By Camille T. Taiara

As overworked and underpaid media activists took time off from their jobs, rose at dawn, and made the two-hour drive from San Francisco to Monterey to line up for passes to the Federal Communications Commission's localism hearing July 21, FCC chair Michael Powell vacationed on Cape Cod.

"As always, Michael Powell has plenty of time for big media companies and no time for the people whose democracy is being compromised by his policy choices," Free Press managing director Josh Silver told Broadcasting and Cable.

Indeed, Powell, who'd found the time to visit San Francisco and Menlo Park a week earlier to meet with industry leaders, also missed a prior localism hearing in Rapid City, S.D., in May – the third of six nationwide scheduled in response to mass public outcry against his new set of rules loosening media ownership caps.

Powell's snub was just one more symbol of just how astonishingly unresponsive the GOP-dominated FCC has been to public input when it comes to its mission of managing the public airwaves in the public interest.

The FCC scheduled just one hearing for the entire western United States – in the middle of the work week and far from any major urban centers. Only one of the three commissioners who'd voted in favor of deregulation, Kathleen Abernathy, was present at the meeting.

Meanwhile, the mainstream media have continued to black out the story. And Clear Channel, the nation's largest radio conglomerate and arguably the greatest beneficiary of media deregulation so far, may have made an underhanded, although ultimately failed, attempt to stack the hearing in its favor, according to Monterey resident Jim Burns.

Burns, whose case against Clear Channel radio stations for airing jokes and songs encouraging statutory rape was closed by the FCC in June, told the Bay Guardian he found himself among 40 or 50 Clear Channel employees waiting in line for a ticket to the hearing during the first round of giveaways July 19. He reported hearing one Clear Channel staffer telling another that his boss had ordered him to be there.

"A multibillion-dollar company that has access to the FCC anytime it likes paid its employees to gobble up tickets meant for the public," Burns said.

Kim Bryant, general manager and vice president of Clear Channel Radio in the Monterey, Salinas, and Santa Cruz region, confirmed some Clear Channel employees did line up for tickets and attend the hearing, but disputed Burns's numbers and denied that anyone was ordered to go. "If they didn't want to go, they didn't have to go," Bryant told us, adding that only about five Clear Channel radio employees went to the hearing, as well as another five or so from Clear Channel TV.

Regardless, the hearing represented a resounding victory for media democracy advocates. About 600 people showed up to hear panel presentations and to speak out, according to the FCC's Localism Task Force. Pubic comment – which was limited to two minutes a person and didn't begin until 8:30 p.m. – lasted until midnight. Almost everybody who spoke argued eloquently about the perils of a corporate oligarchy.

Among some of the highlights and better points made by those who stepped up to the mic that night:

• Inflation-adjusted wages are decreasing. Corporations are paying less and less of the federal tax burden from which schools and other important services are funded. Yet we rarely hear about it on the news.

• Corporations spend tens of millions of dollars on ads to defeat measures to extend health care to the uninsured and other progressive legislation. Without real reporting on the issues, important electoral campaigns don't stand a chance.

• We need more public interest programming, especially during prime time – including "real civic discourse" on controversial issues and not just generic public service announcements.

• Accountability is the norm in education. Why is it anathema in broadcasting, a local community college professor asked.

• An entire generation has been excluded from the airwaves thanks to poor public interest requirements and a lack of competition for licenses – the result of FCC practices that cater to big business interests. Several speakers said we need to create new "entry points."

• One speaker asked why it is that "for the first time, we're finding out what the rest of the world has known for a year" when it comes to the Bush administration's false claims leading to our war in Iraq.

• Children's needs are not being served by the required children's programming.

• Media Watch founder Ann Simonton said the media have a "history of covering activism with a snicker" without taking a serious look at protesters' arguments. She also worried about the "real-life consequences" of sexist and racist hate spewed by today's talk shows.

• The predatory commercial environment makes it difficult for independent and locally owned stations to survive. Yet those stations are most accountable to, and best at serving, local communities.

• Minority-owned, local radio is "a dying breed."

• Our media are failing miserably to reflect important demographic changes. There needs to be more programming that addresses issues affecting Latino, Vietnamese, and other "minority" populations, that celebrates those cultures, and that is in immigrants' native languages.

"Corporate owners are making millions off the public trust," one speaker said. "I think it's time to start collecting rent."

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