It's hard to choose which deserves the coarser jeer: the excited baying in the press about the nondiscovery of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, or the wailing about the 3-to-2 decision of the Federal Communications Commission in early June to allow corporate media giants to increase their domination of the market.

Actually, they're all part of the same bundle of nonsense, and if we meld the two, we're left with the following absurd proposition, most eagerly promoted by Democrats to impart the impression that only greedy Republicans are serfs of the corporate media titans, and that the Telecommunications "Reform" Act of 1996 was actually a well-intended effort to return the airwaves to We the People.

The absurd proposition: Before the June 2 FCC ruling unleashed darkness upon the land, we were afforded diversity of choice and a multiplicity of analyses, not just from hole-in-the-wall operations like Pacifica or satellite-based LINKS TV but from the journalistic mainstream. But now, after the FCC decision, these voices will soon be stilled. We are entering the era of Big Brother.

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