You don't like Fox? Hey, get rid of it!
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Howard Dean, media meddler
: Howard Dean says he'd "break up" media companies. This is the worst of political pandering: Big media companies have been made into the boogeymen du jour and so he announces he'll go after them. No legal basis. No constitutional justification. Just because they're there.
Drudge gives us a pretty damned scary transcript of Dean's appearance on the Chris Matthews show:
"The essence of capitalism, which the right-wing never understands -- it always baffles me -- is, you got to have some rules," Dean explained to Matthews and students at Harvard.
MATTHEWS: Well, would you break up GE?
(APPLAUSE)
DEAN: I can`t -- you...
MATTHEWS: GE just buys Universal. Would you do something there about that? Would you stop that from happening?
DEAN: You can`t say -- you can`t ask me right now and get an answer, would I break up X corp...
MATTHEWS: We`ve got to do it now, because now is the only chance we can ask you, because, once you are in, we have got to live with you.
(LAUGHTER)
DEAN: No.
MATTHEWS: So, if you are going to do it, you have got to tell us now.
(CROSSTALK)
MATTHEWS: Are you going to break up the giant media enterprises in this country?
DEAN: Yes, we`re going to break up giant media enterprises. That doesn`t mean we`re going to break up all of GE.
What we`re going to do is say that media enterprises can`t be as big as they are today. I don`t think we actually have to break them up, which Teddy Roosevelt had to do with the leftovers from the McKinley administration.
Dean explained how "11 companies in this country control 90 percent of what ordinary people are able to read and watch on their television. That`s wrong. We need to have a wide variety of opinions in every community. We don`t have that because of Michael Powell and what George Bush has tried to do to the FCC."
Matthews continued:
"Would you break up Fox?"
(LAUGHTER)
MATTHEWS: I`m serious.
DEAN: I`m keeping a...
MATTHEWS: Would you break it up? Rupert Murdoch has "The Weekly Standard." It has got a lot of other interests. It has got "The New York Post." Would you break it up?
DEAN: On ideological grounds, absolutely yes, but...
(LAUGHTER)
MATTHEWS: No, seriously. As a public policy, would you bring industrial policy to bear and break up these conglomerations of power?
DEAN: I don`t want to answer whether I would break up Fox or not, because, obviously
(CROSSTALK)
MATTHEWS: Well, how about large media enterprises?
DEAN: Let me -- yes, let me get...
(LAUGHTER)
DEAN: The answer to that is yes.
I would say that there is too much penetration by single corporations in media markets all over this country. We need locally-owned radio stations. There are only two or three radio stations left in the state of Vermont where you can get local news anymore. The rest of it is read and ripped from the AP.
MATTHEWS: So what are you going to do about it? You`re going to be president of the United States, what are you going to do?
DEAN: What I`m going to do is appoint people to the FCC that believe democracy depends on getting information from all portions of the political spectrum, not just one.
Translation: He's going to meddle in news. He's going to decree who can and can't own media outlets. He's going to break up companies for sport and political pandering. He's not concerned with the First Amendment. He's not concerned with the realities of the media business today (if you don't allow some level of consolidation, then weak outlets will die).
Yes, I work in big media. But I don't own it. I just work in it because I love news and media and I cherish the lack of government involvement in media in this country; I cherish our freedom of speech; I am a First Amendment absolutist. I do not want to see government meddling in our free speech.
This isn't Europe, Howard. Not yet, anyway.
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