Re: [acid-jazz] Media diversity at risk (slightly off-topic)

From: Six Stringa (gtrplaya_at_hotmail.com)
Date: 2003-05-30 20:43:48

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    I've listened intently to newscasts on our local community jazz station
    regarding the subject. Interesting to say the least.

    Thanks.

    >From: "Park, James R S" <jrspar_at_essex.ac.uk>
    >To: <acid-jazz_at_ucsd.edu>
    >Subject: [acid-jazz] Media diversity at risk (slightly off-topic)
    >Date: Fri, 30 May 2003 08:57:34 +0100
    >
    >I hope this is of some interest to you all.
    >
    >
    >James.
    >
    >
    >Media Diversity at Risk
    >
    >By Marfuza Khan
    >The Corporate Research Project
    >May 29, 2003
    >
    >
    >
    >On June 2, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) will vote on
    >proposed changes to longstanding government rules on media ownership. It
    >is widely believed that FCC chairman Michael Powell, and the two other
    >Republican commissioners on the five-member Commission, will vote in
    >favor of loosening government rules which limit the size and reach of
    >the nation's largest broadcasting, newspaper and cable companies.
    >
    >The rule changes that will be considered by the Commission are part of a
    >regular, congressionally mandated review initiated under the 1996
    >Telecommunications Act. However, this is the first time the review will
    >involve such drastic changes. Michael Powell has not made his full plan
    >public, but it reportedly calls for the most extensive rewriting of the
    >ownership rules in decades. As Jeff Chester of the Center for Digital
    >Democracy points out, "The rationale for these policies is that they
    >help provide for a diverse media marketplace of ideas, essential for a
    >democracy. They have not been perfect. But these rules have helped
    >constrain the power of the corporate media giants."
    >
    >According to the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, only
    >a third of all Americans realize that the public owns the airwaves, and
    >about a tenth are aware that the FCC gives stations licenses for free.
    >In 1997, broadcasters lobbied and received portions of the digital
    >broadcast spectrum - worth, according to some estimates, upwards of $70
    >billion - for free. The proposed rule changes would further increase
    >media concentration and have a deleterious impact on independent
    >production. At the same time, the changes are expected to result in the
    >loss of local content in favor of homogenized national programming. That
    >has been the experience in the radio market after the restrictions on
    >ownership were eased with the passage of the 1996 telecommunications
    >bill, which, for example, paved the way for Clear Channel Communications
    >to expand from 40 stations to 1,225 and in the process exert
    >unprecedented control over the industry.
    >
    >Michael Powell has rejected a request from two commissioners to delay
    >the vote even though there is precedent for granting such a request.
    >Michael J. Kopps, one of the two Democrats on the Commission who
    >requested the extension, said that that the chairman was rushing to vote
    >on proposals that could change the media landscape in ways not fully
    >understood.
    >
    >The Proposed Rules and Their Relevance in the Age of Multi-Media
    >The six key rules that are being considered for change are:
    >
    >1) The newspaper/broadcast cross-ownership ban that prohibits the
    >combined ownership of a major newspaper and broadcast station in the
    >same urban market;
    >
    >2) The national television station ownership cap that prohibits any one
    >entity from owning TV stations covering more than 35% of the national
    >audience;
    >
    >3) The dual network ownership rule that prohibits mergers among the four
    >major television networks;
    >
    >4) The television/radio cross-ownership rule, which limits the number of
    >stations that can be jointly owned in any one market;
    >
    >5) The local television duopoly rule that limits common ownership of
    >television stations in the same market; and
    >
    >6) The local radio ownership rule that limits the number of radio
    >stations any one entity can own in a single market.
    >
    >Commission chairman Michael Powell has said that today's ownership rules
    >don't reflect the realities of the modern media marketplace. They are
    >irrelevant in a multi-media landscape where consumers have choices among
    >hundreds of cable channels, millions of websites and satellite radio.
    >Powell's spiritual father is Mark Fowler, Ronald Reagan's first FCC
    >chairman, who said that public interest rules for television were
    >unnecessary, since TV was just another appliance, "a toaster with
    >pictures." When asked in 2001 what he thought the term public interest
    >meant in the FCC's mission, the current FCC chairman responded, "I have
    >no idea...I try to make the best judgment that I can in ways that
    >benefit consumers. Beyond that I don't know."
    >
    >A recent analysis by the Consumer Federation of America and Consumers
    >Union, two of the nation's largest consumer advocacy organizations,
    >debunks the notion favored by chairman Powell that a revolution has
    >taken place in the media and communications market that renders the
    >current rules irrelevant. The analysis uses FCC data that show that TV
    >is the American public's dominant source (56 percent of survey
    >respondents) of news and information, while newspapers are the second
    >(23 percent) most important source. Cable and the Internet play a small
    >role as a source of local news - 11 percent and six percent
    >respectively. Internet users, however, use the websites of newspapers
    >and TV stations as their primary source of information. Radio has almost
    >disappeared as an independent source of news.
    >
    >Critics have also correctly pointed out that while there may be hundreds
    >of channels, there is a paucity of choices. Five major corporations are
    >the gatekeepers and decision makers for the programming choices of the
    >vast majority of the American people. Right wing powerhouses are also
    >expected to grow. The proposed takeover of DirecTV, the country's most
    >powerful satellite service, by Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation is the
    >obvious example. Companies such as the Sinclair Broadcast Group, which
    >reaches 24 percent of the national TV audience, has created repackaged
    >"faux" local news - local broadcasting combined with prepackaged news -
    >like Clear Channel in the radio market.
    >
    >The Persuasive Power of Media Corporations
    >The major media companies have been engaged in the campaign to loosen
    >government regulations for a number of years. As noted in a study by the
    >Center for Public Integrity, media companies' strategies for winning
    >friends and influencing people have included time-honored techniques
    >such as lobbying, campaign contributions and taking politicians and
    >their staff on junkets. They have often gone either first to the FCC or
    >to Congress to achieve their agenda to end any federal limits on their
    >size and power. Failing legislative or regulatory intervention, they
    >have also launched a powerful attack of the rules in the courts, arguing
    >that the rules violate their right to free speech and are no longer
    >needed to ensure that consumers have access to competing sources of news
    >and entertainment programming. The U.S. Court of Appeals court for the
    >District of Columbia struck down FCC rules or demanded that they be
    >rewritten three times between February and April this year.
    >
    >The media industry's political power is much greater compared to other
    >industries. In his memoir, "You Say You Want a Revolution," former FCC
    >chairman Reed Hundt comments, "The media industry does not mobilize
    >great numbers of voters and it actually is not comprised of America's
    >largest economically most important companies..." The media's
    >significant and political clout comes from its near ubiquitous,
    >pervasive power to completely alter the beliefs of Americans.
    >Politicians are afraid to take on the news media directly for fear that
    >they will simply disappear from the TV or radio airwaves and from news
    >columns.
    >
    >Media Concentration & Democracy in the Marketplace of Ideas
    >Five companies - Viacom (owner of CBS), Disney (ABC), News Corporation
    >(Fox), General Electric (NBC) and AOL Time Warner - control about 75
    >percent share of production of prime-time viewing. Research conducted by
    >the Project for Excellence in Journalism finds that larger companies and
    >network owned TV stations produce lower quality news shows than do
    >smaller media companies. These five corporations are now on the verge of
    >controlling the same number of television households as the big three
    >broadcast networks did forty years ago. In the past, when three or four
    >broadcast networks controlled so many households, the Commission
    >protected the public's interest in competition and diversity of
    >viewpoints by requiring independent production of programming.
    >
    >No such policy protects the American public today. Tom Wolzien, a Wall
    >Street analyst terms this "programming oligopoly" and shows that it
    >exists both in the distribution and production of programming. For
    >example, NBC owns outright or holds a significant financial interest in
    >one hundred percent of the new series on its schedule. The other
    >networks are not far behind. Rather than compete fairly in the
    >marketplace of ideas, the networks leveraged their control of the
    >publicly owned airwaves to take over television program production,
    >driving small businesses and creative entrepreneurs, many of whom were
    >women and minorities, out of business.
    >
    >The biased coverage of the war against Iraq by the mainstream media,
    >particularly by Fox, demonstrates the pitfalls of media concentration.
    >Interestingly, Michael Powell makes the connection between the war and
    >his agenda. He says that bigger media companies are needed more than
    >ever because only they can cover the war the way the Iraq war was
    >covered.
    >
    >The Big Five
    >* Viacom - 2002 revenues $24.6 billion. Owns 39 broadcast television
    >stations and 185 radio stations. Cable networks include MTV, Nickelodeon
    >and BET. Other businesses include CBS, UPN, Paramount Pictures, Simon &
    >Schuster and an 80.4 percent equity interest in Blockbuster Video.
    >
    >* News Corporation - 2002 total revenues $17 billion. Owns (80.6
    >percent) the Fox Entertainment Group, which includes 20th Century Fox,
    >Fox Television Stations, and Fox Cable (includes sports and movie
    >channels, National Geographic Channel). Fox Television owns 60
    >television stations and has 188 affiliates. News Corporation is the
    >world's largest publisher of English-language newspapers, including the
    >New York Post. Also owns HarperCollins Publishers.
    >
    >* AOL Time Warner - 2002 revenues $40.9 billion. Businesses owned
    >include America Online, CNN, Time Warner Cable, Warner Bros. Pictures,
    >Turner Networks (includes TBS Superstation) and HBO. The Warner Music
    >Group's major record labels include Elektra and Atlantic. The publishing
    >business conducted primarily through Time Inc. includes Time, People,
    >Sports Illustrated, Fortune and Money. The Securities and Exchange
    >Commission and the Department of Justice are conducting investigations
    >into accounting and disclosure practices of the company.
    >
    >* General Electric - 2002 revenues $31.7 billion. NBC provides network
    >television services to more than 220 affiliated stations, produces
    >television programs, operates 28 television-broadcasting stations,
    >operates four cable/satellite networks around the world, and has
    >investment and programming activities in the Internet, multimedia and
    >cable television. Also owns Telemundo, one of the two largest hispanic
    >broadcasting networks.
    >
    >* Walt Disney - 2002 total revenues $25.3 billion. Operates the ABC
    >Television Network, which has 226 primary affiliated stations. ABC Radio
    >Networks provide programming to more than 4,600 affiliated radio
    >stations. Radio Disney is carried on 51 stations, including 32 that are
    >owned by the company. ABC Radio Networks also produce the ESPN Radio
    >format, which is carried on more than 700 stations, including 215
    >full-time (four of which are owned by the company), making it the
    >largest radio sports network in the United States. Disney also owns 10
    >television stations, 44 standard AM radio stations, and 18 FM radio
    >stations.
    >
    >Conclusion
    >As Virginia Riskin, President of the Writer's Guild of America, said in
    >her remarks at one of the FCC hearings on the proposed rule changes in
    >February, "The media are the modern-day American Town Square, the place
    >where people from different backgrounds and points of view share their
    >stories and the public learns about the world." Ensuring broadest
    >participation at this modern American town square is an essential
    >precondition for a pluralistic democracy to flourish. The First
    >Amendment rests on the assumption that the widest possible dissemination
    >of information from diverse and antagonistic sources is essential to the
    >welfare of the public. As the Supreme Court has reiterated, "Assuring
    >that the public has access to a multiplicity of information sources is a
    >governmental purpose of the highest order, for it promotes values
    >central to the First Amendment."
    >
    >
    >
    >

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