[Congressional Record Volume 153, Number 194 (Tuesday, December 18, 2007)]
[House]
[Page H16649]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




               FCC NEEDS TO LISTEN TO THE AMERICAN PEOPLE

  (Mr. INSLEE asked and was given permission to address the House for 1 
minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. INSLEE. Mr. Speaker, today the Federal Communications Commission 
may do violence to its own name. The idea of communication is that you 
speak, but you also listen. And in a stunning act of bureaucratic 
arrogance, the FCC today may refuse to listen to the thousands of 
Americans who have told them to listen to America and not change the 
media consolidation laws.
  The FCC went out and held these hearings, including in Seattle, 
Washington, where thousands of people came and told the FCC in no 
uncertain terms that their arrogant effort to remove these productions 
for the first amendment could not stand, and yet they refused to listen 
to Americans who told them that.
  We know that when we lose access to information, democracy suffers. I 
hope the FCC today might have second thoughts and decide that part of 
their job is listening to the American people, in fact, the highest 
part of their job. And we're going to do everything we can, if they do 
this today, to stop in the tracks this effort to undo protection 
against media consolidation.

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