(This is guest blog from Joel Kelsey, a grassroots organizer for Consumers Union, the sponsor of this blog. He is attending a Federal Communications Commission public hearing on media ownership in Chicago and sent us this live blog from the event. He can be reached at kelsjo@consumer.org.)

We've just gotten underway with testimony here in Chicago; it's 7pm. Four hundred people have packed the Rainbow/Push Coalition headquarters to testify to the FCC commissioners on the state of Chicago's media. Lining up as early as 10am, community members have been waiting 8 hours for a shot at the microphone.

Chicago, the fifth of six ownership hearings being held across the country, has underscored a startling dynamic that has developed at many of these hearings - the public will go to extraordinary lengths to tell our regulators not to lift current ownership rules.

Similarly, the National Association of Broadcasters will go to extraordinary lengths to fog up the issue of public obligation. Sending young, paid, staff people to hold spots in line for their braodcaster bosses, they tried to ensure the first slate of public testimony be industry dominated. However, they were shocked to find 40 unpaid actual Chicago citizens - many who took the day off work - to make sure they would have their two minutes.

Starting off on the right foot, KRS-1 hit on what happens to media content when the owners of most outlets are far removed from the culture of the constituency it serves - you get stereotyped representations of women and people of color. As a later panelists put it, ''Crime is going down in Chicago, but coverage of crime is not.'' Listening now to the public speakers, while stories of crime coverage in communities of color flood the airwaves, the priority issues in the same neighborhoods go unheard.