From the Folks Who Are Giving Away Your Internet, More Media Concentration

Your Federal Communications Commission - which in the name of the "public interest" eliminated Net Neutrality and turned control of the Internet over to the big telecom and cable companies - announced today it is ready to do you yet another service. This time, FCC Chairman Kevin J. Martin, again in the name of the "public interest," is proposing to eliminate or weaken long-standing rules that prevent local newspapers, television and radio stations (and their websites) from all merging together to dominate and decimate local communities' media, a move likely to set off yet another feeding frenzy of media consolidation.

Unfortunately, these local media conglomerations, all suddenly combined and controlled by a single owner, would operate at the expense of free expression, diversity, democracy, and culture which, according to the First Amendment and the Supreme Court, depend upon "an uninhibited marketplace of ideas in which truth will prevail" - a marketplace where there is a "wide diversity of viewpoints from a multiplicity of sources."

Even Wall Street, which demanded and eagerly financed the last round of arranged media marriages, now disavows its old claims that these mergers create "efficiency" and "synergy." Investors who bought that bill of goods have been burned badly as the promised benefits never materialized, the conglomerated companies meandered and floundered, and their stock prices tanked. Even the President of Time Warner, the poster child for failed "synergy" after its disastrous hookup with AOL, now proclaims that "Synergy is Bullshit." De-consolidation has already taken place at Viacom/CBS and Knight-Ridder, and empire-building managements are under attack from angry shareholders at Tribune and Time Warner.

Big newspaper mogul William Dean Singleton, former Chair of the Newspaper Association of America, just today proclaimed that the newspaper business is "still a very, very, very profitable piece of what we do and will be for a long, long time." So that guts the argument that these rules need to be lifted to save "dying" businesses.

And now, our research indicates there may be a link between the increasing takeover of locally-owned media by absentee-owner national conglomerates and the increasing public complaints about objectionable content on the airwaves.

So this would be in the "public interest?"

But why should we care who owns the Old Media Dinosaur when it's on the verge of extinction? There's always the Internet, right? Wrong. The vast majority of Americans still get their news, information, and entertainment via the Old Media of newspapers, television, and radio. And when it comes to getting local news, Internet users overwhelmingly surf to the websites of local newspapers, TV and radio stations. Putting all those local community Old and New Media news and information sources under one management - a management that likely will no longer be local - is a genuinely bad and dangerous idea. While you may hear many local voices, it will likely be just one out-of-town ventriloquist.

And while you and I are here on the Net having a swell time now, how long will that last given the Commission's elimination of Net Neutrality? That gives control of your web-surfing to Big Cable and Big Telco broadband providers, who can then sell it to the highest bidder. Which may well be your local community's media monopoly.

In 2003, when then- FCC Chairman Michael K. Powell first gutted these same rules, he was roundly ripped by not just the usual suspects, but by his fellow conservative Republicans. As Brent Bozell of the Parents Television Council then memorably quipped, "When so many disparate organizations -- groups ranging from the Catholic Conference to Common Cause, from the Family Research Council and the NRA to Move On, the Writers Guild and NOW -- when all of us are united on an issue, then one of two things has happened. Either the earth has spun off its axis and we have all lost our minds, or there is universal support for a concept." Turns out we hadn't lost our minds. Rather there was universal support for this concept: "Protect Free Expression, Diverse and Independent Voices, and Democracy. Stop the FCC."

Eventually, the fired-up and pissed-off grassroots deluged the Commission with over 3 million protests, which makes today's inflated indecency complaint numbers the FCC itself is so fond of citing to justify its fines seem downright puny. But this is media ownership, not indecency. By a party-line 3-2 vote, the Commission rebuffed the protests and lifted its long-standing media ownership limits, as it planned from the start.

The public was left to challenge in court the Commission's dubious contribution to the "public interest." Ultimately - fortunately - but perhaps not surprisingly -- the U.S. Court of Appeals found the FCC's actions "arbitrary and capricious" and overturned them.

So here we go again, as now-Chairman Martin tries to succeed where then-Chairman Powell failed. Martin has learned a lesson from his predecessor's failure. As FCC Commissioners Adelstein and Copps have repeatedly requested, he has scheduled a series of public hearings across the country. Hopefully, all the Commissioners will use these hearings to gain a better understanding of the damage that increasing media concentration inflicts on our nation's communities, democracy and culture.

If they do listen, and keep an open mind, then perhaps they won't repeat the mistakes of 2003 and once again cook up new rules behind closed doors with their Big Media lobbyist sous-chefs that only serve the interests of the empire-building media conglomerates, while decimating diverse and independent media outlets in local communities.

That is something the public has no interest in.

Check out www.stopbigmedia.com, make your voice heard, and pass it on.