been outspoken in criticizing the loss of diversity in media ownership and the failure of the FCC to battle monopolization and homogenization; Representative Louise Slaughter has introduced legislation mandating free airtime for political candidates; Senator Paul Wellstone has expressed an interest in legislation that would reassert standards for children's programming and perhaps adopt the approaches of other countries that regulate advertising directed at young children; and Jesse Jackson Jr. has expressed a willingness to introduce legislation aimed at broadening access to diverse media, along with a wide range of other media reform proposals. If an organized movement demands it, there are people in Congress with the courage and the awareness to provide it with a legislative focus.

Ultimately, we believe, the movement's legislative agenda must include proposals to:

§ Apply existing antimonopoly laws to the media and, where necessary, expand the reach of those laws to restrict ownership of radio stations to one or two per owner. Legislators should also consider steps to address monopolization of TV-station ownership and move to break the lock of newspaper chains on entire regions.

§ Initiate a formal, federally funded study and hearings to identify reasonable media ownership regulations across all sectors.

§ Establish a full tier of low-power, noncommercial radio and television stations across the nation.

§ Revamp and invest in public broadcasting to eliminate commercial pressures, reduce immediate political pressures and serve communities without significant disposable incomes.

§ Allow every taxpayer a $200 tax credit to apply to any nonprofit medium, as long as it meets IRS criteria.

§ Lower mailing costs for nonprofit and significantly noncommercial publications.

§ Eliminate political candidate advertising as a condition of a broadcast license, or require that if a station runs a paid political ad by a candidate it must run free ads of similar length from all the other candidates on the ballot immediately afterward.

§ Reduce or eliminate TV advertising directed at children under 12.

§ Decommercialize local TV news with regulations that require stations to grant journalists an hour daily of commercial-free news time, and set budget guidelines for those newscasts based on a percentage of the station's revenues.

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