I'm writing a public policy proposal on media reform, and I want to focus on the present media conglomerates as well as their control over the television networks, in addition to government influence on the media.
I already have the genesis of a public policy proposal on how to reform media, and by reform, I mean "re-regulating" the media companies, and reinstating the Fairness Doctrine, as well as demanding complete transparency on the part of the government in its deals with media enterprises. I'm also toying with the idea of instituting a ban on any government propaganda being disseminated to the media, but I'd like to hear possible reasons why I shouldn't include this in my policy paper.
However, I'm having a bit of trouble pulling together the threads I need to establish the background of how the media conglomerates came to be in this state today. I've done research on the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which I feel was the major catalyst in the way that media companies came to be in the state they are in today. It seems that the so-called deregulation of the media industry which was left up to the FCC, ended up giving the entire media industry a complete lack of accountability. This shouldn't come as a surprise, considering many of the members in the FCC have corporate ties to the media conglomerates.
I'm basically threshing this policy paper outline out, and I think it needs more focus, and perhaps more depth. My professor, however, warned me against going into more details. I originally wanted to examine how the reporting on television, radio, and the newspapers were influenced by the media companies that owns them, but I had to cut the focus down to one, which is the television.
It's going to end up as a thirty-five page paper, but I'm excited about writing it, and what I've found so far shows to be rather revealing about how the average American consumer is being misinformed by their own media outlets every day.
When the policy paper's done, I'm looking forward to putting here on Dailykos.