"Without much notice, the federal government is moving toward the most sweeping change ever in the rules that govern ownership of the American news media.

This shift could reduce the independence of the news media and the ability of Americans to take part in public debate. Yet because of meager press coverage and steps taken by the Federal Communications Commission in its policy-making process, most people probably have no idea that it is taking place.

Having seen how totalitarian regimes moved the world to war through domination of their news media, the government during the 1940's put restrictions on how many news media outlets one company could own, both nationally and in a single city.

Though those rules have been relaxed in the last 20 years, companies are still blocked from buying a newspaper and television station in the same city or from owning more than one TV station in the same market.

Three weeks after it proposed eliminating those rules, the F.C.C. released a series of reports about the current media marketplace. But the reports focused almost entirely on the economic impact of relaxing the ownership rules. They largely ignore the public's interest in a diverse and independent press."

The worst thing about Colin Powell is his son.  He's quickly moving to make the American media landscape even more homogenized than it already is, something hard to imagine possible.  Imagine the worlds of local television and newspapers going the way of ClearChannel, the evils of whom I've mentioned here before. 

"The precedent in radio is telling. Since the rules on ownership of radio were last relaxed in 1996, the two biggest companies went from owning 130 stations to more than 1,400. "

The worst part is that they're trying to slip it past the public without anyone noticing.

"The F.C.C. chairman, Michael K. Powell, has scheduled only one public hearing, in Richmond, Va., on the proposal, and the public comment period will close at the end of this month. It is a small and brief opportunity, but one that the public should seize if it cherishes an independent press. "

Take the opportunity.  FAIR has an alert up about this and provides the following information on who to contact:

"ACTION: Let the FCC and Congress know that you want the rules that limit media consolidation to be preserved and strengthened, not weakened.

1. File a comment with the FCC. The Center for Digital Democracy has a form that simplifies the process:
http://www.democraticmedia.org/getinvolved/ownershipAction_FCCFiling.html

2. Write to your elected officials. You can look up the name and contact information of your Congressional and Senate representatives by entering your zip code at:
http://congress.org/

As always, please remember that your comments are taken more seriously if you maintain a polite tone. Please cc fair@fair.org with your correspondence. "

[via Metafilter]

[via Metafilter]

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"Ever wonder why SUV drivers are such assholes? Surely it’s no coincidence that Terry McAuliffe, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, tours Washington in one of the biggest SUVs on the market, the Cadillac Escalade, or that Jesse Ventura loves the Lincoln Navigator.

The easiest place to find SUV slobs, however, is right here in Colorado. The U.S. Census Bureau reports our state as having more SUVs per capita than any other state, by far. About 14 percent of Colorado drivers–one in seven–drove an SUV when the latest census data was released in 2000. At that time, the numbers were nearly double the national average and they’ve only grown in the past two years."

A local perspective on Keith Bradhser's book "High and Mighty" which I mentioned here a few weeks ago.

"Politics is the practice of doublespeak. We've seen time and again how politicians will say one thing, yet act in the opposite manner - only to rectify their statements and actions with another statement that trumps the first absurdity.

Fortunately, through the magic of creative individuals and relatively cheap digital audio editing tools, the speech of political creatures can finally be unspun, and the truth laid bare.

This is a gallery of translations of popular politicians as made by audio collage artists from around the planet. They all are, as far as we know, works in the public domain, and may be freely shared and used as fodder for further translation projects. They are all encoded in MP3 format. If anyone would like to add, modify or delete their listing(s) in the gallery, simply e-mail us and we will do so."

These are funny.

[via Hit & Run]

"Observant Derek Vadala noted that it ' Looks like the exploit code from the Security Focus (i.e. Bugtraq) vulnerability database has been removed. There used to be an _exploit_ tab between _discussion_ and _solution_ on the individual vulnerabilty pages. It provided exploit code, if available. This was extremely useful for doing vulnerability testing so it's too bad. Seems to me that this is just one less resource for white hats and one more advantage for the blacks hats. I wonder if the recent acquisition by Symantec had something to do with the change."'

Of course, there's a flip side to Symantec aquiring all those companies.  Securityfocus takes one more step towards irrelevence.

"Inside a cavernous room on the first floor there, security analysts for Symantec sit in long, curved rows 24 hours a day, working on computers and facing a wall of theater-size screens. Information displayed on the screens helps them keep tabs on whether any attacks are underway at any of the company's more than 600 corporate clients. "

A good short article on Symantec's managed security business and what they've been doing with their recent aquisition of Riptech and Securityfocus.  While this type of operation isn't really new - Security Operation Center's (SOC's) have been around for a couple of years now - it does give a good layman's picture of the usefulness of data collection and mining for insight into security problems, something on many people's minds with the emergence of TIA.  They even have a video tour!

[via SecurityNewsPortal]