Media Reform

Jeff Jarvis has a post up on the Conference for Media Reform. It is a collection of the left that is looking to introduce more governmental policies (ie regulations) to combat the lefts loss of a monopoly of the media. Jeff is a moderate democrat who has deep roots in the media. He and I disagree on certain topics, but as he has delved into the blogworld, his opinions are coming closer to mine every day.

Here is an excerpt from his post:

Next month, there’s a National Conference for Media Reform with all sorts of odd bedfellows: FCC censor-freaks Jonathan Adelstein and Michael Copps, Al Franken, Seattle Times owner Frank Blethen, David Brock of Media Matter, folks from Fair and the Newspaper Guild and Consumers Union, and so on.

This is the left-wing media-haters club, not to be confused with the right-wing media-haters club. The right-wing club hates the media because they think it’s left-wing; the left-wing hates media because they think it’s corporate (and thus right-wing).

Here’s the dangerous part about this one: They want to “increase informed public participation in crucial media policy debates, and to generate policies that will produce a more competitive and public interest-oriented media system with a strong nonprofit and noncommercial sector.”

The keyword there: “policies.” Policies come from government. Government media policies equal government media control. I hate that.

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Don’t forget that media is now us: If you want government to regulate that media you open the door for government to regulate this media.

I think that everyone and anyone who cares about keeping the government out of the media should keep a close eye on this conference. We have seen the results of McCain Fiengold on the country when the government tries to regulate the media in an election. We have seen the results of the fairness doctrine. It is time to make sure Washington does not do this to us again.

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