FC: NPR's Rick Karr replies to FCC chairman at Chamber of Commerce

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

[To reply to Rick: I never claimed that Powell said public interest and 
market forces are the same. Powell's claim was far weaker; which is why I 
characterized it as such a "mild" statement. As for the consolidated 
ownership point, I'm not willing to leap to a big-is-bad conclusion. Large 
companies may be easy targets to assail, but (1) a lot of people really do 
want to listen to top 40 dreck and (2) being big may bring some economies 
of scale. --Declan]

---

Subject: RE: FC: Senator tells FCC chairman he should be at U.S. Chamber 
of  Commerce
From: "neuunit () earthlink net" <neuunit () earthlink net>
Date: Thu, 7 Mar 2002 20:01:51 -0500
To: "declan () well com" <declan () well com>

You wrote:

> Of course Michael Powell was merely telling the truth and Senator
> Hollings knew it. But Hollings would rather score political points by
> assailing someone who dared suggest -- mildly! -- that government
> intrusion may not be the best solution to every problem. To Hollings,
> that's apparently more important than speaking his conscience. Shame
> on Hollings for being a knave; shame on Safire for sounding more like
> Ralph Nader or Pat Buchanan than someone who once called himself a
> conservative. --Declan]

And shame on you for letting your A-is-A blinders obscure the real point: 
Powell said, "public interests and market forces _can_" be the same 
(emphasis added). He didn't say they're _inevitably_ the same, that the 
relationship is an identity.

The question Safire asks -- rightly -- is whether the public interest is 
served by allowing unregulated markets to lead to consolidated ownership of 
a limited public resource, namely radio spectrum assigned to broadcast 
media. Is Clear Channel's control of a massive segment of US radio 
broadcasting warranted, or in the best interests of the public? Your 
comment presupposes that the debate itself is an irrelevant distraction; I 
think that you do yourself and your readers -- even your most ardent 
libertarian readers -- a disservice by making that assumption.

--
Rick Karr
(Cultural Correspondent, National Public Radio, for identification purposes 
only)




-------------------------------------------------------------------------
POLITECH -- Declan McCullagh's politics and technology mailing list
You may redistribute this message freely if you include this notice.
Declan McCullagh's photographs are at http://www.mccullagh.org/
To subscribe to Politech: http://www.politechbot.com/info/subscribe.html
This message is archived at http://www.politechbot.com/
-------------------------------------------------------------------------