More than 400 people crammed
into a University of Iowa lecture hall
on Wednesday, Oct. 5, to voice their
opinions on media to the Federal
Communications Commissioners.
FCC commissioner Jonathan
Adelstein and Jordan Goldstein,
legislative aid to FCC commissioner
Michael Copps, were in Iowa City
as part of a national tour to listen to
citizens’ views on media and relay the
concerns back to Washington, D.C.
“Help us come up with a fresh
set of rules to encourage diversity
and competition in the media,” Goldstein read, on behalf of FCC
commissioner Copps.
The tour’s particular focus was to
change the FCC’s 2003 decision to
ease the rules on media ownership,
which would allow one company to
own all of the television, radio and
print media in a market.
John Nichols, The Nation’s Washington
correspondent and co-founder
of The Free Press, opened the panel.
“This is the single most important discussion any American citizen
can be a part of,” Nichols said.
More than 100 Iowans signed
up to testify their frustrations to the
FCC commissioners.
Iowa Representative Wayne Ford
criticized the way African-Americans
and Latinos are belittled in the
media. He cited the portrayal of minorities
during the Hurricane
Katrina
coverage as
an example.
Gilbert
Cranberg,
former Des
Moines
Register editorial-pages
editor,
talked
about the
effect media
conglomeration
has
had on Des
Moines. He said in 1983 there were 50 media
companies. Last year there were five.
Amy Johnson Boyle, director of
marketing and public relations at
the Cedar Rapids Area Chamber
of Commerce, left her job
as news anchor at KGAN-TV because the company
was sold to television conglomerate,
Sinclair Broadcast Group. Since
the sale, she says local
news coverage in Cedar
Rapids has decreased
significantly.
Ben Stone, the Iowa
Civil Liberties Union executive
director, spoke of his
frustration with the lack of
coverage local unions receive.
“Our First Amendment
protects our right to hear, not
just to speak,” Stone said.
Nicholas Johnson, UI
College of Law professor
and former FCC member,
recalled the days of Woodstock,
revolution and hippies,
when he said the media was
real.
“The FCC needs to put the
teeth back in,” Johnson said. “We need more voices from our
nation’s media, but not from the
same ventriloquist.”
