Op-Ed Columnist: The Five Sisters By WILLIAM SAFIRE, NYTimes

If one huge corporation controlled both the production and the dissemination of most of our news and entertainment, couldn’t it rule the world?

Can’t happen here, you say; America is the land of competition that generates new technology to ensure a diversity of voices. But consider how a supine Congress and a feckless majority of the Federal Communications Commission have been failing to protect our access to a variety of news, views and entertainment.

Conservative Safire has been a leader on this issue of media industry consolidation. One can almost forgive him for failing to state the obvious: Republicans control the FCC, the legislature and the White House (and are stacking the judiciary). mjh

mjh’s Dump Bush weBlog: Follow Up on the FCC Giveaway to Fox, et. al.

BILL MOYERS: And so those 24 lines were quietly inserted in last week’s fine print [of the 1,182 page spending bill]. With those lines, the House and Senate agreement was overturned and the new cap was set just high enough to allow Viacom and Murdoch to keep all their TV stations. …

What does it say to you about democracy? That almost a million citizens make themselves heard in support of overturning the FCC ruling. The Senate votes 55 to 40 to overturn those rules. And yet the House can’t vote on it. [because of Hastert and Delay]

SENATOR BYRON DORGAN: Why? Because the President supports the FCC rule. This is his Federal Communications Commission.