The FCC voted this morning to re-examine its rules on media ownership. Chairman Kevin Martin described the review of the rules as a "vital process" and said that the FCC would take a different approach this time around, as opposed to two years ago when the issue was bogged down in the courts.

FCC Democrats Michael Copps and Jonathan Adelstein voted against certain aspects of the decision, saying that the commission needs more time to discuss the issues involved and give the American public the option to comment on the changes. Martin said that the FCC will give the public 120 days for commenting in six hearings around the country. He also says that the FCC will launch a Web site specifically for input from the public on media ownership.

Adelstein said the re-examining of the rules was “totally inadequate." “We seem to be repeating past mistakes,” he said in a statement. “It’s like a blank check to permit further media consolidation...[it] is so open-ended that it will permit the majority of the Commission to allow giant media companies to get even bigger at the time, place and manner of their choosing.”

“If we make the wrong decision, our communities will suffer and our country will suffer,” Copps added in a statement. He also said the FCC's decision to review media ownership rules document "initiates the single most important public policy debate that the FCC will tackle this year." Copps adds, "This debate will have far reaching implications for the credibility of information Americans get from the media-for the vitality of the civic dialogue that determines the direction of our democracy-and for whether TV and radio offer entertainment that is creative, uplifting  and local or degrading, banal and homogenized."

The FCC has come under pressure from major media companies in recent years to change the rules allowing cross-ownership between newspapers and radio or TV stations.

Complete details on the Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking on media ownership can be read here.