Early communications policy started out strongly in favor of preserving and ensuring diverse sources of information. Through a series of actions that spanned until the 1970s, the Federal Communications Commission – the government agency responsible for media policy – adopted rules that restricted the number of media outlets one company could own. By the beginning of the 1980s, however, the Reagan Administration, the FCC and Congress embarked on a deregulatory approach and began chipping away at the protections that ensured media diversity.
