Have you all contacted the FCC? Here is a GREAT letter!!

[proud2BlibKansan]

Today, Sunday, November 18, I wrote each member of the Federal Communications Commission. Their Chairman, Kevin J. Martin, would like to allow more media consolidation. We have until December 18 to protest that move. I am reproducing my letter to the Commission below. At the bottom of my letter, I reproduced contact information for each member. I urge each of you to contact the Commissioners and to have others do the same.





Nov 18, 07


Mr. Kevin J. Martin


Chairman


The Federal Communications Commission


Dear Sir


I live in the greater Kansas City, Missouri area. We have one major newspaper here, The Kansas City Star. The Star is essentially a monopoly newspaper here; its largest competitor is the Independence Examiner, a paper that serves the Independence, MO area. In the 1950s, the Star was ordered to divest itself of a radio and a TV station, WDAF TV and WDAF Radio. Under other restrictions, the Star was not allowed to own smaller papers in the area. In the late 1990s, the Star approached the Justice Department to ask for those restrictions to be lifted. Some restrictions were lifted, and immediately, the Star bought up local papers all over the area, two of them in the Lee’s Summit area near where I live. That gave the paper another monopoly, the area newspaper business. I was the only one to complain to the Justice Department because I feared exactly what did happen after the Justice Department decision.


Mr. Martin, we need more choices not fewer. I am boycotting the Star at this time because the Star’s news department has become a neo-con outlet that buries important news in the back of the “A” section while placing news favorable to the Bush administration on page A-1.


For 2 ½ years, I wrote a free column for the Lee’s Summit Journal. That paper is one among several that was bought out by the Kansas City Star. During my time as a contributing columnist, I wrote about various topics, but when I wrote a column critical of Bush during the lead up to the war with Iraq, I was blackballed by the Publisher, Steve Curd, who was a Star employee. He had come from the Star sales department to be publisher of the Journal. That, sir, was censorship. That blackball held until recently. During that time, 4 ½ years, I could not even get a letter to the editor published in that paper. I am still essentially locked out of the editorial pages of the Journal, but Republican office holders have full length columns in every edition. In the last four editions, Republican State Representative Will Kraus had a column concerning Veterans’ Day, Republican Governor Matt Blunt had a column, Republican Senator Kit Bond had a column concerning health care for veterans, and Republican State Senator Matt Bartle had a column concerning a plan for the state to set up a savings account for a rainy-day fund. Do you get the picture? As long as you are a Republican official, you will be published, but if you have a differing point of view, a view that is critical of those same politicians or Republican policies, it will not be published.


Is that what you want to do with our news media in Kansas City, give the monopoly newspaper still other means of presenting the views of Republican politicians? Commercial radio in the area is already controlled by those who only offer talk radio programs that favor the Republican Party.


No sir, what we need is more diversity of ownership, not less.


Gene W. DeVaux


Chairman Kevin J. Martin: [e-mail]
Commissioner Michael J. Copps: [e-mail]
Commissioner Jonathan S. Adelstein: [e-mail]
Commissioner Deborah Taylor Tate: [e-mail]
Commissioner Robert McDowell: [e-mail]

[proud2BlibKansan]

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