The FCC Vote That No One Knows About

CHICAGO -- As Federal Communications Commissioner Michael Copps barnstorms around the country holding unofficial public hearings in advance of a scheduled June 2 vote on proposals to eliminate the FCC cross-ownership ban and ease other media-ownership restrictions, he repeats the same message everywhere: News outlets have failed to inform the public about these important issues.

"The media have not done a very good job of teeing up this debate for the American people. ... Whatever your side, someone's got to tell them what's up for grabs," he said during a recent stop at the "Midwest Public Forum on Media Ownership," held at the Northwestern University School of Law in Chicago.

He added: "I haven't seen the first network news report on media ownership. It's an important issue that affects what you see and hear and read -- and they're not reporting it."

Copps repeatedly framed the issues in the June vote -- which could kill the ban on common ownership of a newspaper and a broadcast property in the same market -- as "dramatically altering the media landscape."

More than seven of 10 Americans, 72%, say they have heard "nothing at all" about the FCC media-ownership debate, according to a late-February survey by the Project for Excellence in Journalism in collaboration with the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press. Only 4% of respondents said they had heard "a lot" about the debate.

"Three out of four people don't know -- that's not acceptable," Copps said. "My plea, for all people with the media, is to exercise your responsibilities and your rights in this debate."

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Mark Fitzgerald (mfitzgerald@editorandpublisher.com) is editor at large for E&P.

With talk radio and the Internet and cable television, nobody in the US is going to suffer from limited access to alternative POVs because of these proposed regulatory changes.

"Current broadcast-ownership rules strictly regulate business expansion, with caps on market share and prohibitions against corporations having sizable cross-ownership stakes in newspaper, radio and TV markets. Mr. Powell rightly thinks that competition, not government, should decide such business matters, and the FCC is set to release new rules in this regard by June...

Standing in the way are some of the usual big-government suspects, such as Sens. Byron Dorgan, Barbara Boxer and Patty Murray. Joining them, disappointingly, are conservative Sens. Trent Lott, Wayne Allard and Kay Bailey Hutchison, all of whom should know better.

It's no mere coincidence that two of the companies handcuffed by the current caps are Fox Television and Clear Channel, America's largest owner of radio stations. Fox, with its refreshing lack of a leftist bias, has been gobbling up market share from the big three networks and CNN. Clear Channel, which operates approximately 1,200 radio stations nationwide, has ruffled some 'mainstream' media feathers with the pro-war slant and conservative disposition of many of its on-air personalities.

These two enterprises are big because they are popular; they are popular because they offer consumers the only major alternative programming to the dominant liberal media outlets. Despite growing demand for Fox and Clear Channel, current media-ownership rules stop them from expanding, thus limiting their voice.

Federal courts have spoken on this topic before. In response to a suit filed by Fox, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia held in February 2002 that the appropriate approach to deregulation of broadcast ownership is, "Damn the torpedoes! Full speed ahead." It was Congress that forced the FCC to review its broadcast-ownership rules every two years and either justify or amend them. Mr. Powell is simply trying to follow the judicial green light for deregulation via the congressional mandate to amend the rules when necessary.

Lest anyone forget, the era of big government is not over. Washington still takes it upon itself to decide who can own what, when and under what circumstances. Current media-ownership rules protect established outlets and — dare we say — established opinions..." Broadcast Deregulation Needed --Editorial, The Washington Times, April 16, 2003

yitbos

Would you summarize the best arguments for both sides, and/or tell who's for and against it?

I've done no formal research, but based on what I do know, the public's best interests are not served by lifting this ban. Given the broadcast media's proclivity for attempting to shape public opinion rather than reporting the news, they should not be allowed to extend their ownership to print assets within the same market. I would think we need the print media to at least keep the broadcast media "honest", as it were.

Personally, I could never get over the audacity of the Federal Government in creating an agency which thinks it has the right to regulate and restrict the usage of a naturally occuring phenomenon which can be found from one end of our universe to the other. As an amateur radio operator I can see the need for regualting/monitoring it's usage but the concept galls me.

I don't know that the Left is any more or less furious about the consolidation of media power into a few hands than are conservatives. The point is that there hasn't been enough coverage of the issue for a meaningful number of people of ANY political bent to have developed an opinion.

It's ridiculous when, in big city markets, the 20 highest rated radio stations are owned by a total of 3 or 4 companies. Radio stations barely compete against one another any more--they merely slice up the demographics of a given market and make their comfortable profits. (you have to be extraordinarily bad at business, by the way, to lose money in radio--it's a finite resource; even the stations with the smallest audiences manage to make a profit.)

While the free market is the way to go in nearly every situation, including media, take a look at what has happened next door in Canada.

There is still the CBC, which is a state organ. There were 2 other national networks, but they are now combined into one, which is owned by the Asper family (major contributors to the federal LIEberal party here).

The Asper family also own every major paper in the country, as well as other media interests. Do you WANT all the media in various parts of your country to be owned by "Billary" shills, or is the current state of affairs bad enough already?

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