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An assault on democracy and media diversity

The Rupert Murdochs of this world are slowly strangling media ownership and diversity. Witness the recent takeover of the Wall Street Journal. Now, George Bush is seemingly doing everything within his power to help his "mates" in the media to consolidate their hold on media outlets, as John Nichols details in his piece in The Nation:

"President Bush is the lamest of lame-duck chief executives, with no moral authority, no legislative majority and no popular domestic or foreign-policy agendas. So what can he do with the remaining months of a failed presidency? Make his corporate allies rich and destroy the essential underpinnings of American democracy.

To that end, Bush's chairman of the Federal Communications Commission has initiated a scheme to radically rewrite media ownership rules so that one corporation can own the daily newspapers, the weekly "alternative" newspaper, the city magazine, suburban publications, the eight largest radio stations, the dominant broadcast and cable television stations, popular internet news and calendar sites, billboards and concert halls in even the largest American city."

Don't for one moment think that this momentum will be confined to America. Australia already has the densest concentration of media of anywhere in the world. It isn't going to get any better with both political parties toadying up to the Packers and Murdochs.

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