Subject: [NEXTEL-1] Stop the FCC's Covert Operation

From: [email-masked]
Date: Fri, 30 May 2003 20:16:35 -0400

Stop the FCC's Covert Operation

By Thane Peterson

MAY 30, 2003
 
Michael Powell & Co. seem determined to ignore overwhelming public opposition and
endorse a secret proposal on media consolidation.
 
Here's a quiz. Name a hot political issue that unites the following people and
groups:

- Singer Neil Diamond
- The National Rifle Assn.
- The Consumers Union, the organization that publishes Consumer Reports
- Senator Trent Lott (R-Miss.)
- Media mogul Ted Turner, founder of CNN
- Entertainment and Internet mogul Barry Diller
- The National Organization for Women
- Conservative New York Times columnist William Safire
- Code Pink, Women for Peace, an antiwar group
- The African American/Asian American/Hispanic Caucus of Congress 

The answer: All are publicly opposed to the Federal Communications Commission's
plans to vote on new rules governing media ownership on June 2. It's not clear
exactly what the FCC will be voting on because, incredibly, Commission Chairman
Michael Powell has never deigned to make public the 250-page document laying out
the plan. But the general idea is to loosen rules that restrict the share any one
company can own of the national TV market and allow cross-ownership of TV stations
and newspapers in local markets. 

Most analysts believe the changes would lead to a wave of consolidation in the
national media market, which is already dominated by a handful of big companies
such as AOL TimeWarner (AOL ), Viacom (VIA ), and News Corp. (NWS ). 

APPALLED AND UNITED.  Barring a last-minute change of heart, Powell intends to go
ahead with the vote, despite requests for a delay from the two Democrats (out of
five members) on the FCC and a passel of lawmakers from both parties. Powell won't
share the details of the plan even with Congress. 

This is undemocratic and disgraceful. Whether you're conservative, liberal, or in
the middle, we should all be appalled by the way the FCC is acting in this case. 

First off, allowing further consolidation of the U.S. media business is wrong on
its face. Most of the usual "bigger is better" arguments don't apply. Media
companies don't face the same sort of harsh foreign competition that confront auto
and steel companies, for instance, partly because foreign ownership of them is
restricted. 

Moreover, our system of government invests print and broadcast media with special
privileges (one reason they're so profitable) but also with special
responsibilities precisely because they are so important to the functioning of our
democracy. The "efficiencies" that come with mergers will likely mean fewer
reporters, less local news, and a diminishing of the debate democracy needs to
function. 

NEW MATH.  New technology simply isn't taking up the slack. You may think what you
know about the world comes from the Internet, radio, and TV. But most actual news
gathering is still done by print organizations such as newspapers, news agencies
like the Associated Press and Bloomberg, and news magazines like BusinessWeek.
Rush Limbaugh, Matt Drudge, and your favorite news anchor may put a spin on
information in the public domain, but they aren't out gathering it. In small and
medium-sized communities, the local newspaper is the sole source of information
about government policies and local elections. More consolidation is likely to
hurt, not help. 

Yet, Powell has held only one official public hearing on the proposed changes, and
has refused to attend most of the ad hoc meetings held around the country by
Kenneth Adelstein and Michael Copps, the two Democrats on the FCC. The reason,
Powell says, is that he prefers to focus on empirical studies -- and, in any case,
the public has had plenty of chance to comment via the FCC's Web Site
(http://svartifoss2.fcc.gov/ecfs/Upload/). 

If you actually go to the site and read some of the empirical studies the FCC is
relying on, however, they're pretty appalling. I came away wondering, why is the
FCC making such monumental decisions with so little real information to go on? 

FUZZY LOGIC.  The FCC staff seems to have bent over backward to conclude that
media consolidation has few ill effects. Take this conclusion by staffers Keith
Brown and George Williams last September as to why radio advertising rates soared
81% (68% excluding inflation) in the five years after the FCC deregulated the
radio market. Almost all of the lift came from "economic growth," they conclude.
Oh really. 

Rates might have gone up even more without consolidation, the study says. "A
greater presence of large national owners in a local market appears to decrease
the advertising rates paid by national and regional advertising agencies." 

Does that make sense to you? It sure doesn't to me. If economic factors were,
indeed, the cause of such a huge increase, why didn't radio ad rates plunge when
the recession took hold last year? And why the emphasis on "national and regional"
ad agencies when one of the FCC's mandates is to promote local diversity? 

OVERWHELMING REACTION.  The study misses one of the main problems with radio
consolidation: That local advertisers have been squeezed out by big national ad
firms. The truth is that as media markets consolidate, Wal-Mart (WMT ) and K Mart
(KM ) may get good deals on radio ads, but a small, independent hardware store has
a hard time getting its message across. 

Worse, many of the studies by their own admission don't prove much of anything.
For instance, David Pritchard, a journalism professor at the University of
Wisconsin-Milwaukee, analyzed coverage of the 2000 Presidential elections in 10
markets to see if newspapers and TV stations with the same owner tend to have a
similar political slant. He was cautious in coming to any conclusions. But if you
read the footnotes, you discover that four of the newspapers he discusses are
owned by Tribune Co. (TRB ), which has the relatively unusual policy of not
requiring its cross-owned local outlets to coordinate their Presidential
endorsements. Doesn't that make the study even less representative? 

To its credit, the FCC has a wonderful Web site and an electronic system that
makes it easy for citizens to comment on issues under consideration. To date, the
FCC has received more than 20,000 comments on its plans to change media ownership
rules -- and, as of a tally on May 8, they were running more than 99% against. In
addition, NRA members sent some 300,000 postcards opposing the changes, and
activist groups such as MoveOn.org have taken out ads in major newspapers
criticizing the plans. Has the FCC considered this outpouring? We'll know on June
1, but don't hold your breath. 

UNMENTIONABLE PROTESTS.  In 2001, two university professors studied five FCC
decisions going back to 1996 and found that none of the decisions reflected public
comment. One FCC staffer interviewed for the study noted that electronic comments
from average citizens carry little weight with the commission because they are
"nontechnical in nature." 

The FCC tends to be pretty cavalier about how it handles public comment in
general. For instance, Concerned Women for America, a conservative group that aims
to ensure that "Biblical principles" are followed in American public policy,
discovered late last year that the FCC received nearly 7,000 indecency complaints
about CBS' Victoria's Secret Lingerie TV show -- and logged them as a single
complaint. As a result, Concerned Women says, the FCC officially counted only 97
complaints received during the fourth quarter. 

The bottom line here: If the FCC isn't listening to the public, it isn't acting in
the public good. To go ahead with this vote on June 1 would be a travesty of
public service. 

Peterson is a contributing editor at BusinessWeek Online.

Source:
http://www.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/may2003/nf20030530_8491_db028.htm

------------------------ Yahoo! Groups Sponsor ---------------------~-->
Get A Free Psychic Reading! Your Online Answer To Life's Important Questions.
http://us.click.yahoo.com/Lj3uPC/Me7FAA/ySSFAA/61FxlB/TM
---------------------------------------------------------------------~->

Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/