Samizdat

Remember that word over the next few months--as well as--heaven forfend!--the next few years if the following holds true.

The FCC is proposing to relax the rules guarding ownership of the media. Right now, owners of major media outlets, newspapers, television stations, etc., cannot own different media in the same market.

The FCC is considering allowing ownership of television and print in the same market.

That means a much tighter control of information than we currently have.

One of the ways the Soviets of the USSR kept themselves in power for as long as they did was their tight control of information. Even mimeograph machines (Remember those? You do? You don't look that old!) were controlled by the state.

Samizdat is defined in Wikipedia as: Etymologically, the word "samizdat" is made out of "sam" (Russian: сам, "self, by oneself") and "izdat" (Russian: издат, shortened "издательство", izdatel'stvo, "publisher"), thus, self published, with this interesting bit of info: Self-published and self-distributed literature has a long history, but samizdat is a unique phenomenon in the post-Stalin USSR and other countries with similar socio-economic systems. Under the grip of censorship of police state these societies used underground literature for self-analysis and self-expression.

It is devoutly to be wished that the United States doesn't fall to the point where we need to engage in our own samizdat to find out what's happening in our government.

Keep the media competitive!

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