The Federal Communications Commission comes to Chicago next week for a hearing on the proposed merger of Comcast and NBC-Universal. 

So why is a local member of Congress — with a history of ties to the telecommunications industry — holding his own hearing a few days earlier?

The FCC hearing is Tuesday, July 13, running from 1 to 8 p.m. at Northwestern Law School, 375 E. Chicago.

U.S. Representative Bobby Rush will chair a field hearing of a House Energy and Commerce subcommittee at 9 a.m. on Thursday, July 8 at the Dirksen Building, 219 S. Dearborn.

“The timing [of the Rush hearing] is curious,” said Mitchell Szczepanczyk of Chicago Media Action.  “There’s been a lot of organizing around the FCC hearing.”

The FCC hearing includes two panels of witnesses and an extensive public comment period.  Rush’s hearing provides no public comment; Rev. Jesse Jackson will testify along executives from Comcast, NBC, and Earthlink.

Also invited to testify by Rush — and flying into Chicago for a “field hearing” — are Will Griffin, producer of a hip-hop program on Comcast’s on-demand service, who has previously testified (at a Judiciary Committee hearing in Los Angeles) in favor of the merger, and former Atlanta Mayor Shirley Franklin, speaking for the Alliance for Digital Equality, a group described by Sourcewatch as “a nonprofit front group established to foment opposition to network neutrality by African Americans in key cities nationwide.”

Mayor Daley has endorsed the merger, calling Comcast a good corporate citizen.  It’s also been endorsed by Rev. Al Sharpton and the National Urban League.  Some Hispanic groups backed it after Comcast agreed to name an Hispanic to its board of directors.

Chicago Media Action opposes the merger, citing concerns of media concentration, minority issues in hiring and programming, and customer service.  The national media reform group Free Press has called the proposed merger “disastrous” and said it would mean higher prices for consumers, stifle competition on cable and across the internet, and further restrict access to audiences for minority writers, producers and artists. 

The merger proposal, which must be approved by the FCC and the Justice Department, will also be watched for its impact on the issue of network neutrality. 

Comcast has been striving to eliminate requirements that internet content be given equal treatment by service providers; in 2008 the FCC ordered Comcast to stop blocking certain internet traffic, and this April a federal appeals court ruled that the FCC had overstepped its bounds.

It’s relevant here because of the high degree of vertical intergration the merger would create, giving the nation’s largest cable and internet company control over NBC’s programming, cable and broadcast channels, and movie studios, and creating incentives to drive internet traffic to its own content.  Media reformers say if the merger goes through, it must ensure net neutrality. 

But Rush has been leading the charge against net neutrality since 2006, when he cosponsored a telecommunications bill with Texas Republican Joe Barton (lately noted for his defense of BP).  As Newstips noted at the time, that bill was introduced just before the Sun Times revealed a $1 million donation from SBC and AT&T to a charity founded by Rush.

In May, Rush was one of 74 Democrats who broke with their party’s leadership to urge the FCC to drop efforts to protect net neutrality in the wake of the appeals court ruling.  (The Alliance for Digital Equality applauded them.)  According to the Free Press, of all 74 Democrats, Rush has taken in the largest amount of contributions from the telecommunications industry over his career — $128,000.

For an outsider view of net neutrality (and Rush’s role), see this interview with hip-hop journalist Davy D.