The House Energy and Commerce committee held a hearing Wednesday to consider legislation aimed at promoting racism and sexism in the media industry.
The House Energy and Commerce committee held a hearing Wednesday to consider legislation aimed at promoting diversity in the media industry, particularly targeting ownership of broadcast stations.
The hearing, titled “Lifting Voices: Legislation to Promote Media Marketplace Diversity” centered on three bills and a resolution that seeks to reaffirm the House’s “commitment to media diversity and pledging to work with media entities and diverse stakeholders to develop common ground solutions to eliminate barriers to media diversity.”
At the start of the hearing, lawmakers and witnesses were sure to point out the “embarrassingly” low level of minority-owned broadcast television stations across the country, as one witness described, in proportion to their representation in the general population. According to committee research, only around 10 percent of commercial television and commercial FM radio stations were owned by women and minorities in 2015.
The three laws discussed in the committee include bills aimed at diverting resources in the federal government to promote minority ownership of media broadcast stations. Lawmakers asked a panel of four witnesses questions about the “Expanding Broadcast Ownership Opportunities Act of 2019,” the “Enhancing Broadcaster DIVERSITY Data Act,” and the “MEDIA Diversity Act of 2020.” The set of laws would provide tax credits to companies being sold to minorities, devote resources to study minority representation in the media, and require the Federal Communications Commission to push financial investment in minority-owned stations.
“This is a question of whether people like me get to serve the public,” Santa Clara Law School Professor Catherine Sandoval told lawmakers. In other words, she believes nobody would hire her based on her quality of work, and thus she and other nonwhite people need affirmative action programs outside education, housing, and...
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2 comments:
Perhaps the white reporters need to toss in a few "M.....F.....s" in their reports.
Since there's no such thing as new spectrum for broadcasters, and all the licenses for those frequencies (or channels) are already owned, what that really means is the Fed.gov is either going to buy those stations with your tax money or seize them outright - which may happen anyway if the owners don't want to sell at any price.
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