Writers' Guild East issues statement on Comcast/NBC merger:

[villager]

“The Writers Guild of America, East is disappointed by the FCC’s approval of the joint venture between Comcast and NBC Universal. We consistently have opposed this action because entertainment and news media already are too consolidated; too few multinational mega-corporations control what people watch on television and in movie theaters. The Comcast/NBCU deal is particularly frightening because it brings together one of the largest internet service and cable TV providers with one of the largest content providers. Without strong and meaningful safeguards, the economics of the deal virtually mandate that Comcast/NBCU will discriminate in favor of its own content and leave writers and other independent members of the creative community out in the cold. This will impact not only entertainment programming but the diversity of news and public affairs voices so vital to a democracy.

We applaud Commissioner Copps for his opposition to the deal as approved. While we also appreciate that the FCC has conditioned its approval on a number of commitments made by Comcast and NBCU, with all due respect, we think these conditions simply make the venture a little less disastrous. Time will tell if writers and other creators will be squeezed out of the internet, and if a small handful of powerful entities continue to control what people watch. “

(Just received press release...)

[RufusTFirefly]

1. Our information sources are slip, slip, slipping away...

"To live in this process is absolutely not to be able to notice it—please try to believe me—unless one has a much greater degree of political awareness, acuity, than most of us had ever had occasion to develop. Each step was so small, so inconsequential, so well explained or, on occasion, ‘regretted,’ that, unless one were detached from the whole process from the beginning, unless one understood what the whole thing was in principle, what all these ‘little measures’ that no ‘patriotic German’ could resent must some day lead to, one no more saw it developing from day to day than a farmer in his field sees the corn growing. One day it is over his head.

From They Thought They Were Free

[villager]

2. as is absolutely the intention...

n/t

[xchrom]

3. +1