The conclusion of an interview with author Eric Klinenberg on his book Fighting For Air, media consolidation, democracy, and what the American public and the FCC should be doing about this issue. You can find the introduction and part one of this interview here. He even answers some question from fellow Kossacks!
Much more after the jump...
Cross posted at The Seminal
J-Ro: Now, the million dollar questions: Do you see any way that there could be a free market solution to this problem of media consolidation?
Eric: Well there’s no such thing as a free market in broadcasting. I try and make this point all the time. Broadcast companies are not interested in the free market, they need regulation. If you don’t have regulation in broadcasting, then anybody can put up a tower and broadcast a signal over anyone else’s, and there would be chaos without regulation in broadcasting.
It’s not free market that they are going for; they want a regulatory system where there are no caps on ownership. They want to be able to own as much as they possibly can get their hands on and not be burdened by regulatory constraints at that level. However, they still want monopoly licenses to make sure that no one else can broadcast over the signal that they have. It’s a pretty strong demand, if you think about it.
So long as we have the notion that the airwaves are public resources, and that companies operating on them have to meet certain public interest standards in exchange for using these public resources, then I think it’s fair to have regulations that make demands for diversity of ownership and diversity of perspective for meeting those public interest obligations. Then, in the political sphere, we debate what those demands should be.
One of the things that I’m concerned about is the attack on the very idea that the institutions like the FCC have public interest obligations. So when Michael Powell says, “I’m waiting for angel of the public interest to arrive at my doorstep and tell me what the public interest is, and if I don’t get that I can’t operate to advance the public interest,” this is an assault on the principals of the public good that have driven much of the American government and much of Western governance for centuries. I think that it’s a very important point, the advance of this idea that markets will solve our problems, and we need not deal with the notion of the public or the public interest. This is an idea that we’ve seen now transform the political systems in nation after nation for the last several decades, and you’d be hard pressed to convince me that we live in a more equal and just world because of it.
J-Ro: Building on what you said about the public resource, I know you’re a supporter of Net Neutrality. Would you like to see more Internet news organizations treated as mainstream? Would you like to see successful bloggers or journalists who’ve moved away from print be given press passes, or more access?
Eric: Sure, I would. It’s difficult, because you have so many bloggers out there, and it’s hard when space is limited in small places. It’s hard to know how you would allocate press passes. Certainly there are some bloggers out there, like the DailyKos, Talking Points, people who write for the Huffington Post, some local bloggers, who have real influence and large readerships, and they should be taken seriously. My sense is that they are increasingly taken seriously. For instance, in the last election cycle, there were a lot of bloggers who were given press passes. In the Presidential elections in 2004, a lot of bloggers were allowed special kinds of access. I think it’s inevitable that that will happen.
However, again, the distinction that I’m really concerned about has to do with blogs that do a lot of commentary and blogs that do original reporting. I’m a huge fan of blogs, a huge reader of blogs, I think blogs have tremendous capacity to deepen the debate on many different issues, and they can take up stories that have been reported elsewhere and run with them in different directions that mainstream journalists would never take them. They can keep a new story on everyone’s agenda, as we all know at this point. They can elaborate parts of stories that need more attention. However, there are very few bloggers I know of who have the time and the resources, the energy, the salary, the skill that you need to do something like a major investigative report. I mentioned the Washington Post coverage of the Walter Reed scandal. Potentially, a really great blogger who has a lot of background, an investigative journalist who has institutional sponsorship from a corporation that’s willing to support her, you could imagine a future scenario in which a blogger might do something like that, but it’s pretty far fetched, and there’s not likely to be many. My concern, and I talk about these issues with techies and bloggers and people who really believe in the future of new media, is that sometimes in our enthusiasm for the power of blogs and for the incredible innovations, technologically speaking, that we’re seeing, we forget about the value of old journalism, professional journalism, and professional journalists. I think they do amazing work, work that’s vital for our democracy, and I’m very concerned that with all the market upheavals we’re seeing, we’re going to be throwing out the baby with the bath water.
I’m worried that many people don’t value journalists and local journalists as much as we should as a culture, and I also want to say that, for my book, I interviewed a lot of bloggers, a lot of people who do local blogs, and they all told me, “We could not do our work were it not for the incredible journalism that we get from old media organizations, particularly the newspaper.” I think that a lot of this kind of so-called heated debate between the old media and the new media is itself a kind of media fiction, because in the real world, the people who do blogs and the people who do journalism, there’s actually a lot of cooperation, a lot of mutual understanding.
J-Ro: A kossack, ishseminal, asks, “Do you think media consolidation has contributed to slumping CD sales across the country, or has had a negative effect on the quality of the music that we’re seeing, both on TV and outside of the mainstream media in what kind of CDs get released, what kind of bands tour the country, and what kind of artists get promoted?”
Eric: Well, we know that the playlists have gotten really standardized under media consolidation. A sociologist named Gabriel Rossman did a really nice paper (pdf) showing that the bigger the radio company, the less diverse overall its playlists were for its stations. So we find ourselves under radio consolidation in this odd situation where the majority of music Americans listen to is not available on the radio, and if the music’s not available to hear on the radio, consumers are a lot less likely to buy it in a record store or a CD store. So, I don’t think consolidation has been good for most bands. You can imagine consolidation being good for bands who’s songs are played over and over again on radio stations, but I think consolidation has made it very difficult for bands to break out and to get heard. I think this, in my view, has been a bad thing for the music industry.
If you think about the history of American music and the different kinds of sounds that broke during different periods of time, house music in Chicago in the ’80’s, grunge in Seattle in the ’90’s, the explosion of hip hop from New York and L.A. from the ’70’s through the ’90’s, all these various kinds of special sounds have emerged. I’ve asked people, “Can you think of a big sound, of a great new style that’s emerged since the radio consolidation of 1996?”
There are clearly a lot of people who are concerned about Clear Channel’s strongholds over the touring industry, and the music industry through radio. For a time, Clear Channel owned more than 1,200 radio stations in the United States, it owned Premier Radio Networks - which is the biggest syndicating program - and it owned more live concert venues that any other company. That meant that a lot of musicians felt incredible pressure to tour with Clear Channel. Many people were concerned that if they didn’t tour with Clear Channel they would be punished for it, that their music wouldn’t be plugged on radio stations across the country as much as it would be if they did tour with Clear Channel. There one famous lawsuit against Clear Channel over this, settled out of court, and who knows what the real effect of it was. I can’t estimate what exactly it did, but I think there are a lot of people who are concerned that the consolidation at this level just makes it more difficult for aspiring bands to get a hearing and get a tour together if they start to be successful. My point is, it is not like independent music or independent media has disappeared. On the contrary, if you travel around the country and you do the hard work of trying to find local independent music, you can, but you’re not very likely to get it on commercial radio and you really have to work hard to get at the most interesting kinds of cultural production out there. In my view, that’s a shame.
J-Ro: Lastly, from a couple of readers, they ask, “All right, we understand! We’ve read your arguments and we agree. What can we do to to help fight media consolidation? What can we do to reverse this? What are the kinds of groups that we need to get involved with? What are the kinds of things we should be doing?”
Eric: Well, there are a lot of different fronts in this battle, and they keep changing. Six months ago if you had asked me that question I wouldn’t have said that one thing you have to care about is the royalty rate of Internet radio stations, but now of course you do. I wouldn’t have told you that you need to be worried about the postal rate for small independent magazine publishers, but now you do. One thing you need to do is find a way where you can stay updated. Fortunately, there is one organization that’s emerged over the last few years that I profiled in my book, that I think has become a great central resource for anyone interested in the future of media. It’s called Free Press, their website is freepress.net, and whether your core concern is Net Neutrality, or Internet radio royalty rates and the future of Internet radio, or media consolidation, fake local news, you name it, Free Press has been addressing it and they have information about how you can get involved on their website.
They’re not the only organization by a long shot. MoveOn.org has a whole division of media activism, and they’ve done a bunch of really creative and exciting projects that I think have made a difference in the debate about the future of media policy. Media Matters for America is a watchdog site that has done a lot of work trying to hold media organization accountable. The Parents Television Council is an organization with pretty conservative politics, but has been interested in this issue of cable choice, or whether as consumers we should have the right to pay for the cable channels we want and to not pay for those that we’ll never watch. Currently, most cable subscribers are getting dozens of stations that they literally have never watched, and they have no choice but to pay for them in their packages. Parents Television Council and the Consumer’s Union, which publishes Consumer Reports, have been very active on that. There are a lot of organizations working on this, and I’d say the most important message I’d have for people who care about the state of the media and want to do something is that you shouldn’t feel hopeless, because the last 5 years, in my view, is a history of extraordinary and unpredictable successes from citizens and citizen organizations that say, “We’re tired of media policy being made by big media companies, Congressional officials, lobbyists, and FCC commissioners in the back halls of Washington DC office buildings. It’s time for us to turn media policy into public policy,” and they’re doing exactly that.
——————————–
I believe Eric Klinenberg has a tremendous point. Media matters. It affects your life and mine. After you read Fighting For Air, you will no longer doubt this premise. As Eric points out, we are right now positioned at a turning point. Big media companies have started to realize that their dreams of consolidation don’t always lead to the kinds of profits they are looking for. They are starting to realize that consumers will find other sources of information if broadcast media does not meet their needs. The FCC is starting to pick back up its mandate to defend the public interest, and the grassroots campaign for media reform is picking up steam.
If you care about media issues - and you should - then read Eric Klinenberg’s book, get involved with the Free Press, or Media Matters, or any other grassroots media organization you can find, and help take back the airwaves from media corporations. These airwaves are a public resource, your public resource, and you deserve a say in how these resources are used.
Finally, let us know what you think. What do you care about with respect to media consolidation? What solutions do you find sensible? Join the discussion here and contribute to the national discussion trying to reshape the media policy that affects us all.