Trump’s FCC Chair Announces Plan to Scrap Ownership Limits Standing in Way of Sinclair Mega-Merger

Ajit Pai’s disastrous proposal is tailor-made for Sinclair and other giant broadcast chains that push often slanted or cookie-cutter content over the public airwaves. He’s fulfilling a longstanding industry wish list and ignoring how decades of runaway media consolidation have significantly harmed local news and independent voices.

The Federal Communications Commission has routinely failed — and been repeatedly scolded by the courts for doing so — to consider how gutting these rules will impact already abysmally low levels of broadcast ownership by women and people of color. We need to strengthen local voices and increase viewpoint diversity, not surrender our airwaves to an ever-smaller group of giant conglomerates. Chairman Pai is clearly committed to doing the bidding of companies like Sinclair and clearing any obstacles to their voracious expansion. But his attempt will be met with fierce opposition at the Commission and in the courts.