MEDIA WATCH BRIEFS
go to briefs

FCC set to pave way for media monopolies

Compiled by Shane Perlowin

May 20 (AGR)— Cheered on by the Bush Administration and powerful media conglomerates, Federal Communications Commission (FCC) chair Michael Powell is pushing ahead with a June 2 vote to gut longstanding rules designed to prevent the growth of media monopolies. If successful, Powell’s push could, in the words of dissident commissioner Michael Copps, “dramatically [alter] our nation’s media landscape without the kind of debate and analysis that these issues clearly merit.” Copps and the other Democratic commissioner, Jonathan Adelstein, have asked for a thirty-day delay in the vote, but Powell has the upper hand—he and two other Republican commissioners form a majority on the five-member FCC and they are moving ahead.

The final six regulations that prevent media concentration that will be eliminated altogether under the current proposal include restrictions on the number of TV stations a single company may own, as well as a prohibition on owning newspapers and TV stations in the same community. The FCC is under tremendous pressure from corporate lobbyists to remove the rules so firms can get bigger and bigger and have more and more monopoly power, translating into less risk and more profit for them. Powell’s decision to force a vote on rule changes that have not been broadly debated or analyzed has provoked a fierce response from the widest coalition of critics ever to weigh in on an FCC rule-making decision.

Powell’s contempt for public opinion, evidenced by his scheduling of only one official hearing on the proposed rule changes, is so great that he refused invitations to nine semiofficial hearings at which other commissioners were present. The hearings drew thousands of citizens and close to universal condemnation of the rule changes. Powell has said he has no interest in attending any more public hearings. He wants to restrict his input to corporate lobbyists.

Lowry Mays, CEO of Clear Channel, a company that owns 1,233 radio stations and dominates radio broadcasting in many of the largest markets of the United States, recently let slip that he has no interest in the public interest—or producing radio that serves it. “We’re not in the business of providing news and information,” he told Fortune magazine. “We’re not in the business of providing well-researched music. We’re simply in the business of selling our customers products.” Clear Channel got big because, with the Telecommunications Act of 1996, the US Congress rewrote the rules governing who could own what in the media landscape. That rewrite eliminated limits on the number of radio stations that could be owned by one corporation, and Clear Channel’s portfolio leapt from barely 40 stations in 1995 to more than 1,200 today. If the FCC votes for further deregulation on June 2, Clear Channel and companies like it are going to get a whole lot bigger.

The lobbyists are now working overtime. According to the Center for Public Integrity, the 50 largest media companies spent $111.3 million to influence Congress and the executive branch between 1996 and 2000, paying for 1,460 all-expense-paid trips for FCC bureaucrats and 315 junkets by members of Congress and their staff. The media conglomerates make no secret of the fact that they share Clear Channel’s values. “There’s no longer any public-interest need served by the Commission’s ownership rules,” argued Viacom (CBS) Fox and NBC/Telemundo in their call for elimination of the ownership rules.

An examination of roughly half the 18,000 public statements filed electronically with the FCC show that 97 percent of them oppose permitting more media concentration. Even media moguls Barry Diller and Ted Turner have raised objections, with Turner complaining, “There’s really five companies that control 90 percent of what we read, see and hear. It’s not healthy.”

Local governments are also getting involved; the Chicago City Council urged rejection of the proposed changes in a resolution that declared: “Unchecked media consolidation benefits a small number of corporate interests at the expense of the public interest.” Noting that the consolidation of radio ownership that followed passage of the 1996 Telecommunications Act has proven disastrous for pop music, journalism and local communities, Bonnie Raitt, Billy Joel, Don Henley, Patti Smith, Pearl Jam and other musicians signed a letter telling Powell they were “extremely concerned as American citizens that increased concentration of media ownership will have a negative impact on access to diverse viewpoints and will impede the functioning of our democracy.”

Nearly 300 academics signed a letter to the FCC protesting Powell’s refusal to allow an evaluation of the “research” he has talked of using to justify relaxing the media ownership rules. The national associations of Hispanic and black journalists called on the FCC to delay action until more study of threats to diversity could be completed. Leaders of the AFL-CIO, the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, the Consumer Federation of America and many other groups argued that Powell had not allowed enough time to analyze the potential damage to democracy.

“This is giving control of the news and flow of information to a handful of media giants,” said Aidan White, General Secretary of The International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), an organization that represents more than 500,000 journalists in more than 100 countries. “It is a process that will diminish the diversity of ideas and opinions and will marginalize minority opinions and dissent.”

The IFJ says media concentration rules need to be tightened, not relaxed, and cites a worrying trend of conglomerates exercising editorial control over media services at the expense of journalistic independence. “The FCC is supposed to regulate the airwaves in the public interest,” said White, “but handing over the jewels of a nation’s information and cultural heritage to huge corporations will not satisfy the public need for diverse media sources. This is simply politicians delivering glittering prizes to their friends in the media.”

To replace the locally owned newspapers and broadcast outlets that would be gobbled up in a new wave of consolidation, the conglomerates suggest that citizens could still get information about what is going on in their hometowns through “interpersonal communication”—that is, talking to one another.

Source: International Federation of Journalists, Associated Press, The Nation, Adbusters

back to top