Neoliberalism Of 1996

The Telecommunications Act of 1996 was signed into existence in order to amend the Communications Act of 1934. The 1934 Act created the Federal Communications Commission to oversee and regulate these industries, so the 1996 Act was created in order to deregulate the media industry. However, the creation of the act represented a major change in American telecommunication law, because it was the first time that the Internet was included in broadcasting and spectrum allotment. What the 1996 Act was met with harsh criticism because it allowed for media cross-ownership and many Americans felt like this act was going to led to the monopolization of the media. The Federal Communications Commission beleived that the goal of the law was to allow an increase in competition in the communication business.
What the US Telecommunication Act of 1996 did was eliminate the …show more content…
Neoliberalism is a set of national and international policies that requires corporate and business domination of all social affairs and little societal opposition. It is almost always intertwined with a deep belief in the ability of markets to use new technologies to solve social problems far better than any alternative course. Neoliberalism had promised individual freedom guaranteed by the freedom of the market and out of trade which has involved the privatization of public assets, the opening up of natural resources to private exploitation, increased foreign direct investments and “freer” more unfettered trade, and created an export-led growth favored over import substitution. It is here that one can see why the existing commercial media system is so important to the neoliberal project, for it is singularly brilliant at generating the precise sort of bogus political culture that permits business domination to proceed without using a police state or facing effective popular