David and Goliath in Daytona

The Federal Communications Commission is deciding whether it should ease limits on how many media outlets a company can own in one market, but the fact is most Americans are against media consolidation. A survey by the Media and Democracy Coalition found that 57 percent were against a company owning a newspaper and a TV station in the same market, and 70 percent thought that media consolidation was a problem.

A Community or a Corporate Fiefdom?

A century ago, those with great wealth felt an obligation to their communities. Rather than hoard huge personal fortunes, they felt responsible for giving back to the society that made their wealth possible. Andrew Carnegie established public libraries in the United States and England, gave seed money to start Carnegie Mellon University, established a pension fund for college professors (now TIAA-CREF), and of course owned Carnegie Hall. More recently, in 1989, Florida lawmakers (at the urging of the st. Petersburg Times) passed a law instructing courts that corporate profits could be used for good works in the community, in an effort to prevent hostile takeovers. Florida law states that corporate decisions can be based not just on profits, but on community interests as well. It's a sad day when we need laws to tell us what should be common sense...if we want our communities to be places where we actually want to live, we need to give back to those communities and not just pillage and leave.

Good corporate citizens know that if they want to attract the best employees, they need to create an environment that people will want to relocate to. Businesses relocate to places that have thriving arts communities and good schools. Businesses philanthropically support their local communities so they are welcomed and looked upon with favor. Using child labor overseas is not good for business, and neither is taking a community's wealth and shipping it somewhere else.

Apparently Cox Communications never got the message...