Common Cause Members Speak Out: Stopping the TEGNA/Standard General Merger
Patricia D: “A Democracy is only as good as its informed electorate. One company owning a lot of media outlets narrows the reporting over a greater area usually with cookie cutter duplicate programming and reporting. I am not in favor of this approach.”
Joseph K: “The mandate of the FCC is to regulate and safeguard the ‘Public Airwaves’ (bandwidth) for the public. The public airwaves/media outlets, have been swamped with fraud and disinformation that has influenced our elections and physically threatened the functioning of our democracy. Speech is protected in this country, but fraud is prohibited everywhere. You are the watch dog. End it.”
M.B.: “‘The 20th century has been characterized by three developments of great political importance: The growth of democracy, the growth of corporate power, and the growth of corporate propaganda as a means of protecting corporate power against democracy.’ – Alex Carey, Australian social scientist, 1995.”
Lynn P: “Freedom of the press is integral to our democracy. It’s so essential, the Founders enshrined it in the Bill of Rights. When only a few large corporations control the media space, local press coverage suffers and independent journalists reporting on our communities are silenced. Monopolistic control of journalism means just a few companies determine what news gets reported. American democracy thrives when there are a wide variety of news sources holding government to account. I implore the FCC to protect independent, community-based journalism. Please stop the takeover of small local news outlets by larger media conglomerates!”
Lynne K: “National media overwhelm local journalism. We must protect local independent media for the news closest to us.”
Margaret B: “Media monopolies are anti-democratic by nature. They must be stopped. ”
Hilary C: “Truly local & independent journalism is the only way to maintain a check on local stories, investigations, and other key matters that cannot be covered if they are not the priority of owners. We have seen how these companies gobble up local stations & newspapers only to get them purely for profit, not journalism. [We must] maintain the importance of the people of the communities who report and select stories that are important to their communities to cover.”
Leslie G: “We need local news reported by those who live in the communities and because they live there they understand the importance of what they are reporting and the impact it had. The further you get away from the source the more diluted the news becomes or worse yet it never gets reported at all. News should not become a monopoly. ”
Carole O: “I live in a rural state where local news is vital. This buying spree sounds like a monopoly ploy to “standardize” the news we get. Don’t we have ENFORCEABLE laws against this kind of thing?”
Robert B: “Please DO NOT allow this toxic merger to proceed! Independent media is critical to democracy and should be protected from being manipulated by just a few national media conglomerates!”
Steve A: “Keep our newsrooms democratic and out of the hands of oligarchs with sketchy agendas”