Free Press Scares the Boots Off the Telco Army

The phone and cable industry has almost 500 lobbyists in Washington. Free Press has one. If you don’t believe me, check out this graphic.

But judging by the telco lobby’s frequent mentions of Free Press in their recent comments to the FCC -- which is part of the agency’s public process to shape a national broadband plan -- you might think it was the other way around. In fact, AT&T alone mentioned Free Press more than 30 times in its comments!

We must be doing something right.

Thanks to more than 16,000 Free Press activists who submitted comments to the FCC this summer in support of Net Neutrality, and to our own Free Press researchers who submitted detailed comments, the phone and cable lobby is scared.

So scared, in fact, that they posted their own deceptive comments to the FCC in a last-ditch effort to block any movement toward reform. These comments reached such heights of absurdity that even the FCC’s plan coordinator Blair Levin complained of their sloppiness.

Most of that sloppiness came in the form of alarmist and specious arguments in which the telcos suggested that if the FCC were to adopt the policies advocated by Free Press and others, the open Internet would pretty much collapse.

The fact is, our message is getting through and we’re on our way to protecting the open Internet forever (see our reply comments to the original group of comments here).

But the fight is heating up, and we’re going to need your help. After all, they have hundreds of people to press their case in Washington, and we have only one.

Free Press is a national, nonpartisan organization working to reform the media. Free Press does not support or oppose any candidate for public office. Through education, organizing and advocacy, we promote diverse and independent media ownership, strong public media and universal access to communications.