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Advocacy Over the past 25 years, ownership of the media has become concentrated in the hands of fewer and fewer large corporations. The situation is now so extreme that five companies control 80% of what people watch on television and ten companies control two-thirds of what we hear on radio.
Our democracy depends on a well-informed public. If we only have a few corporations controlling our sources of news, we don't hear the diversity of voices we need to make informed decisions. Similarly, a few large corporations can severely curtail the variety of music, arts, and entertainment programming broadcast on TV and radio.
Since the airwaves are owned by the public, the government has a responsibility to ensure that broadcasters serve the public interest. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is the government agency that is charged with regulating the ownership of media. Its mandate is to ensure diversity, localism, and competition in the media, conditions critical to the health of our democracy and culture. And yet, the FCC voted in June, 2003, to dramatically loosen the rules governing media companies, allowing large corporations to own many more media outlets.
The new rules - currently blocked by a court injunction from taking effect - allow one corporation to own television stations and newspapers in the same community and to own newspapers and several TV stations in larger communities. They also allow one corporation to own enough local TV stations to reach 45% of viewers nationwide (up from 35%).
The Telecommunications Act of 1996 already loosened the rules on media ownership and resulted in a huge wave of media mergers. For example, since the Telecom Act, the number of owners of local television station in the US has dropped by half (Los Angeles Times, 4/19/01), ownership of TV stations by people of color has dropped to its lowest point since the federal government began tracking such data in 1990 (FAIR), and more than half of the 11,000 commercial radio stations have been sold (Silicon Alley Reporter, 3/01). A news media controlled by a few large corporations does not serve the public interest; it serves the corporate bottom line, limiting debate and keeping citizens uninformed. The risk, as Mark Crispin Miller writes in The Nation, is that "America's cities could turn into informational 'company towns,' with one behemoth owning all the local print organs - daily paper(s), alternative weekly, city magazine - as well as the TV and radio stations, the multiplexes and the cable system." We could lose local sources of news and information, as well as the variety of voices that works to keep us an informed citizenry.
Consolidation in television means that programming, as well as news, becomes homogenized, limiting employment opportunities for women and trapping them in stereotyped roles. In the 2002-03 TV season only 16% of prime-time shows were directed by women, and only 27% were written by women. Women characters on these programs were overwhelmingly white (74%) and young (58% were in their 20s and 30s, while 54% of male characters were in their 40s and 50s). In fact, viewers were more likely to see female aliens and demons than Asian-American women in prime time! If the current media companies continue to increase their hold, these numbers will only worsen.
Media consolidation means that the same few companies that own the broadcast distribution networks also own the creative companies. It means, in the case of the rules relaxed this year, that a few media giants could buy even more local TV stations and force them to eliminate local programming to make room for network shows. Already, only 11% of 2001-02 new prime-time programs came from companies other than major studios - and most of those were low-cost reality shows. Networks would control even more of what we see and what programs get made. Democratic control of the media means more diverse programming and more employment for women and people of color - behind and in front of the camera.
Congress is currently considering overturning the FCC's actions. Some proposals pending in Congress are partial and some are wholesale rollbacks of the FCC's changes.
One promising piece of legislation, S. 1046, the "Preservation of Localism, Program Diversity, and Competition in Television Broadcast Service Act of 2003" has been moving through the Senate and may be brought to the floor early in 2004. Introduced by Senator Ted Stevens (R-AK) the bill now has 47 Senate co-sponsors (including 12 Republicans). This bill is important because it reinstates cross-ownership limits between TV and newspapers; clarifies that the FCC has the authority to "re-regulate" if it is in the public interest; mandates field hearings during reviews of proposed purchases and mergers; and requires companies to sell radio stations in areas where they hold a monopoly. If this bill is considered on the Senate floor, it will likely pass by a wide margin. This could put significant pressure on the House leadership to allow consideration on their side of the Capitol.
Senators and representatives need to hear that their constituents support media diversity and oppose all the FCC rule changes. Please call, write, or email your Senators and Representatives telling them so. Millions of Americans already have - add your voice today! Find your members of Congress and their contact information at this site: http://www.visi.com/juan/congress/ .
Additionally, as part of its new "localism"
initiative, the Federal Communications Commission will hold six "town
meetings" across the nation over the next nine months to give citizens
a chance to report how well the media is serving the public interest in
their communities and how it can be served better. For information on
these hearings, visit the Future of Music Coalition web site at: http://www.futureofmusic.org/
A tentative schedule of the hearings is as follows:
Free Press
Women's Institute for Freedom of the Press
Women's Radio Fund
The Center for Digital Democracy
Media Tank
Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting - FAIR
MediaChannel
Third World Majority
Center for Media and Democracy
Who Owns What
The National Organization for Women Foundation Chart of Media Ownership
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