Our readers may recall last week when media giant Comcast threatened to pull all of its funding support from a small non-profit charity because a teenage girl there dared to tweet a criticism of Comcast for hiring former FCC Chairman Baker as its own private lobbyist. Well, Comcast would like you to forget about all that and trust that this time it really will support free, independent press, honestly.
You see, in order to push through the merger (assisted by Commissioner Baker, of course) between media conglomerates Comcast and NBC, Comcast agreed to "partner with" a minimum of five independent, non-profit news organizations. Ironically, the whole point of independent journalism is to allow reporters the freedom of commenting on stories of interest to the public without concern as to how such stories might affect the profits of corporate giants such as, say, Comcast. And while Comcast might want us to believe that freedom of the press and corporate imperialism are not mutually exclusive, their history of punitive treatment towards critics seems like pretty damning evidence to the contrary.
Reporter Josh Stearns over at Save The News suggests that readers should think twice about assuming that Comcast has the capacity, never mind the intention, to engage in truly free press:
The Reel Grrls example has to be a consideration for nonprofit journalism organizations who are thinking about working with the media giant around these local news partnerships. What happens when one of these nonprofits wants to cover a local telecommunications issue, or do a public interest piece on rising cable rates? Do local reporters have to worry if they tweet about how bad their Comcast Internet service is? If Comcast is watching its “digital footprint” this closely, you can bet it won’t be happy if one of their nonprofit news partners wants to investigate a story where the company is implicated....
If Comcast is willing to threaten a local youth media organization over a tweet, what would stop it from pulling funding from a local nonprofit journalism website over a story? For news organizations looking to get out from underneath the thumb of commercial media pressures that have gutted newsrooms and shaped coverage, these two are too close for comfort. And for the public looking for independent, watchdog journalism, be cautious if there’s a Comcast logo in the corner.
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