(This post is part of the MyDD candidate series. I am not affiliated with the Dodd campaign in any way.)

Media consolidation is an issue of personal importance to me. I believe in getting to the root cause of problems, and a root cause of the proliferation of misinformation, misleading political memes, and badly framed arguments is the fact that our nation's mainstream media, which still provides the majority of the American public with their news and information, is owned by too few people.

Media consolidation matters. Today, just five corporations control the majority of news that most Americans see. Is it any surprise, then, that the media can sell us lies about Iraq, health care, or social security? Yet despite its crucial importance, this issue sneaks by under the radar of far too many campaigns.

Rolling back media consolidation will do wonders for our democracy. It will ensure that people have diverse viewpoints that they can turn to for their news. It will give those without voices more representation in our media landscape. It will prevent political attacks masquerading as news from ever gaining credibility (see Swift Boat Veterans For Truth).

Chris Dodd has long had my respect for his stance on media consolidation issues. I had the privilege to ask him a question on this very issue at the Yearly Kos convention, and his answer was extremely satisfying.

I was further heartened earlier this week, as Dodd took another strong stance against media consolidation. Josh over at The Seminal and I have been leading a campaign against media consolidation, and we've targeted a bill in the Senate, the Media Ownership Act of 2007 (S.2332) which would would increase support for minority ownership of media outlets, as something we'd like to drum up support for.

I emailed the Dodd campaign to see if this was something Chris Dodd would like to co-sponsor, and they got back to me with an affirmative and this statement:

"Diversity in the media is a critical component to maintaining a healthy democracy. I'm very worried that we are moving in a direction where too much power is being held in the hands of too few corporations. The FCC needs to ensure that minority and women-owned media outlets are not reduced further in favor of major conglomerations. A free, vibrant press is at its best when diverse views are represented. I look forward to continuing to work to enact this critically important legislation into law."

I'm glad to see Dodd continuing to speak out on this issue. It's one that I truly care about, and one that I feel often receives too little attention.

It also speaks to Dodd's strength as a candidate. The media consolidation issue should be framed as a question about democracy, and speaking up for our democracy and for the Constitution is something that Dodd has been increasingly vocal about. This, combined with the fact that he's lending his support to this issue now, as opposed to in the future, makes me a Dodd supporter.