Open Letter to the NAB

Below is an open letter to the president of the NAB from FAIR and several notable media activists and organizations, including Noam Chomsky, Ben Bagdikian, Robert McChesney, Media Alliance, Global Exchange, and others.

If you\'d like to write to Mr. Fritts yourself, he can be reached at efritts [at] nab.org, or 202-429-5300 (NAB general phone), 202-775-3520 (NAB fax). FAIR always advises that polite letters are taken more seriously.

http://www.fair.org/nab.html

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Edward O. Fritts
President and CEO
National Association of Broadcasters
1771 N Street, NW
Washington, DC 20036

September 18, 2000

Dear Mr. Fritts,

We are writing to remind the NAB that this country\'s airwaves are the property of the American people. Independent, critical and genuinely representative media are crucial to a healthy democracy; without them, citizens lose the means to control and participate in the public debate that sets the nation\'s political agenda.

As it stands today, the broadcasting industry is failing to serve the public. Dissenting political viewpoints are routinely marginalized in national mainstream media, and the interests and perspectives of women, people of color, labor, local communities, and lesbians, gays and bisexuals are consistently underrepresented. Across the country, programming that addresses local concerns is almost non-existent: A study by the Benton Foundation and the Media Access Project recently found that local public affairs shows made up less than one half of one percent of the fare offered by commercial broadcasters. Thirty-five percent of the stations surveyed had no local news, and 25 percent had no local public affairs programming whatsoever.

The broadcasters represented by the NAB get free access to our airwaves