Showdown at the FCC

Fri May 2 09:07:04 PDT 2003

SHOWDOWN AT THE FCC
MoveOn Bulletin
Friday, May 2, 2003
Co-Editors: Don Hazen and Lakshmi Chaudry, AlterNet

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CONTENTS:
1. Eli Pariser: Why Worry About Who Owns the Media?
2. Jeff Chester: Showdown at the FCC
3. Neil Hickey: The Gathering Storm Over Media Ownership
4. Bill Moyers: Barry Diller Takes On Media Deregulation
5. Danny Schechter: The Media, the War, and Our Right to Know
6. Eric Boehlert: Clear Channel's Big Stinking Deregulation Mess
7. Paul Schmelzer: The Death of Local News
8. Caryl Rivers: Where Have All the Women Gone?
9. About the Bulletin

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WHY WORRY ABOUT WHO OWNS THE MEDIA?
MoveOn Bulletin Op-Ed
by Eli Pariser

It's like something out of a nightmare, but it really happened: At
1:30 on a cold January night, a train containing hundreds of thousands
of gallons of toxic ammonia derails in Minot, North Dakota.  Town
officials try to sound the emergency alert system, but it isn't
working. Desperate to warn townspeople about the poisonous white cloud
bearing down on them, the officials call their local radio stations.
But no one answers any of the phones for an hour and a half.
According to the New York Times, three hundred people are
hospitalized, some are partially blinded, and pets and livestock are
killed.

Where were Minot's DJs on January 18th, 2002?  Where was the late
night station crew?  As it turns out, six of the seven local radio
stations had recently been purchased by Clear Channel Communications,
a radio giant with over 1,200 stations nationwide.  Economies of scale
dictated that most of the local staff be cut: Minot stations ran more
or less on auto pilot, the programming largely dictated from further
up the Clear Channel food chain.  No one answered the phone because
hardly anyone worked at the stations any more; the songs played in
Minot were the same as those played on Clear Channel stations across
the Midwest.

Companies like Clear Channel argue that economies of scale allow them
to cut costs while continuing to provide quality programming.  But
they do so at the expense of local coverage.  It's not just about
emergency warnings: media mergers are decreasing coverage of local
political races, local small businesses, and local events.  There are
only a third as many owners of newspapers and TV stations as there
were in the 1970s (about 600 now; over 1,500 then).  It's harder and
harder for Americans to find out what's going on in their own back
yards.

On June 2, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is considering
relaxing or getting rid of rules to allow much more media
concentration.  While the actual rule changes are under wraps, they
could allow enormous changes in the American media environment.  For
example, one company could be allowed to own ABC, CBS, and NBC.
Almost certainly, media companies will be allowed to own newspapers
and TV stations in the same town.  We could be entering a new era of
media megaliths.

Do you want one or two big companies acting as gatekeepers and
controlling your access to news and entertainment?  Most of us don't.
And the airwaves explicitly belong to us -- the American people.  We
allow media companies to use them in exchange for their assurance that
they're serving the public interest, and it's the FCC's job to make
sure that's so.  For the future of American journalism, and for the
preservation of a diverse and local media, we have the hold the FCC to
its mission.  Otherwise, Minot's nightmare may become our national
reality.

------------------------------

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SHOWDOWN AT THE FCC
Jeffrey Chester and Don Hazen, AlterNet
Despite wide protests and the Clear Channel debacle, the FCC is about
to award the nation's biggest media conglomerates a new give-away that
will further concentrate media ownership in fewer hands. The impact on
the American media landscape could be disastrous. Recent TV coverage
of the Iraq war already illustrates that US media companies aren't
interested in providing a serious range of analysis and debate. This
overview describes what's at stake and offers an introduction to the
following articles.
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=15796

------------------------------

THE GATHERING STORM OVER MEDIA OWNERSHIP
Neil Hickey, Columbia Journalism Review
CJR's editor-at-large explains just what is at stake in this fight
over media ownership. He provides an in-depth look at the issues, and
major players in a battle that is pitting journalists against their
bosses, breaking up old alliances, and gathering momentum as the day
of reckoning draws near. He traces the snowballing trend of media
consolidation and its implications for the future, revealing just how
the drive for profit is eroding diversity, local control, and more
importantly giving a few mega-corporations a monopoly over the
dissemination of news.
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=15654

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BARRY DILLER TAKES ON MEDIA DEREGULATION
Bill Moyers, Now with Bill Moyers
The founder of Fox Broadcasting and present CEO of USA Networks is an
unlikely but passionate opponent of plans to loosen media ownership
rules. In an interview with Bill Moyers, the media mogul explains how
deregulation creates corporations with "such overwhelming power in the
marketplace that everyone has to do essentially what they say."
Diller argues that government regulation is essential to prevent media
companies from controlling everything we see, read, and hear. As he
puts it, "Who else is gonna do it for us?"
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=15768

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THE MEDIA, THE WAR, AND OUR RIGHT TO KNOW
Danny Schechter, MediaChannel.org
Why did the media do such a poor job of reporting on the Iraq war? The
boosterism of news anchors, the suppression of antiwar views, and the
sanitized images of war that defined television coverage are not a
simple matter of bias or ineptitude, says media analyst Danny
Schechter. He draws attention to the connection between the decisions
made by journalists and the lobbying efforts of  owners who will
profit immensely from the upcoming FCC  decision in June.
http://www.mediachannel.org/views/dissector/moveon.shtml

------------------------------

CLEAR CHANNEL'S BIG STINKING DEREGULATION MESS
Eric Boehlert, Salon
Clear Channel, the radio and concert conglomerate, has been the
greatest beneficiary of the 1996 Telecommunications Act, which
stripped all ownership limits in the radio industry. The rapacious
company, led by Bush supporter Lowry Mays, has grown from 40 stations
to 1,225 since then, and now uses its power to routinely bully
advertisers and record companies, and more recently censor antiwar
artists. However, as Eric Boehlert points out, its  "success" may be
the most powerful weapon in the arsenal of media activists. Clear
Channel's stranglehold on the radio industry is the best and clearest
example of the effects of rampant deregulation.
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=15281

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THE DEATH OF LOCAL NEWS
Paul Schmelzer, AlterNet
Meet the Sinclair Broadcast Group, the "Clear Channel of local news."
Since 1991, the company has managed to acquire 62 television stations
or 24 percent of the national TV audience. The company's modus
operandi is the centralized production of homogenized, repackaged faux
"local" news. Its success offers an alarming glimpse of the
post-deregulation world in which all news may be produced in one giant
newsroom and from a single viewpoint -- which in Sinclair's case is
wholeheartedly conservative.
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=15718.

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WHERE HAVE ALL THE WOMEN GONE?
Caryl Rivers, Women's Enews
Once the war on Iraq took center-stage in the headlines of newspapers
and magazines across the country, women writers became increasingly
rare in the media. In their place are mostly white men who write on a
narrow band of foreign policy issues, mostly recycling their views
over and over again. From the all-male line-ups in the op-ed pages of
the Washington Post and the New York Times to the dwindling female
bylines in the New Yorker and Atlantic Monthly, women's voices have
been caught in a  "spiral of silence" that is unprecedented since the
pre-women's movement days.
http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=15677

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CyberShamanix
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