Pai is out of control

Friend,

The Senate should have fired FCC Chairman Ajit Pai last month when it had the chance because he’s proving to be crueler and more dishonest than we feared.

Now that his job is secure, Pai is wasting no time in carrying out Donald Trump’s deregulatory, fact-defying and racist agenda.

He’s doing everything he can at the FCC to hinder free expression and innovation by killing Net Neutrality, punishing poor people with attacks on the Lifeline program, and boosting broadcasters like Sinclair that have become propaganda factories for Trump.

Protect the public airwaves: Stop Trump and Pai’s big media giveaway.

Pai is fast-tracking the biggest gift to media companies in 20 years. He wants to eviscerate longstanding limits on how much local media one company can own, clearing the way for a new wave of mega-deals that would put the same cookie-cutter content on every channel and more journalists standing in the unemployment line.

And he wants to ram this through in less than three weeks with no public input or comment.

Pai’s measures are tailor-made for Sinclair, which can’t complete its takeover of Tribune without the FCC gutting the old rules. The changes would open the door to one company controlling two, three, four or more stations in a single market. If Sinclair gets its way, that means Trump TV on almost every channel.

Pai’s industry-written wish list also includes scrapping the longstanding ban on a company owning a daily newspaper and TV station in the same market. And his plan would do nothing to address the abysmally low levels of media ownership among women and people of color.

The end result? We’d be left with fewer independent and local voices than before, fewer journalists on the beat, less locally produced content, and more lobbyists promising the next time will be different.

Don’t let Trump and Pai sneak through this sketchy deal. Speak out!

Pai knows how much you’ll hate his scheme, so he’s trying to rush his plan through while you’re distracted by all the other awful things Trump is doing. That Pai is allowing no public input on these extreme changes is appalling — and it shows how he’s all talk and zero action when it comes to creating greater transparency at the FCC.

The FCC may not be asking for public input, but we need to give it to them anyway.

Don’t let the FCC sneak this through. Speak out today.

Thanks for all that you do—

Craig, Candace and the rest of the Free Press team
freepress.net

P.S. FCC Chairman Pai wants to get rid of the last remaining protections we have against massive media consolidation — and he wants to do it by Nov. 16! Speak out before it’s too late.