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Cantwell promises swift response in Senate if FCC relaxes media ownership rules
In a strongly worded letter sent today to Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin Martin, Senator Maria Cantwell and a bipartisan group of her colleagues warned that any action to relax media ownership rules and open the floodgates to consolidation would be met with a swift response in Congress.
Cantwell didn't mince words in her announcement:
Congress is certainly not afraid to take action against the FCC...Time and again we’ve told the FCC that if it moves forward without adequate feedback from the public, there will be consequences. There are consequences to ignoring the American public’s right to participate fully in the rule making process. In the Senate, we’re going to make sure that if we have to pass legislation stopping the FCC, we will.
Martin's proposal, introduced less than a hundred hours after the FCC's final hearing in Seattle on the matter, includes a rollback of the rule that prevents corporate cross ownership of newspapers and television stations in the same market.