Big Media Giveaway

by James Parks, Dec 4, 2007

Looks like Congress may spoil Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Kevin Martin’s plan to spend the holidays stuffing the stockings of media moguls like Rupert Murdoch with goodies in the form of new rules that allow them to swallow up more of our local news outlets.  

The U.S. Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation will vote today on the bipartisan Media Ownership Act of 2007 (S. 2332)—a bill that would direct the FCC to conduct a separate proceeding on local ownership and create an independent minority and female ownership task force before moving forward with any changes to media ownership limits. The bill, introduced by Sens. Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.) and Trent Lott (R-Miss.),  also would ensure a 90-day period for the public to comment on any proposed rules.

Tomorrow, the U.S. House Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet will hold an FCC oversight hearing. Members are expected to grill Martin about his failure to address the crisis in minority media ownership, plans to eliminate the long-standing ban on newspaper/broadcast cross-ownership and last week’s controversial decision to let Tribune Co. continue operating both newspapers and TV stations in five cities.

Here’s why Congress is so upset. While the public and politicians are distracted by the holiday hoopla and before the first presidential primaries and caucuses, Martin is trying to push through a last-minute move to give big media freedom to control local markets. He wants the FCC to vote by Dec. 18 on rules he’s proposing that would loosen media ownership rules. Under current FCC regulations, a company is prohibited from owning both a daily newspaper and a broadcast outlet—a radio or TV station—in the same market without a waiver. 

Why the rush to change the rules with little opportunity for public comment? Maybe because the last time the FCC proposed a relaxation of the rules in 2003, public outcry killed the plan, says FCC Commissioner Michael Copps, one of two Democrats on the FCC. Copps says Martin hopes the public doesn’t notice what he and his big-media allies are up to.  

Those aware of the proposal are strongly opposed to it, including many union members who have joined in actions to stop the Republican-led FCC from slipping through such a far-reaching rule change. Thousands of people have taken part in the handful of FCC hearings, held at the instigation of Copps and Jonathan Adelstein, the other Democratic FCC commissioner, in Seattle; Los Angeles; Nashville, Tenn.; Tampa, Fla.; Harrisburg, Pa.; and Chicago to protest the proposed rules. (See video.)

At the Chicago hearing in September, Corkey Siegel, a member of the American Federation of Musicians of the United States and Canada (AFM) Local 10-208, told commissioners the biggest complaint he hears around the country is that all the music on the radio sounds the same. 

When commercial media cuts off individuality and diversity at the knees—which it will do if allowed—it is separating out and excluding a “deeper” connection to large groups of people. So for the long haul, the corporate mind doesn’t even make good decisions in its own best interest. We need to make the right decision for this great family of ours.

But if commerce is allowed to make this momentous decision for the people, we can surely know where this will end up.

In Oregon, AFM Local 99 and the Communications Workers of America (CWA) Local 7901 helped pass a resolution at the state AFL-CIO convention in October opposing the FCC proposal. The resolution says, in part: 

Our unions and the general public suffer from under reporting of labor issues and misinformation influenced by corporate America. The frontline workers most affected include journalists, musicians, writers, artists, actors and telecommunications workers.     

On Oct. 31, some 100 members of The Newspaper Guild-CWA and the Teamsters joined with Free Press, a nonpartisan group seeking to increase public input in media decisions, and the Rev. Jesse Jackson, to protest the proposed rules outside the FCC headquarters in Washington, D.C.

Last year, several unions affiliated with the AFL-CIO Department for Professional Employees submitted testimony to the FCC asserting that lifting media ownership limits will increase consolidation and result in fewer sources of content, whether news, entertainment or music. Consolidation also will mean less local content, less diversity of opinion and higher barriers to minority ownership. 

While Martin claims his plan would increase diversity in the media, Free Press reported last week that minority ownership of major media outlets has declined sharply on Martin’s watch: 

• From October 2006 to October 2007, minority-owned commercial TV stations decreased by 8.5 percent.

• African American TV station ownership dropped by 60 percent, with the total number of black-owned TV stations falling from 19 to eight in a single year.

In an interview with Salon.com, Copps says Martin’s plan would affect 43 percent of all households and allow even more companies in smaller markets to scoop up stations and newspaper just by meeting “a few loose criteria.” 

If they get away with this one proposal with newspaper-broadcast cross-ownership, they’ll come back for changes in more of the rules. I just fail to understand how that kind of control over our media enhances democracy or works to the benefit of the American people.

Free Press also found the proposed rule does not mention the core policy issues the FCC has failed to address—the impact of consolidation on local programming, minority ownership and the quantity of local news across the market. Derek Turner, Free Press research director, says:  

Chairman Martin’s double-speak can’t disguise the fact that his proposal would gut the cross-ownership ban everywhere. The reality is that Martin’s plan is no moderate compromise. If passed, the new rules would unleash unprecedented consolidation across the country. 

Caaron writes on StopBigMedia.com that cross-ownership results in a net loss in the amount of local news produced across local broadcast markets.

The latest studies by Free Press, Consumer Federation of America and Consumers Union include detailed analysis of recent FCC data that conclusively demonstrate the harms of cross-ownership. Among their findings:

• Cross-ownership crowds out the competition. The presence of a cross-owned station leads other stations in a market to collectively curtail their news output by about 25 percent. 
•  Cross-owned stations—and markets with cross-owned stations—don’t produce more local news.

The last time the FCC tried to change the rules in 2003, millions of people contacted Congress and the FCC to oppose the changes, which were ultimately thrown out by the courts. The FCC in 2003 wiped out decades-old limits on the number of local TV, radio and newspaper outlets a corporation could own, but a bipartisan majority in the Senate voted to overturn the rule changes with Congress eventually reaching a compromise—limiting the number of stations one company could own to 39 percent of the national audience. Since then, growing media consolidation has resulted in increasing lack of diversity both in the content produced and those producing it.

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