FCC eases media ownership rules

Thanks, FCC. Here's a story from the Washington Post about what happens when media are allowed to own multiple outlets in a city. I don't want to live in that world, and apparently between 500,000 and 750,000 people who commented to the FCC don't either.

Mega-Media: Better or More Of the Same?
Washington Post, June 3, 2003

It wasn't hard to find the big story in Tampa yesterday. News of the arrest of Tampa Bay Buccaneers football player Michael Pittman on domestic violence charges appeared in the Tampa Tribune, again on the Tribune's Web site, again on TV station WFLA's Web site and yet again on TBO.com, a local news portal.

In every case, however, it was the same story, written by a single Tampa Tribune reporter, Katherine Smith. As it happens, all the media that carried Smith's story are owned by the same company, Media General Inc. of Richmond.

It is, perhaps, a vision of what's to come for the news media. Yesterday, federal regulators voted to sweep aside long-standing rules that have prevented other cities from adopting Tampa's radical experiment in media convergence.

In a split decision, the Federal Communications Commission agreed to permit more media consolidation, enabling the likes of, say, Gannett Co. of Fairfax County to own a TV station and a daily newspaper in the same city (Media General has owned the Tampa paper and WFLA for years under an exemption to this rule). It also gave the green light to companies such as the Walt Disney Co. or Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. to buy more TV stations, including multiple stations in the same city.

(snip)

But bigness itself usually doesn't translate into better news coverage, says Tom Rosenstiel, the executive director of the Project for Excellence in Journalism in Washington.

In fact, the opposite appears to be the case: In a study earlier this year, Rosenstiel's organization found that TV news operations owned by smaller companies were twice as likely to rank high on measures of "quality" (breadth of topics and sourcing, balance of viewpoints, etc.) than stations owned by the nation's 10 biggest group owners.

Rosenstiel theorizes that big companies may impose a "cookie-cutter" mentality on their stations, and that bottom-line pressures compel them to treat local newscasts as "cash cows." He adds, "There's little reason frankly to believe that relaxing this rule will enhance the quality of local TV news. It may enhance the financial ability of the companies that own the stations, but there's no hard evidence that the journalism will get better."

I was surprised by the decision of the FCC yesterday. I know Atrios had pretty much given up, but I thought that more than 500,000 comments, postcards, and e-mails from all over the political spectrum (everybody from Code Pink, Women for Peace to the NRA) would manage to sway the Republican majority. I guess those comments in favor must have had a lot of sway. You know, the ones from Disney and Rupert Murdoch. Big business wins again.

But maybe not for long. When you can get half to three-quarters of a million people exercised enough about a technical, boring issue like media regulation to make a comment, send a letter, postcard, or e-mail, you've got some serious power. Maybe they should send cards to all of their senators and representatives. Public pressure on them might have been more effective. And if a Democrat wanted to run with that issue (hint, hint) it might get some traction with both core Democrats and southern Reagan Republicans who supported the NRA on this issue.