WILLIAM SAFIRE HAS A SKEPTICAL TAKE on FCC Chairman Michael Powell’s stance regarding media concentration:

Many artists, consumers, musicians and journalists know that such protestations of cable and Internet competition by the huge dominators of content and communication are malarkey. The overwhelming amount of news and entertainment comes via broadcast and print. Putting those outlets in fewer and bigger hands profits the few at the cost of the many.

Does that sound un-conservative? Not to me. The concentration of power — political, corporate, media, cultural — should be anathema to conservatives. The diffusion of power through local control, thereby encouraging individual participation, is the essence of federalism and the greatest expression of democracy.

I agree, of course, that the concentrated political power of Big Media is a threat. And I think that Bush should respond to Safire’s call to “go on the record” by opposing Powell’s initiative, and by encouraging Attorney General John Ashcroft to have the Antitrust Division take a close look at Big Media as it is today.