Speech is at the heart of being human. Language, free and open, allows us to express ideals, communicate with one another and work together in our search for the path to ultimate truth. However, speech becomes useless unless somebody is allowed to listen.
Michael Powell leaves the Federal Communications Commission with a nauseating legacy behind him. Under him, detested deregulation the process of allowing media conglomerates to gobble up ever-larger shares of the marketplace of ideas — reached new agonizing heights, enough that his own Republican colleagues broke ranks to protest. While his lax leadership may have been good for business, it was bad for the rest of us. We would like to think that our information comes from unbiased sources, but too many corporations have given into politicization for us to be quite so naïve.
Clear Channel, the company behind 60 percent of the nation’s rock radio stations, showed how quickly it was willing to support censorship when, after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, it sent out a list of 150 songs that might be called “offensive,” including Louis Armstrong’s “What a Wonderful World” and Cat Stevens’ “Peace Train.” During the election, Sinclair Broadcast Group, a company with the power to reach a quarter of the televisions in U.S. households, refused to air Ted Koppel’s speech on Nightline in which he listed off the names of all the U.S. soldiers who have died in Iraq. Both companies are tied to the Bush family.
The more consolidated the media are, the fewer opportunities viewpoints have to flourish and the easier it is to pull one over on the nation. Without separate and distinct voices, there are no checks on politicians or on the smiling people feeding us what is laughingly labeled “news.”
Powell has supported more obvious, but no less insidious, censorship in the form of vague and restrictive guidelines that are selectively enforced. “Nipplegate,” served a la Janet Jackson, cost Viacom over a half million dollars in fines and still apparently reverberates in the hearts and minds of the people who are too afraid to show “Saving Private Ryan,” lest they invite the Gods of Silencing’s wrath. The Public Broadcasting Service had to bleep words from documentaries on Puerto Rican poets and Masterpiece Theatre in order to keep from treading an almost invisible line, resulting in broadcasts that sounded less like television and more like an inebriated gorilla playing Operation. Even the British comedies are considered worth cutting for their use of improper language. The music group Bono also narrowly escaped being burned at the stake for daring to utter an on-air expletive. The shame! The agony! Think of the children!
Think of the First Amendment. Think of impervious committees that use the rules as an excuse to poison programs they disagree with. I wonder if Powell would show the same concern if anti-abortion groups ran advertisements with graphic imagery. Perhaps I am being overly cynical, but the vicious and the vindictive actions of a single committee have had a chilling effect on speech that I find singularly repulsive.
Powell may be retiring, but the alternatives hardly seem better. Though noted for their independence and less radical views than Powell, both of the leading candidates for chairman of the FCC have previously had their pockets lined with telecommunication conglomerates’ contributions or endorsements. It is doubtful that their autonomy stretches any further than their integrity.
This is the price we pay for democracy: electorates choosing foolish administrations that use their ignorance and arrogance to shut out independent voices. Government officials should be a little more invested in civil liberties than in furthering their own dynasties. It might be worthwhile for the power-hungry to remember that arbitrary laws will someday be in the hands of the enemy. It would be better if everyone could agree that some things, such as freedom of information, should be held inviolate, but blood-thirsty bureaucracies intoxicated with their own power will only become more and more abusive unless a truly neutral party comes to stop it, and no court is completely above partisan interests.
Perhaps Powell’s most frightening move was the tyranny he inflicted, not on the American public, but on his own allies. The New York Times reported that one member of the FCC voted against the chairman only to have his travel budget slashed to nothing. He paid a price for his choice to dissent.
When any governing body tries to suppress opinion by cutting the funds of those who disagree with it, democracy is undermined to an intolerable degree. Justice Anthony Kennedy reminds us that “inconvenience does not absolve the government of its obligation to tolerate speech.” Let us listen to these words before we lose the freedom so preciously hoarded.

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