The rules change effort was driven by FCC Chairman Kevin Martin.
Last December, as the FCC vote on its proposed rules changes was approaching I posted alengthy diary on the background of this story. I think segments of it bear repeating because it spells out just how blatantly, and sometimes illegally, Martin plowed forward with the changes in the face of the FCC’s own rules and overwhelming public and even Congressional opposition.
When the FCC’s earlier efforts to pass similar rules (under then Chair Michael Powell - son of Colin) were blocked, Martin then took on the chairmanship and moved forward. After court rulings that the agency had failed in the first attempt to heed public opinion, Martin did hold another set of public hearings, but as you will see, those were essentially for show. Even as the last of the new hearings were taking place and public opposition was clear, Martin had already written and submitted an Op-Ed piece to the NY Times explaining that the FCC would be going ahead with its vote. Called before the Senate to explain what he was doing, Martin was warned point blank not to proceed. But he diid.
Now the Senate seems prepared to react….even it is four months after the fact. Going back to that initial effort under the Powell chairmanship:
Chairman Michael Powell was in charge of the process, the public was not given time to review the rules or voice their concerns about how the rules would impact their local communities. Only one public forum was held in Richmond, Virginia, and the rules themselves were never made public prior to the FCC's vote. The only thing that kept the rules from going into effect was a decision by a Philadelphia court that found that the rules were flawed, and so was the process that produced them. In fact, when the FCC first launched its efforts, the American public responded with over 3 MILLION complaints.
But that didn’t stop the Commission. Michael Powell stepped down as Chairman and Kevin Martin, a member of the FCC since 2001, was named to fill the post in March of 2005. A year later, in 2006, Martin launched the new effort to try and accomplish what Powell had not. He announced that further “research” would be undertaken on the need for media consolidation and that a series of public hearings would be held around the country, giving the public a chance to voice their opinion.
Hearings were held in Nashville, TN; Harrisburg, PA; Tampa, FL; at Duke University in North Carolina; in Los Angeles, CA; and most recently, in Seattle, WA. However, as with so much of this story, the devil is in the details. Democratic members of the Commission complained that the technical studies were flawed, rushed and incomplete and in some cases had been written to buttress pre-conceived positions. And the public hearings, in virtually all cases, were scheduled with just five days advance notice, giving advocacy groups little time to organize opposition in the area.
Despite those handicaps, the opposition was clear. Each hearing drew over 1,000 attendees and literally hundreds signed up to speak at each one, with testimony often running into the early hours of the following day. As they had before in letters, phone calls and e-mails, the public expressed intense and clear opposition to further media consolidation. A poll by the Media and Democracy Coalition (no longer online) made clear the magnitude of public opposition to the proposed rule change:
• Seventy percent of the poll respondents describe media consolidation as a problem and 42 percent of Americans describe it as a major problem. Democrats, independents and Republicans all consider ownership consolidation to be a problem in nearly equal proportions; seventy-one percent of Democrats, 73 percent of independents and 69 percent of Republicans believe increasing ownership consolidation is a problem.
• By a considerable margin of 57 percent to 30 percent, the public favors laws that make it illegal for a corporation to own both a newspaper and a television station in the same city or media market. Similar levels of support exist among political liberals (59 percent favor), moderates (58 percent favor), and conservatives (56 percent favor). Likewise, the poll finds support among both older and younger Americans (58 and 55 percent, respectively), white Americans and people of color (59 and 50 percent), and union and non-union households (59 and 56 percent).
• The concern about ownership consolidation and cross-ownership of local news outlets is further informed by the public’s preference for local news sources which are threatened by the concentration of ownership by a few, very large multi-national conglomerates. Americans report that they are more likely to watch local television news on a daily basis (61 percent daily) than national television news broadcasts (44 percent daily) or cable television news (37 percent daily). Newspapers share a similar dynamic: thirty- five percent of the public say they read their local daily newspaper every day compared to 5 percent who read a national newspaper on a daily basis. When it comes to local news, the same patterns emerge, with television dominating followed by local radio news, daily newspapers and the Internet.
• The consolidation of ownership also threatens to introduce more bias into broadcasts that the public already views as tainted by partiality. One third of Americans (34 percent) already believe there is a “great deal” of bias in the news coverage they watch, and nearly three-quarters (72 percent) of the public consider there to be a “great deal” or a “fair amount of bias.” Revealingly, by a 56 to 30 percent margin, the public believes there is more bias in “national newspapers and broadcasts” than in “local newspapers and news broadcast.” Consolidation of ownership threatens the autonomy of the local outlets that the public prefers and relies on and eliminates the diversity of voices in the news media that prevents imbalance in news coverage.
Was Commissioner Martin keeping an open mind and listening to the public voice? It seems very hard to believe he did, especially when hisOp-Ed in support of his rule change appeared in the New York Times just two days after the final Seattle Hearing. The timing of those two events drew angry criticism from members of Congress who accused Martin of treating the hearings as a pretense rather than a true public forum. Several suggested he had already written and submitted his Op-Ed piece to the Times even before the Seattle hearing. The Times failed to answer questions on the timing.
But that’s only part of the story because Chairman Martin wasn’t just ignoring the public’s opinion. He was also going against the FCC’s own research study which found that consolidated media operations generated less local news than true “hometown” outlets. And Martin was doing so despite having been caught lying about the fact that the Commission had tried to destroy the study when it learned of those findings.
Mother Jones has the background:
Senate reconfirmation hearings tend to be predictable affairs, marked by polite give-and-take and senatorial grandstanding, but generally free of surprise plot twists. And so it was supposed to go last September 12, when Federal Communications Commission (FCC) chairman Kevin Martin appeared before the Commerce Committee. In March 2005, following the departure of Michael Powell (Colin's son), President Bush had named the young Republican lawyer to head the extraordinarily powerful five-person panel that oversees the nation's media and telecommunications policies. Martin, a boyish-looking 40-year-old who'd been on the FCC since 2001, planned to carry on much of his predecessor's unfinished business, particularly stiffening penalties for on-air indecency and the sweeping deregulation of media ownership rules. But unlike Powell, who was confrontational and contemptuous of his critics, the bland and soft-spoken Martin seemed unlikely to attract controversy.
But controversy caught up with him when Senator Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) strayed from the script at his reconfirmation hearing. Boxer began by asking Martin about an FCC study, commissioned by Powell, on the impact of media ownership on local news. Unsuspecting, Martin said that it had never been completed. Then, as he watched glumly, Boxer brandished a draft of the study, which had, in fact, been written more than two years earlier, only to be buried by the FCC. The report found that locally owned television stations, on average, presented 5 1/2 minutes more local news per broadcast than stations owned by out-of-town conglomerates. The findings squarely contradicted the claims made by Martin, Powell, and big media companies, who have argued that lifting limits on ownership would improve local news coverage.
"Now, this isn't national security, for God's sakes," Boxer continued, unable to resist making Martin squirm. "I mean, this is important information. So I don't understand who deep-sixed this thing." Martin meekly said he had no idea, and promised he'd look into it. Within a week, a former FCC lawyer claimed that "every last piece" of the report had been ordered destroyed before it was leaked, and a second unreleased study came to light, prompting Boxer to refer the matter to the FCC's inspector general.
The discovery of the missing studies wasn't just bad for Martin's image, it was a blow to his pet project—trying to repeal what's known as the cross-ownership ban, a 31-year-old FCC rule that prohibits a single company from owning a newspaper and a TV station in the same regional market. Powell had repealed the rule in 2003 amid public outcry, only to have a federal court reinstate it the following year. Last April, Martin told the members of the Newspaper Association of America that he would renew the effort to end this regulatory relic from "the days of disco and leisure suits." Lifting the ban, he said, "may help to forestall the erosion in local news coverage." But now, the FCC's own internal findings confirmed what its critics had been saying for years—that letting one company dominate a city's news business actually undermines the quality of the local media that most Americans rely on for their news.
As usual, Bill Moyers has produced an excellent summary of the events leading up to last December’s vote... Massing of the Media with clips from the public hearings and appearances by Martin before Senate and House Committees at which he informs members of Congress that he intends to hold the vote no matter what they and the public think. You will find both the Moyers video and a transcript of the segment.
It seems likely the GOP will go to the mattresses on this issue. Media consolidation has been a huge benefit to them in so many ways. It has concentrated control of the airwaves in the hands of a small group of very conservative owners....ABC/Disney, News Corporation, NBC/GE, The New York Times, and Clear Channel to name some of the largest.
Concentrated ownership also means corporations hold assets subject to government license approval which makes them less likely to challenge authority via news outlets. The result...less probing journalism, the virtual disappearance of substantive network documentaries, and more freedom for government sources to peddle their propaganda. As a prime example, witness CBS actions on the Niger/Yellowcake story in the wake of the Rathergate incident...sitting on a 60 Minutes piece for years.
Today, we are watching the end result of this process....major media conglomerates which focus their news resources on bread and circuses....celebrity crackups, American Idol, "reality TV", headline news about bears loose in New Jersey and Brittany Spears, and happy pet stories. Meanwhile, as has been documented, real coverage of a war which is bleeding us dry and destroying our democratic institutions has disappeared. Political debate is reduced to gotchas and symbolism like flag pins. And as we are learning, when war is covered, the "experts" used are often paid shills for the Pentagon and/or the White House, while revelations of White House "management" of torture are totally ignored.
This is probably one of the most important battles progressives will face along with matters like FISA and personal privacy and habeas corpus. The challenge is that we have fought so many battles already, it can sometimes seem overwhelming........and it is our weariness and the complicity of the media which this administration counts on to carry out its work.
This is a very rare case of Congress actually acting in the face of actions so blatant and so clearly opposed to the public will that they defy belief. Once more into the breach...we all need to let our representatives know that their blocking of these rules is essential to a true democracy and knowing the truth.
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