FCC wrong on media ownership

Your recent coverage of the back-and-forth at the FCC over media ownership (“FCC may find it has the power to reregulate cable,” Nov. 13) totally missed the larger story: that FCC Chairman Kevin Martin is playing games with a house of cards that is likely to tumble.

Martin is seeking to virtually eliminate the media ownership rules that are vital to protecting the diversity of voices controlling television stations and newspaper outlets.

For political cover, he is using a bizarre and legally dubious authority to promulgate new regulations that he claims will promote diversity, lower consumer prices and more choice. In fact, every study shows that his various proposals to regulate the television industry will do just the opposite.

The FCC’s flacks may want us to believe that the media ownership package is balanced when it is not.

If promulgated, it will be a pox both on consumers and on the diverse sources that provide them the television news and entertainment that they want.

E. Faye Williams Chairwoman National Congress of Black Women

Washington