Stop the FCC - Save Community Media
Take Action Now > bit.ly/savebmc
If you have not seen Won't You Be My Neighbor? yet, I recommend it highly - a documentary about the late, great Fred Rogers and his Neighborhood, and his wonderfully positive legacy and the good effect his TV show had on society as a whole and children, individually.
These days, or on any day of the week, we all can use a little more Mr. Rogers.
On behalf on everyone at BMC, I hope we can follow Fred Rogers' good example about about treating others with kindness regardless of their opinions. And I hope we remember how mass media & social media can powerfully influence children, teenagers and adults to take positive, constructive actions or negative, destructive actions.
While you watch this brief video clip of Fred Rogers, testifying before Congress in 1969 to save the funding of public television, please take into account this:
The Federal Communications Commission of today, is considering a similar move that could well be fatal to BMC, and hundreds of community TV stations across the United States.
Please tell Congress to to tell the FCC to vote NO on the "FNPRM on cable franchising". Please click on the link at the bottom . . .
Why?
Well, consider this: Facebook, Twitter, & Google for example, even with their combined technological heft and wealth, cannot stop foreign entities & commercial enterprises from hacking their platforms and databases to unduly influence American consumers and voters with false data, robots, and fake issues.
On the other hand, the Belmont Media Center, like our many colleagues at hyper-local community media centers across the nation, has never once been hacked by the Russian government - that's over the 40 years that community television has existed, compared with less than half that time in which "social media" has been around.
Armed with minuscule budgets, dedicated staffers and most of all, through the work of engaged & informed volunteers, community media centers continue to connect real people to real issues which affect real lives, local governments, & schools and real communities.
If the Federal Communications Commission approves the proposed rule-making, a vital, irreplaceable, open, non-commercial, and truly publicly accessible nationwide platform of free speech and creative expression will be lost. Our democracy and our neighborhoods, like what Mr. Rogers valued, will be poorer for it. Act now!
bit.ly/savebmc
Questions or comments? Contact me, Jeffrey Hansell, Executive Director of BMC at (617) 484-2443 or email jeff@belmontmedia.org