FCC Plan Will Result in Freedom Of or From the Press?

macduffman writes "Kevin Martin, Chairman of the FCC, has fired a volley in the war against media moguls ... or is it in the war against freedom of the press? An article in the Editor and Publisher describes the plan to ban cross-ownership in the same market (i.e., owning a newspaper and a broadcast station in the same city). Several waivers exist for some current ownerships, but would not be passed on to new owners. The plan calls for public comment beginning in mid-November, and the FCC would vote on it a month later." This follows an unpopular 2003 decision by the FCC that was eventually invalidated by the courts. At issue is the speed at which this complex decision is being carried out: "Media consolidation opponents said Wednesday that the chairman may be moving too fast. Sen. Byron Dorgan, D-N.D., said that one month for the public to consider the rule is not enough time. 'If that's his intention, it's going to subvert the public interest,' he said. 'The FCC needs to learn a lesson here from what happened previously.'" Update: 10/19 17:58 GMT by Z :Rewritten for clarity.

Comments

That is freedom OF

[unity100]

plain and neat. It is for ensuring nobody gets the nation in their grip by grabbing them on all fronts of media. Like hearst and so on in the past.

Re:That is freedom OF

[dgatwood]

The problem is this: print is dying. A lot of what keeps print media and news radio and other niche services alive is the cross-promotion on other media outlets in the same market. Were it not for that, we'd have even fewer newspapers than the already vanishingly small number that we have today. At this point, I think web publishing is quickly emerging as a replacement for what the print media used to be, and there's only so much we should do to force the independence of what amounts to a dying medium.

Even as someone who generally supports laws to limit ownership of large numbers of media outlets in a single market, I find myself against the cross-ownership rules. That's not the right way to ensure freedom of the press. What we need are laws that undo the consolidation of the radio industry that we've already seen (and the continuation of the laws we have that protect TV from the same fate).. We need to:

• Limit the number of radio stations in a single market by any single entity to three sets of call letters (which might each include one FM and one AM station with the same call letters).
• Require that Clear Channel and Infinity Broadcasting (and any other conglomerates that violate the rule) divest themselves of those interests within 12 months after these laws go into effect or lose the licenses.
• Mandate local ownership by setting a maximum of 50% of the radio stations in a market that may be owned by any company or individual not headquartered within the station's reception range.

That is how you ensure freedom of the press---not by preventing one individual from being able to control a single stack of local media (a TV station, a radio station, and a newspaper), but by ensuring that for any given medium, there are multiple independent outlets through which different voices can be heard.

Re:That is freedom OF

[dgatwood]

If each conglomerate is limited to three FM stations in a market, you'd still have about 33 companies in any market instead of the average of 2 companies we have today in most major markets even if you didn't do anything more than that rule.

With regards to your second point, satellite channels should not be limited, as satellite bandwidth really isn't a highly constrained resource. The Washington Post would be irrelevant if this rule gets killed, so I'm not sure why you mentioned it.

As for needing more than a month, I doubt they'll get more than a few hundred comments nationwide, and that's a very generous estimate. Not that many people care who owns print media outlets, and that's really all that this proposed rulemaking affects.

Re:That is freedom OF

[dgatwood]

Why not one? Because there are a hundred and one usable frequencies in the FM band... fifty-one if you throw away all the first adjacents (which is commonly done on either side of higher power stations). If you really had fifty-one stations all competing independently, you'd have to have an extremely large market area to support anything approaching that level of competition effectively. Most stations would probably just shut down if you limited it to a single station per market.

Also, some markets are fairly large geographically. Limiting it to a single station in a market would likely mean that some areas of the population would not have any radio stations that are less than an hour away. Far from promoting local station ownership, that would actively discourage local station operations.

For example, take a look at the Tennessee TV market map. In particular, look at the Nashville, TN market. It's that light green area that covers roughly a third of the state. For TV, a limit of one station in a market that size is okay, as most TV stations are in significant metro areas (Nashville, Knoxville, Chattanooga, Memphis, Jackson, and the tri-cities area). For radio, though, it's insane. At last count, there were 406 radio stations in Tennessee, many of which are in smaller areas.

For example, my home town of 8,000 people had radio stations. The most significant grouping of independent stations was the Thunderbolt Broadcasting family of stations, which consisted of four FM and one AM. That didn't seem too far out. They had one country, one oldies, one adult contemporary, and one classic hits. Going much beyond that number of stations in a single market, however, would be too much. They were, IMHO, a really good example of what radio broadcasting should be. They had an AM talk/news station associated with it, they regularly covered local events (high school athletics, band supper, etc.), and pumped money back into the community, sponsoring college scholarships, etc. I don't want to see the desire to regulate radio conglomerates result in laws that hurt folks like Paul.

Re:That is freedom OF

[dgatwood]

Most larger markets have pretty much clogged spectrum. You have 101 FM radio slots (20 MHz band, one station every .2 MHz, plus one for the other endpoint of the range), so divide by three. Actually, though, that's off by a factor of about 1.5 because you can't realistically use first adjacents for higher power commercial stations, so it's probably more on the order of twenty. In any case, it would be way more than two.

Bear in mind that I'm talking about per market. Markets are generally pretty big geographically. A market is generally defined as being a metro area plus the surrounding areas up to a geographical barrier or up to the typical range of an average station, though there are exceptions (San Jose, CA and San Francisco, CA are two separate markets, for example, and probably should not be, since they are so heavily overlapping). The next ones over are, I believe, Monterey-Salinas-Santa Cruz (geographically separated by mountains to a large degree) and Sacramento (separated by a pretty good distance).

Way to read the article

[StealthyRoid]

The lede doesn't match the article at all. What's actually going on is this:

Currently, there's an FCC rule preventing multiple media channel ownership by teh same company in the same city/region. You can get waivers for this, but it's kind of a pain in the ass. What the current FCC chair wants to do is abolish that rule, allowing companies to own as many media channels (ie, a newspaper, a TV, and a radio station) as they'd like. In general, the Republican appointees support this plan, the Democrat appointees oppose it. Regardless, however, the post states the exact OPPOSITE of what's really happening.

Re:Way to read the article

[geeknado]

Right-- and the real concern here is what was stated by the Consumers Union representative...That a few companies could rapidly gain total ownership of all media outlets in a given area, driving out both competition and differing opinions in the local press. Your region might have a single 'voice' in the media, which is not a positive thing.

All that said, the relevance of radio and newspapers has diminished greatly over time. There're few truly independent radio stations in most cities, and most independent newspapers are struggling financially...This is not necessarily due to monopolistic practices, but rather the viability of their business models since so much of their potential consumer base is absorbed by television and internet media sources. While I am not in favor of abolishing the rule on general principle, I am not sure if this would be the same sort of catastrophe that it would have been 25 years ago.

Re:Way to read the article

[Walt Dismal]

Indeed, the post does not truly spell things out. A critical problem with the FCC proposal is that any media conglomerate that comes to dominate the media outlets in an area then has an inordinate ability to shape political contests to its own will.

For example, let's say Rupert Murdoch comes to dominate Smallville, USA. He could then elect to minimize coverage of certain local candidates in favor of ones who would reciprocate his favors if elected. Clearly this drives special interests over public interests. Such a monopoly is the antithesis of a free market.

Imagine if Microsoft controlled all news media in a town, and you objected to schools buying Microsoft products over using open source. Or Wal-Mart owned the media outlets in a town and supported candidates for office who did not object to destruction of local merchants by the big box. A fair system would have some amount of healthy competition between media, and their coverage, thus helping guard against such domination.

Re:Way to read the article

[jellomizer]

Well this is the problem with Press.

a. If it is not interesting people wont pay attention to it.
b. Going to much in depth looses people interest in the topic
c. less people interested means loss of revenue.
d. Loss of revenue means you can loose you job.

e. if you make it interesting you need to cut the depth and trigger emotions
f. to trigger emotions you need to make a Good guy who has been harmed and a Bad guy causing the harm.
g. The person being portrait as a bad guy doesn't like being a bad guy so he shows how the good guy isn't that good.
h. the previous good guy does the same in retaliation.
i. creating interest boosting sales and company gets stronger.

Option for this problem is to create Government controled media. Which has its problems too.
a. If you are paid by the government and the person controlling your purse strings does something wrong you will turn a blind eye to it.
b. Government can control what is shown and what isn't, even if it isn't an official rule.
c. Failure to do so will cost jobs.

Re:Way to read the article

[dgatwood]

You need to clarify your comment a bit. I suspect you understand the issue, but your wording could confuse people into thinking that this rule is about something that it is not really about.

This is not about wanting to own an unlimited number of media outlets. Most people want limitations on that. This is about owning an arbitrary number of types of media outlets---that is, if you own any number of radio or TV stations in a given market, you cannot also own a newspaper. There really is not a good reason for that sort of limit, and I support tearing down that limitation. It really isn't important to have such a restriction for print anymore, as print really isn't that important anyway in the grand scheme of things.

At this point, all this law is really doing is A. preventing newspaper companies from easily diversifying into more viable media like radio and TV, and B. making it harder to sell off print properties, thus encouraging less profitable print properties to be shut down entirely. Thus, I think it would be a great idea to shoot it in the head. I've thought the law was a bit silly since I first learned about it a decade ago. While this might seem counterintuitive to those folks who remember print back in its heyday, killing this law off is likely to significantly increase freedom of the press by allowing print publishers to expand into TV and radio, thus helping to reduce the current radio duopoly that we are seeing between Clear Channel and Infinity.

The law made sense when print was king, but in this day and age, it is an anachronism that only serves to hasten print's demise.

Re:Way to read the article

[geeknado]

I agree with many of your points, although I'd suggest there're other ways to 'make it happen' beyond government control-- consider NPR as an example. NPR has a combination of grants, listener, and corporate contributions that make it viable...That said, it's not clearly beholden to anybody in particular, so you get an interesting mix of perspectives and coverage of events that most of our other media outlets ignore.

On the downside, NPR tends to be extremely esoteric, and thus mostly captures the attention of a subset of our culture that /desires/ depth in media. I don't think it's hard to make a case that that's not the majority right now. Now, he news is all about making money. That wasn't always the case...There was definitely a time where the TV news in particular was sort of like an art competition between outlets-- who could do the 'best' news, relative to the competition. There seemed to be a sort of honor in the whole thing that kept it going...That's long gone now, I'm afraid(and has been for most of my lifetime).

Re:Way to read the article

[geeknado]

I believe that NPR does have something of a liberal bias but, in terms of coverage, they seem to work extremely hard to describe both sides of the equation. There are fewer talking heads and more on-site reporting/interviews with people.

This is more akin to old-school reporting, where biases are secondary to substantive programming. I can't speak to your local station's programming, obviously, but this seems to be true of the national programs such as "All Things Considered", where I'd challenge you to find someone actually portraying any figure anywhere as "evil". Fox News, by contrast, penetrates every story with subjective statements, and applies a much more obvious filter in terms of what they actually bother to report. I'm not basing that on NPR(hopefully obviously), I'm basing it on observations derived from my own consumption patterns, which involve media from many sources, some of which are international.

Who cares?

[pablo_max]

I mean really. Who the hell cares about this? Do you honestly trust these mega media giants to bring you the "real" news anyhow? I mean for the guy that turns on FOX news for his "no spin" news show is still going to get the program served up to him in the way he is used to while the rest of us who want to know whats really going on in our country and the world will do like we always to and turn to BBC or even spiegel.de to here about it. Lets face it, the news in this country has not been real news in a long long long time and this new stance from the FCC is not going to change anything. Americans will continue to get there spoon fed candy covered news....just the way they like it ;)

Re:Who cares?

[nebaz]

Uhhh...has it ever occurred to you that the reason we have these huge mega media giants in the first place is because the FCC has been relaxing ownership rules for media for years, allowing there to be fewer and fewer owners of media? Requiring smaller media ownership provides diversity of viewpoint much more easily than not. My grandfather was upset about newspaper conglomeration back in the 70's, and he warned of a day when there would be two or three huge media companies. It's because of apathy that this has been allowed to happen. News of all things should not be oligarchical.

Re:Who cares?

[RingDev]

Just remember that when Clear Channel buys out your local PBS station and starts broad casting "Barney, the created by God Dinosaur" children's show which features Barney and his friend Stegie giving a very white skinned couple named Adam and Eve taxi services around their over-sized garden.

Also, there are 3 stations in my broadcast area that carry the BBC broadcasts, headlines, and a number of other world news sources. I can learn more from a 3 minute BBC blurb in an extended commercial break than I can from an hour of Fox news.

-Rick

Re:Who cares?

[zippthorne]

Yeah, we had much more diversity when it was just CBS, NBC, and ABC.

Re:Who cares?

[nebaz]

Think newspapers. Also, how many independently owned local TV stations still exist?

how?

[Harin_Teb]

Out of curiosity...

How does one address the lack of ownership by minorities and women? It seems to me that it would not be possible to "force" minorities and women to buy media outlets, nor would it be possible to force people to sell to them...

well, ok, maybe you could force people to sell to them, but how are you going to compensate them for the price difference that they would have gotten from someone else? And wouldn't a forced sale implicate the takings clause?

Re:how?

[R2.0]

Allow me to answer your questions from the standpoint of the far left"

"How does one address the lack of ownership by minorities and women?"
Decree it.

"It seems to me that it would not be possible to "force" minorities and women to buy media outlets, nor would it be possible to force people to sell to them..."
Why not? Just pass a law requiring the sale and transfer of new or existing licenses to women and minorities. Done."

"well, ok, maybe you could force people to sell to them, but how are you going to compensate them for the price difference that they would have gotten from someone else?"
Compensate? Fair Value? those terms only have meaning in a capitalist exploitative framework. This is about social justice - the current owners, being white males, are owed nothing. Indeed, they owe everyone else for past actions of their ancestors. As a matter of fact, all white males should not only be compelled under the law to forfeit their properties without compensation, they should also pay reparations to the new owners for depriving them of the potential profits for the past years. Great idea - Thanks!

"And wouldn't a forced sale implicate the takings clause?"
That's not the correct interpretation of that clause - protection from "takings" is a group right, for the benefit of society. There really is no right to keep your property on an individual basis, regardless of the language in the constitution.

Please reverse for opinions from the far right.

Not quite, guys

[jtroutman]

FTFP:

An article in the Editor and Publisher describes the plan to ban cross-ownership in the same market

FTFA:
Among the rules that are potentially on the chopping block is a ban on one company owning a newspaper and broadcast station in the same market.

So the post should have read:

An article in the Editor and Publisher describes the plan to no longer ban cross-ownership in the same market

Oh fer chrissake

[$RANDOMLUSER]

"We should first address the appalling lack of ownership of media outlets by women and people of color."

How about you guys portion out the spectrum, keep your noses out of content and (the color or reproductive organs of) ownership, and let the market work itself out?

Ban multiple owndership, period

[Fear the Clam]

I would like to see a ban on owning more than one newspaper or broadcast station at all. Imagine how interesting life would be if radio stations weren't all the same damn thing run out of a conglomerate office, running the same ads at the same time, and offering everything geared to the most popular, dumbest, lowest common denominator?

I know, I know, I'm talking about a time before everyone got merger fever, back when the American (and beyond) experience was very different from place to place. But now that the Internet can ensure that everyone can get the same experience (news, music, television) if they really want, wouldn't it be a interesting thing to ban the unified voice of corporate broadcasting?

Re:Ban multiple owndership, period

[fireboy1919]

Would you ban all franchises, then, on the same basis? Or perhaps a company that owns a hardware store on one end of town and a home decor store on the other?

This is defintely a straw man. Unlike the case of most franchises, radio stations, and newspapers are a limited public resource (newspapers are a limited resource only because of the government bureaucracy that must be waded through in order to have one). Further, unlike a hardware store, they both naturally affect public opinion about them because they're media sources - so they're natural monopolies. Monopolies do bad things when they're confined to a region, but they get really bad when the get bigger.

It makes zero business sense, either in media or most any other industry.

This is where your argument falls apart. I'd go so far as to say that it profitability and productivity actually goes down when you go beyond a certain size in almost every industry because the people "running the show" become necessarily less detached from their target market and the people doing the work become detached from a profit-motive (because income isn't really tied to profitability and/or doing what they love). The only thing it does is make a few people very, very rich most of the time. The exception to this is commodities that everyone wants exactly the same way, like milk, gasoline, eggs, internet access, etc.

I think this is especially true of radio stations - which have local community listeners. The local operators are the ones who should be making the decisions because they're the ones who know their audience. Further, every area needs pretty much the same equipment. It's not like corporations get a big boost in efficiency because they're a corporation.

Pandora's box

[xx01dk]

Doesn't it depend on the definition of "single market"? For example, Clearchannel owns radio stations all over the country. Would a single market be defined as the number of stations they own in:

a) a specific city or county or region or
b) the number of stations of a specific genre or
c) the number of stations of a specific genre in a specific area?

How are the media market sectors defined? In addition to those categories I mentioned above, you also have ethno-centric programming and demographics to contend with. This is akin to opening pandora's box imho.

This also worries me: "We should first address the appalling lack of ownership of media outlets by women and people of color." Does this mean that congress will be asked to pass affirmative action laws against media corporations? That's just silly, and also might be an ominous inroad towards state-controlled media. *shudder*

What motives prompted this, i.e.: Is Kevin Martin in somebody's pocket, or does he have a personal stake in it? Why else propose something so ludicrous? I'm all for ensuring against monopolies but isn't it a little too late and/or drastic to propose something like this?

WTF?

[jav1231]

""We should first address the appalling lack of ownership of media outlets by women and people of color."
Why is there an inherent idea that women and people of color have an interest in ownership in every segment of society? How many people of color own companies in the tanning market? How many women own companies in the aftershave market? I realize this isn't a perfect comparison but could it be that women and "people of color" simply haven't attempted such ownership? The idea that equality means equal distribution is socialistic in nature. Equal treatment doesn't equate to equal distribution. Rather, it should mean equal access. If someone decides they have no interest in the access it's not "an appalling lack of ownership" it's an "appalling lack of interest."

its not "fixing"

[unity100]

its anti-monopoly regulation and it is necessary. if such regulations werent around, united states would be controlled by around 4-5 big robber barons as of now. up to now there was not a regulation for individual media channels for this. this new thing is good.

Re:its not "fixing"

[Applekid]

Quote:

its anti-monopoly regulation and it is necessary. if such regulations werent around, united states would be controlled by around 4-5 big robber barons as of now. up to now there was not a regulation for individual media channels for this. this new thing is good. It already pretty much is.

TFS:

Several waivers exist for some current ownerships, but would not be passed on to new owners. And so, will also get worse since it will effectively lock the barons in place forevermore. If they were really serious, they'd bust up some of them up now.

Clearly both politicians and established corporations love this bill.

Re:This may be meaningless; we've gone 2 the web

[postbigbang]

Call BS if you like. Your option.

Go to Media Matters, or one of the right-wing websites and get a load of what accuracy means today. If you're looking to bloggers for news, you're hosed. These are opinions, not journalism. My RSS/Atom reader gets 50 different sites every eight minutes. Local content in my 'major' market has been a monopoly for years. Heaven help you if you're a suburb, or a rural community. But this ruling doesn't affect them-- it's about major market competition.

You have to take EVERYTHING with a grain of salt these days; the integrity of print media and daily news are at a formulaic all-time low. You trust these guys? I don't.

In major markets, there are lots of the same bubble-headed bleached-blonds on TV (thank you, Don Henley) spouting the same foo at 6pm and 11pm. Then there are the morning shows. The rest are network fillers and commercials. This, this is quality? I can watch 900+ cable channels, and it's still a wasteland.

If you're a suburb of a major market, you're screwed for local news. Where are you going to get the news on a local level? The FCC's decision doesn't affect you, it only dries up competition in major markets-- that's where the money is.

TV 'anchors' are stars now. They don't get the news. They get make-up jobs and Lexus rides, and show up, looking pretty, when the mayor turns a shovel some place. Parts of the community? Nope. Entertainment. And it's been that way for two decades now.

Re:Funny you mention that...

[NiceGeek]

This will get modded as flamebait I'm sure...but I thought all the NAU nutters were on Digg