12/27/07
On Dec. 18, the five commissioners of the Federal Communications Commission
met in Washington, D.C., and passed, by a 3 to 2 vote, new regulations that
would allow more media consolidation. This, despite the U.S. public's
increasing concern over the nation's media being controlled by a few giant
corporations.
Dissident FCC Commissioner
Michael Copps said of the decision: "We generously ask big media to sit on
Santa's knee, tell us what it wants for Christmas, and then push through
whatever of these wishes are politically and practically feasible. No test
to see if anyone's been naughty or nice. Just another big, shiny present for
the favored few who already hold an FCC license -- and a lump of coal for
the rest of us. Happy holidays!"
It was Bush-appointed FCC
Chairman Kevin Martin who rammed through the rule changes. He has served
President Bush well. As deputy general counsel for the Bush-Cheney campaign
in 2000, he was active during the Florida recount. Before that he worked for
Kenneth Starr at the Office of Independent Counsel during the Monica
Lewinsky scandal.
The federal regulation in
question is the newspaper-broadcast cross-ownership ban. It has for decades
prevented the same company from owning both a television or radio station in
a town as well as a newspaper. Underlying this ban is the core concept of
the public interest.
Copps couldn't have been
clearer: "Today's decision would make George Orwell proud. We claim to be
giving the news industry a shot in the arm -- but the real effect is to
reduce total newsgathering." Mergers will result in newsroom layoffs and
less, not more, coverage of local issues.
Martin's new rule is also
going to hurt the diversity of the U.S. media. Juan Gonzalez, former
president of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, recently
testified at a congressional hearing on media ownership. He said, "Even as
our nation has become ever more diverse racially and ethnically ... minority
ownership of the broadcast companies ... has remained at shockingly low
levels."
Gonzalez pointed out that
the new rule will allow the 19 minority-owned TV stations in the country's
top 20 cities to be targeted for takeovers by newspapers, further reducing
minority ownership.
There is a reason that
journalism is the sole profession explicitly protected in the U.S.
Constitution. As a check and balance on government, it is essential to the
functioning of a democratic society.
As Thomas Jefferson
famously stated, "Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a
government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should
not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter."
By eliminating the
newspaper-broadcast cross-ownership ban, Martin claims to be saving
newspapers. In a New York Times op-ed piece, he writes: "In many towns and
cities, the newspaper is an endangered species. ... If we don't act to
improve the health of the newspaper industry, we will see newspapers wither
and die." As Copps pointed out in his scathing dissent to the rule change,
"We shed crocodile tears for the financial plight of newspapers -- yet the
truth is that newspaper profits are about double the S&P 500 average."
The problem facing Martin
and his big media friends isn't that newspapers are unprofitable; it's that
they are simply not as profitable as they used to be, in part because of the
Internet. People no longer have to rely on the newspaper to post or read
classified ads, for example, with free online outlets like Craigslist.
The media system in the
United States is too highly concentrated and serves not the public interest
but rather the interests of moguls like Rupert Murdoch and Sumner Redstone,
who controls CBS/Viacom.
Media corporations that
will benefit from Martin's handout are the same ones that acted as a
conveyor belt for the lies of the Bush administration about weapons of mass
destruction in Iraq.
We need a media that
challenges the government, that acts as a fourth estate, not for the state.
We need a diverse media.
The U.S. Congress has a
chance to overrule Martin and the FCC, and to keep the newspaper-broadcast
cross-ownership ban in place. It should do so immediately, before the
consolidated press leads us into another war.
Amy Goodman is the host of
“Democracy Now!,” a daily international TV/radio news hour airing on 650
stations in North America, including at 6 a.m. and 9 a.m. weekdays on local
station 88.1 KFCF FM.