The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights

Contents

• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgments and Caveat
• Preface From LCEF
• Preface From MIT's CRCP
• Introduction: Off Course on a Long Dark Road

Part One

• Section 254
• Section 255
• Section 706
• The Impact on Rural America

Part Two

• Section 202
• Media Mergers (1995-2001)
• A Brief Note on Mergers
• Telecom Mergers (1996-2001) 
• Section 336

Part Three

• Section 257
• Section 714

Afterword

• Does the Digital Divide Still Exist?

Appendix

• The Authors
• About CRFCP
• About LCEF
• About MIT's CRCP

Acknowledgments and Caveat

There are few organizations which fund communications policy analysis on behalf of the poor or in support of democratic values. I would like to thank the following individuals and foundations for their support over the past five years: Jon Funabiki and Alan Jenkins of the Ford Foundation; Helen Brunner and Mary Frey Bennett of the Alfred A. List Foundation, Gail McClure, Caroline Carpenter and Betty Overton at the W. K. Kellogg Foundation, Elspeth Revere and Woody Wickham of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation; and Gara LaMarche, Jack Willis and Mark Schmitt of the Open Society Institute. Organizations such as ours, independent of both government and business, exist only because foundation executives understand that independence is important to honest communication.

The opinions expressed in the following articles represent the views of the individual authors only, neither credit nor blame should extend to our supporters, or the boards of either the Civil Rights Forum on Communications Policy or the Tides Center.