State adviser, Marxist also want more FCC control of airwaves

“Net neutrality” rules must be implemented while the government should
quintuple federal funding for public and community broadcasting,
argued Ben Scott, the State Department’s recently appointed policy
adviser for innovation.

http://www.keywiki.org/index.php/Ben_Scott

Scott was writing last year in a radical magazine in an article co-
authored by Robert W. McChesney (left), an avowed Marxist activist who
has called for the dismantlement, “brick-by-brick,” of the U.S.
capitalist system, with America being rebuilt as a socialist society.

http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/i...asp?indid=2227
http://www.keywiki.org/index.php/Robert_McChesney

McChesney is the founder of the George Soros-funded Free Press, which
petitions for more government control of the Internet and news media.

http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/g...asp?grpid=7103
http://www.keywiki.org/index.php/Free_Press

Scott and McChesney also recommended the U.S. impose ownership limits
on local radio, TV, and cable channels while pushing for more control
of the media by the FCC.

The duo were writing in the January/February 2009 edition of Tikkun
Magazine, run by avowed Marxist Michael Lerner.

http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/i....asp?indid=632
http://www.keywiki.org/index.php/Michael_Lerner

Lerner has been accused of using the magazine to justify Palestinian
terror and has written articles in which he suggested the 9/11 attacks
were a response to U.S. policies.

“Whatever issue tops your list of priorities, real progress will be
impossible unless we first change our media system,” wrote Scott and
McChesney. “Currently, access to communications and control over media
content are vested in the hands of corporate titans.”

The two recommended the following policy implementations:

* Restore the original mission of the Federal Communications
Commission as a guardian of the public interest. The FCC must become a
twenty-first-century agency focused on the digital media marketplace
of ideas and commerce, with a commitment to public engagement,
transparency, and accountability.

* Support ownership limits and public oversight to foster more
diverse, competitive, and local ownership of radio, TV, and cable
channels.

* At a minimum, quintuple the federal funding for public and community
broadcasting, to at least $3 billion annually-earmarking money for
children’s and public affairs programming. Funding should come from
fees paid by commercial licensees to the public airwaves.

* Ban all advertising on broadcast and cable TV programs where over 33
percent of the viewership is under the age of twelve. This is similar
to the rules in many European nations.

* Establish “Network Neutrality” rules that guarantee free speech and
a free market on the Internet by prohibiting discrimination,
manipulation, and interference by network owners like Comcast or AT&T.

* Restore competition to the market in high-speed internet access to
break the hold of the cable-telephone duopoly on the nation’s
“broadband” infrastructure.

* Transition all public subsidies for telephone networks to fund
infrastructure to bring the benefits of broadband to all Americans.

* Authorize the license of more noncommercial, low-power FM radio
stations in communities nationwide.

* Open antitrust investigations into vertically integrated media
companies that control production and distribution through anti-
competitive practices.

“Net neutrality” refers to government interference to propose a
principle for users’ access to networks participating in the Internet.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2nnyK_uMhpk

The principle states that if a given user pays for a certain level of
Internet access, and another user pays for the same level of access,
then the two users should be able to connect to each other at the
subscribed level of access.

Just last week, FCC Commissioners voted 3-2 to approve controversial
“net neutrality” rules, with the content of those rules, about 100
pages, still being rolled out.

This past May, Scott was named a policy adviser for innovation at the
State Department. He previously served as director of McChesney’s Free
Press.

Scott authored a book, “The Future of Media,” which was edited by
McChesney, who doubles as a professor at the University of Illinois
and is former editor of the Marxist journal Monthly Review.

http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/g...asp?grpid=7105
http://www.keywiki.org/index.php/Monthly_Review

In February 2009, McChesney wrote in a column, “In the end, there is
no real answer but to remove brick-by-brick the capitalist system
itself, rebuilding the entire society on socialist principles.”

The board of Free Press has included a slew of radicals, such as
Obama’s former “green jobs” czar Van Jones, who resigned after it was
exposed he founded a communist organization.

http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/i...asp?indid=2406
http://www.keywiki.org/index.php/Van_Jones

In May, WND reported Free Press published a study advocating the
development of a “world class” government-run media system in the
U.S.

Now the group is pushing a new organization, StopBigMedia.com, that
advocates the downfall of “big media” and the creation of new media to
“promote local ownership, amplify minority voices, support quality
journalism, and bring local artists, voices and viewpoints to the
airwaves.”

Free Press has ties to other members of the Obama administration.

Obama’s “Internet czar,” Susan P. Crawford, spoke at a Free Press’s
May 14, 2009, “Changing Media” summit in Washington, D.C.

Crawford’s pet project, OneWebNow, lists as “participating
organizations” Free Press and the controversial Association of
Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN.

http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/g...asp?grpid=6968
http://www.keywiki.org/index.php/ACORN

Crawford and Kevin Werbach, who co-directed the Obama transition
team’s Federal Communications Commission Review team, are advisory
board members at Public Knowledge, a George Soros-funded public
interest group.

http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/i....asp?indid=977

A Public Knowledge advisory board member is Timothy Wu, who is also
chairman of the board for Free Press.

Like Public Knowledge, Free Press also has received funds from Soros’
Open Society Institute.

http://www.discoverthenetworks.org/v...ory.asp?id=589

http://therealbarackobama.wordpress....l-of-airwaves/