Powell clears the air

It is a relief to know that Michael Powell will be resigning from the Federal Communications Commission.

For years, the FCC chairman has wanted to raise the limits on how many TV stations, radio stations and newspapers one company may own in a local market. Those limits are high enough already. For democracy to work, there need to be many voices, and for that there need to be many owners. Powell and the other FCC Republicans have tended to see the issue in terms of price competition. That is fine as far as it goes, but this industry also needs another sort of competition, that of viewpoints and ideas.

The Constitution forbids the government from managing that directly, but it may set an economic rule that affects it indirectly. A rule limiting the number of TV and radio stations one company may own in a city, or forbidding one owner from having a TV station and a daily newspaper, is reasonable — and we have had such a rule for decades.

The need for it ought to be obvious, but Powell could not see it.

People spoke at public hearings all over the country and he didn't listen. They wrote tens of thousands of letters.

Congress, including almost all the Republicans, got the message, and voted a resolution opposing the FCC on this issue. But the FCC majority went ahead with a proposal to loosen the restrictions.

Mercifully, a federal appeals court threw out the FCC's decision last year and told them to do it over.

According to one account, this has been a big embarrassment to President Bush. We hope so, and that our president perceives the message in it. His next appointment to the FCC should be someone less rigid, more receptive to the public's concerns and more interested in maintaining a diversity of media voices.