Today's Quote 10.20.06

"The evidence is overwhelmingly clear that further relaxation or elimination of media ownership limits by the FCC is not in the public interest," says study author Dr. Mark Cooper, Director of Research, Consumer Federation of America, another MDC member. "This research, taken together with the FCC's own research that it suppressed, proves that media concentration in local markets, consolidation into national chains, and conglomeration across media types all harm localism and diversity in local news markets. Local TV stations and local daily newspapers continue to be the dominant sources of local news and the most influential by far. The Internet is not a significant source of local news. In fact, the few who go online for local news frequently surf to the web sites of the local TV station or the local daily newspaper. The misguided rules the FCC proposed are simply out of touch with these facts."