Powell Movement

Just how embarrassed is Colin Powell about his own son?

The Federal Communications Commission ordered its staff to destroy all copies of a draft study that suggested greater concentration of media ownership would hurt local TV news coverage, a former lawyer at the agency says.

The report, written in 2004, came to light during the Senate confirmation hearing for FCC Chairman Kevin Martin.

Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif. received a copy of the report “indirectly from someone within the FCC who believed the information should be made public,” according to Boxer spokeswoman Natalie Ravitz.

Adam Candeub, now a law professor at Michigan State University, said senior managers at the agency ordered that “every last piece” of the report be destroyed. “The whole project was just stopped _ end of discussion,” he said. Candeub was a lawyer in the FCC’s Media Bureau at the time the report was written and communicated frequently with its authors, he said.

Though this AP report studiously avoids mentioning that as FCC chairman, Michael Powell was the likely driving force behind supressing the study, citing "senior managers" as responsible, the story does indicate that Powell was the one who initially ordered the study, a study that apparently did not produce the desired result sought by Powell. Powell has since moved on to the RAND Corporation, where he contributes tank thinking in furtherance of US militarism. You know, where the big bucks are.