The youth of America should "get more involved" in issues such as the proposed Comcast-NBC Universal merger, because "you can and will be affected by these ongoing issues," Marco Elizondo, a young person himself, writes in an issue of People's World, a publication that describes itself as a national, grassroots newspaper and the direct descendant of the Daily Worker.
Elizondo's colleague at the publication took things even further. Teresa Albano flatly wrote in another story that "such a monopoly of content and distribution is a major threat to democracy and the public's interests."
On a more conventional note (if there is such a thing when it comes to this merger), Comcast (Nasdaq: CMCSA) spokeswoman Sena Fitzmaurice, who should get a raise for the amount of time she spends addressing merger-related issues, defended the fact that Comcast spent $6.9 million to lobby the federal government in the first six months of the year compared to $6.1 million last year and that General Electric, owner of NBC Universal, jacked its lobbying expenditures from $11.7 million to $15.4 million.
Not all that money, Fitzmaurice said, was applied to the merger, and many contributions were made before the merger was even announced on Dec. 3 of last year.
For more:
- see this People's World story
- and this story
- BusinessWeek has this story
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