Letter to the FCC: Make Diversity a Priority
The media have enormous power to shape our culture. Unfortunately, our mainstream media often perpetuate negative and harmful representations of people, especially women and people of color. So it’s not a coincidence that the people who own our country’s broadcast outlets are overwhelmingly white and male.
“It matters who controls our airwaves,” Free Press Senior Advisor Joseph Torres said at last week’s FCC hearing in Atlanta. “Women and people of color deserve better opportunities to become broadcasters and to serve local communities. Unfortunately, policies that once existed to bolster ownership diversity are now gone. What’s more, the FCC has allowed fewer and fewer companies to control more of the public airwaves. Allowing more consolidation will only further erode the diversity of our media system.”
That’s why more than 50 groups representing a wide range of women’s, media and social justice organizations, including Free Press, sent a letter to the Federal Communications Commission urging the agency to make diversity issues a priority in its upcoming media ownership review.
The signers of Thursday’s letter ask that the FCC evaluate the impact of its media ownership rules on ownership opportunities for women and people of color; take proactive measures to promote ownership of broadcast stations by underrepresented groups; and guard against further erosion of media ownership among these groups by maintaining existing media ownership limits.
Read the letter below. Then send your own message to FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski.