Federal Communications Commission Chair Kevin Martin recently released a plan to drastically relax media ownership rules, which includes repealing a rule that forbids media cross-ownership in a single market.
Eliminating the cross-ownership ban means a single media conglomerate could own the newspapers, magazines, Internet news sites, television stations and radio stations in the same city.
As reported in the New York Times, The deregulatory proposal is likely to put the agency once again at the center of a debate between the media companies, which view the restrictions as anachronistic, and civil rights, labor, religious and other groups that maintain the government has let media conglomerates grow too large.""
Indeed, moves toward media consolidation have provoked bipartisan public protest in the past. There was vigorous criticism from both Republican and Democratic lawmakers to a similar proposal to eliminate the cross-ownership ban in 2003 by then-chair Michael Powell. The FCC was flooded with three million calls against changing the rules. A federal court ruling eventually concluded that the commission had failed to adequately justify the new rules.
There is no question why Martin is rushing the rewrite proposal, squelching chances for public input or dissent regarding the radical rule change. His underhanded tactics include delaying the release of the proposed rule rewrites, holding last- minute hearings and proposing to expedite the rule rewrite and hold the final vote in mid-December.
Among the opposition to the proposal is Michael J. Copps, Democratic member of the FCC. Copps said Martin's proposal to complete a relaxation of the rules in December would require procedural shortcuts, giving the public too little time to comment on the proposals and industry experts too little time to weigh their impact on news operations.
""We need to deal with some long-neglected issues before we tackle the media ownership rules,"" said Democratic Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein. ""We should first address the appalling lack of ownership of media outlets by women and people of color.
And we need to implement improvements in how outlets handle issues of concern to local communities.""
The new rules that could lift the cross-ownership ban are unwarranted. What are the benefits to media consumers? The FCC's obligation is to the American people, ensuring the media remain a resource for all citizens. The rule-rewrite benefits big media owners, not the citizens the FCC is meant to serve.
The media are a public trust licensed by the federal government to operators who broadcast in the public interest.
Changes to media ownership rules should strive to increase media owner diversity, rather than make it easier for huge conglomerates to further their empires.
""Chairman Martin's efforts to curtail debate and quickly advance a media consolidation proposal raise numerous warning signs that he wants to further shrink an already limited diversity of opinion found among American news outlets,"" U.S. Rep. Maurice Hinchey said. ""His expected plan is the exact opposite of what is needed in this country.""
Proponents may argue that deregulation is a good thing, theoretically, but deregulation is not the aim of Martin's proposal. The aim is to pander to the demands of big media owners.
""It's almost this Orwellian use of language, where you create new rules but the rules change because they benefit industry and you call it deregulation,"" said Mark Lloyd, co-founder and executive director for the Civil Rights Forum on Communications Policy. ""And people feel that's good, because people like deregulation, people like fewer rules ... but it's a trick, it's not what's really happening.""
The ""deregulation"" of media ownership does not serve to lift restrictions to allow for more media ownership diversity or a diversity of viewpoints, but to ensure conglomerates can further their media monopolies and drastically increase profits. Further concentrating media ownership will further stifle diversity.
As Copps pointed out, he foresees centralization on further media concentration, not localism; uniformity, not diversity; and monopoly and oligopoly, not competition.
If Martin's push to deregulate media ownership rules is successful, basic liberties like freedom of the press and freedom of speech are compromised, as fewer media owners become the gatekeepers policing what is reported.
Fewer and fewer large media conglomerates already control what the public reads, sees and hears. The rule changes would shrink ownership diversity even further, eliminating independent voices and degrading local news
coverage.
Hopefully public outcry over the elimination of the cross-ownership ban matches that of 2003 and the administration's latest plan to deliver for big business can again be thwarted.
Michelle Turcotte is a senior majoring in journalism. Please send responses to opinion@dailycardinal.com.
