Who're you listening to?

The question isn't what are you listening to but rather who are you listening to?

On Tuesday, the FCC voted to remove the rule that formerly blocked corporations from owning newspapers and television/radio in the same media market, a rule that has existed for three-plus decades and has guaranteed that there would be at least a few voices in every market.

Currently, ten gigantic corporations own a massive and frightening portion of our media. For example, when you pop open an issue of Time, Life, People, or any DC Comic series; watch the WB, HBO, Cinemax, TBS, or TNT; check a Warner Brothers movie; listen to music on any of forty record labels; or looking at the interwebs via AOL; you're opening up your mouth and getting baby-birded from AOL/Time Warner. And there are nine other massive corporations that have been gobbling up a media left and right, attempting to guarantee that whenever and wherever we turn, we're getting our messages from them.

And the FCC isn't allowing it.

The FCC is encouraging it.

The FCC which has been, throughout its seventy-year history, charged with ensuring that the media of the realm is used to contribute to the good of the people is instead ensuring that our media is instead used for the good of the corporations.

This is in spite of a national tour in which the FCC director himself asked to hear public opinion on the relaxation of media ownership rules, a tour in which he heard almost universal condemnation of further conglomeration.

And the director didn't seem to care in the least.

We need a new director.

We need a new president to appoint that new director.

We need to be angry because we're about to be controlled even further.

We need NPR and PBS and every independent radio and television station, internet streamer, and newspaper publisher possible.

And you need to check out this past week's Bill Moyers Journal to learn more.

And until then, go listen to some Steve Earle and Eric Idle tunes, would ya?

Countdown to 1000: Six posts to go...right at half a dozen...and with five days to Christmas, I'm going to have to double post a day to spot on with the holiday. I'm good with that, though, because I'm not working for the next two weeks.