FCC Chairman's Slick PR Can't Disguise Big Media Giveaway

Tuesday morning -- just three days after 1,000 people crowded into Seattle Town Hall to tell Kevin Martin's Federal Communications Commission not to allow further media consolidation -- the FCC Chairman released proposed rule changes that would allow one company to own a daily newspaper and a TV station in the same market.

Martin is pushing this massive giveaway to Big Media even though the overwhelming majority of the public -- at six official public hearings and in hundreds of thousands of comments filed with the FCC -- has told him:

1. The media are not serving local communities.
2. He should not allow the largest media companies to get even bigger.

This is not just a slap in the face of the thousands of people who have testified and sent letters to Chairman Martin, but also a snub of Congress who has been calling on him to slow down and address outstanding concerns about the impact of more media consolidation on minority ownership and localism.

The day before the Seattle hearing, a bipartisan group of senators -- led by Byron Dorgan (D-N.D.) and Trent Lott (R-Miss.), and including presidential candidates Barack Obama (D-Ill.), Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) and Joseph Biden (D-Del.) -- introduced new legislation that would slow down Martin's timeline and ensure that the FCC follows its mandate to protect the public interest.

The proposed rule change was accompanied by an op-ed from Chairman Martin in the New York Times claiming that the new rules are designed to save a struggling newspaper industry. Oh, the poor, poor newspaper industry.

They have fallen from average profit margins of 30 percent to around 20 percent today -- still dramatically higher than the vast majority of other industries. Martin's rationale is the best bluff he can offer up while he does the bidding of media giants like Tribune Company and its would-be owner Sam Zell. Martin knows that if Tribune fails to secure cross-ownership waivers or a rule change by Jan. 1, the purchase price would go up at an annual rate of 8 percent.

The U.S. media is a complete mess -- and it doesn't represent the vast majority of Americans. Women and people of color -- who comprise two-thirds of the population -- own only about one-sixth of commercial radio and TV stations.

Martin's proposal doesn't merely ignore this; it would allow the situation to get even worse. He hopes to quell critics' concerns by only relaxing the newspaper/broadcast cross-ownership ban in the only top 20 markets, and by only letting newspapers combine with broadcast stations outside of the four top-rated channels.

Problem is that one-third of the stations owned by people of color are in the top 20 markets and none of those are the top four stations. That puts the few minority-owned stations directly in the cross-hairs of consolidation.

The entire process leading to Tuesday's announcement has been a study in government corruption 101. Biased research, flawed data and unfair timelines from the FCC have consistently pushed the public out of the policymaking process and ignored citizens' impassioned pleas against further media consolidation.

But Martin's proposal represents a particularly nefarious strategic turn. While his press release notes reassuringly that the rule change would be limited to the top 20 media markets, the fine print of the rule change reveals a dangerous loophole that could open the back door to runaway media consolidation in nearly every market. It would allow cross-ownership in smaller markets -- perhaps hundreds of them -- if stations could show such a combination meets a series of ill-defined standards.

In the end, Kevin Martin is yet another Bush appointee attempting to dish out yet another handout for Wall Street on the backs of Main Street. Fortunately, the StopBigMedia.com Coalition -- hundreds of groups from across the political spectrum -- are circling the wagons and readying for a fight.

Comments

[knowledgeispower]

This is just all so disturbing. Well done presenting the facts Josh! Indeed, I remember the days, not so long ago, that I was reassured by my teachers during some classroom discussion that there were safe guards in place (by the FCC no less,) to prevent massive consolidation of the sorts that are, unfortunately, rampant today. It's downright scary how much consolidated there truly is this day and age. Rupert Murdoch is everywhere, as is Sumner Redstone etc. These are the guys that are setting the agenda?! It is nauseating and more than a little disturbing/troubling for any American citizen to believe what one now hears on tv, in print, etc. since in essence it is all coming from painfully few independent sources. It is time for Congress to answer to the American public and prevent Kevin Martin from succeeding!

[JWakkaJane]

Thanks Josh, keep it up.

fwiw, 'Stop Big Media' is the only bumper sticker I put on a car of mine since before 9/11. I'm beginning to think 'Start Little Media' might be more productive. I read somewhere recently that new small newspapers
are the only news publications doing pretty well.

'course then they had to enact that killer postage hike for small publications that will actually decrease the amount some of the biggest publications have to pay for postage.

argh.

my little media:
http://crowings.wordpress.com

[Chris24Ruh]

This ought to be as much evidence as anyone needs that the FCC is a clear and present danger to democracy in America. For Martin to claim his proposed changes are intended to bolster a sagging newspaper business is either a lie or proof that he is incompetant, since nothing in the FCC's charter gives it any responsibility for newspapers. The Commission was instituted in the early 1930s to be the watchdog of the broadcast airwaves. Those airwaves were deemed then to be the property of the citizens of this country.

For the unititiated, the broadcast spectrum is a finite space and, therefore, only a limited number of players get to use them. Unlike newspapers, which can exist in any number the market will allow, only so many radio and TV stations CAN operate, so the licenses to operate them are scarce and must be issued with some notion of the licensee adhering to rules we the pople, via the FCC, have set down. These rules have been almost eliminated since major telecom reform in 1996.

This is also evidence of the lie of the "liberal media" slander. If conservative interests were not represented in media, wouldn't THEY be the ones lobbying against Kevin Martin's plans? Instead, while breathing the lie of a monolithically "liberal media," the conservatives are locking all but conservative voices out of broadcasting. This saddens me and I am a career broadcaster.

[research]

Time for a lot of Anti-monopoly.

do something:

http://action.freepress.net/campaign/fcc_oversight/