Josh Silver at Free Press Action, and other media activists are baning the drums of happiness over the Senate’s action Thursday night.

Thursday night, the Senate cast a near-unanimous vote to reverse the Federal Communication Commission’s December 2007 decision to let media companies own both a major TV or radio station and a major daily newspaper in the same city.

Sen. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.), who introduced the rarely used “resolution of disapproval,” said last night that “the FCC is supposed to be a referee for the media industry, but instead they’ve been cheerleaders in favor of more consolidation. … We already have too much concentration in the media.”

Senator Barack Obama added his support to the resolution saying, “I urge my colleagues in the House of Representatives to expeditiously pass the legislation.”

The Senate vote is good news for everyone who is fed up with a media system, that, in the words of Jon Stewart, is “hurting America” with propaganda pundits, embedded journalists, horse-race election coverage, and celebrity gossip posing as news. It reflects growing awareness — in Congress and with average Americans — of the perils of concentrated media ownership. Namely, insatiable profit pressures that gut newsrooms, replace labor-intensive investigative news with salacious, cheap-to-cover stories, and encourage the dumbing-down of the most pressing issues into 30-second sound bites and partisan shout-fests.

Media concentration is also central to the rise of extremists like Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh, who overwhelm the dial on conglomerates owned and run by businessmen with radical partisan politics.

Stop Big Media

[thx Jack Kaplan]