Independent, critical media are essential to an informed and healthy democracy.

Citizens must have ready access to news and information to make responsible informed choices as voters and to carry out their other duties of citizenship.

Our media laws and rules now promote the formation of huge media conglomerates while discouraging competing voices.

With the U.S. media overwhelmingly owned by for-profit conglomerates and supported by corporate advertisers, investigative journalism is in an alarming decline.

Since governments too often have an interest in controlling the flow of information, we must constantly guard against official censorship.

In our society however, large corporations are a far more common source of censorship than governments. The most frequent form of censorship is self-censorship: journalists deciding not to pursue certain stories that they know will be unpopular with the advertisers.

Thus we need to fortify the media's crucial watchdog function and to help create a more diverse and lively exchange of ideas in America.