OpEdNews - Diary: Time to Call for Trust Busting on Major News Media Companies

The one-sidedness of much of the reporting going on is become very pronounced and obvious. It is time Congress, if it gets a Democrat majority in both houses this fall..it is time for Congress to do some trust busting and investigation of the misuse of the airwaves for partisan advantage.

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Since the media have been called 'the fourth branch of government" or the fourth estate, it is a matter of national importance that they not be coopted by one political party or one segment of the population. But in fact this is what has happened starting under Bill Clinton's administration but accelerating rapidly under the two terms of the Bush Administration. Media consolidation in the hands of a few mega-corporations (the number went from 30 companies owning major media outlets down to 4-6 now) compromises objectivity and in fact is a type of monopolistic practices. Just as Microsoft was investigated and it looked into whether mMicrosoft should be forced to stop monopollistic marketing practices, so these few corporations should undergo 'trust busting' and the ownership of the public airwaves returned to the public and removed from the usurpation of crony capitalist corporations friendly to the right wing and the Establishment. There needs to be trust busting done on our major media companies and the Fairness Doctrine needs to be restored. Otherwise what we have is little different from government control such as exists in China and Russia. Ours isn't official, but it is, 'de-facto', which amounts to something similar: i.e., control of the dissemination of information concentrated in the hands of only a few, to the detriment of the public's right to know.