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I thought you might be interested in the article from the FAIR web site. The following article will be appended to your message: Felons on the Air By Sam Husseini General Electric's ownership of the NBC TV network has been in the news in recent months. As Extra! went to press, companies like Time Warner, Disney, ITT and Turner Broadcasting have reportedly been negotiating to either buy NBC outright or enter into some kind of partnership with GE. But a little-noted aspect of communications law raises questions about GE's ownership of NBC's broadcast licenses -- and its ability to sell those licenses to another company. Shady Characters The Federal Communications Act of 1934 created the Federal Communications Commission to regulate the airwaves, which are considered public property. The act states that the FCC should assess the "character...of the applicant to operate the station," and ensure that the "public interest...would be served by the granting" of a license. Despite a general decline in the FCC's enforcement of the public interest aspect of this law, there is at least one factor that the FCC still considers before granting a license: whether the applicant has committed a felony. In 1989, Rep. John Dingell (D-Mich.), who chairs the House Energy and Commerce Committee, complained of FCC laxness in examining felons (Broadcasting, 1/1/90); his office said the policy "represents one of the excesses of the last eight years." This apparently led the FCC to issue a statement saying it would "consider all felony convictions," as well as "misdemeanors in certain circumstances," as factors in granting or renewing broadcast licenses. This announcement toughened a policy that had been weakened in 1985. To read the rest of the article, please click on the link below. http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1254 This article was published on Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting's Website (http://www.fair.org).

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