Safire on the side of truth and light?!?

[alonso_quijano]

(regarding media consolidation, anyway)

http://www.nytimes.com/2004/02/16/opinion/16SAFI.html

WASHINGTON — If one huge corporation controlled both the production and the dissemination of most of our news and entertainment, couldn't it rule the world?

Can't happen here, you say; America is the land of competition that generates new technology to ensure a diversity of voices. But consider how a supine Congress and a feckless majority of the Federal Communications Commission have been failing to protect our access to a variety of news, views and entertainment.

...

You say the U.S. government would never allow that? The Horatius lollygagging at the bridge is the F.C.C.'s Michael Powell, who never met a merger he didn't like. Cowering next to him is General Roundheels at the Bush Justice Department's Pro-Trust Division, which last year waved through Murdoch's takeover of DirecTV. (Joel Klein, Last of the Trustbusters, now teaches school in New York.)

But what of the Senate, guardian of free speech? There was Powell last week before Chairman John McCain's Commerce Committee, currying favor with cultural conservatives by pretending to be outraged over Janet Jackson's "costume reveal." The F.C.C. chairman, looking stern, pledged "ruthless and rigorous scrutiny" of any Comcast bid to merge Disney-ABC-ESPN into a huge DisCast. Media giants — always willing to agree to cosmetic "restrictions" on their way to amalgamation — chuckled at the notion of a "ruthless Mike."

[randome]

1. Privacy and Mega-Mergers

Those are two things at least that Safire firmly believes in. In those respects, he is as liberal as most of us here at DU.

And I cheer him every time he addresses those subjects.