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What’s New
Recently, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) announced that, under a U.S. court order, it would reconsider its 2003 vote to weaken its media ownership rules that limit the size of big media companies broadcasting on scarce publicly-owned airwaves and prevent cross-ownership between local newspapers and televisions stations. The older, stronger rules have temporarily remained in effect in under the court order and had been designed to protect the democratic “rights of the viewers and listeners” to hear a variety of viewpoints.
How You Can Help
Send the FCC a comment urging it to maintain or even strengthen the existing media ownership rules that prevent big media from getting even bigger. Your comment will help ensure that citizens have a right to hear a variety of viewpoints on publicly-owned airwaves.
Summary
The Supreme Court has long held that “the rights of the viewers and listeners are paramount” and that “the widest possible dissemination of information from diverse and antagonistic sources is essential to the welfare of the public.” Under this guidance, it has been entirely appropriate under the First Amendment for the FCC to protect those rights by limiting the size and influence of powerful media companies, especially those that use scarce public airwaves for free. Otherwise, citizens will have fewer choices in the marketplace of ideas. With fewer choices, democracy, culture and localism will suffer. Ownership limits should be strong enough to promote more diversity of opinion by ensuring that citizens hear a variety of viewpoints.
In 2003, however, the FCC voted 3-2 to weaken its longstanding media ownership rules, even though a massive left-right coalition ranging from the National Rifle Association to MoveOn.org ultimately sent over 3 million comments opposing the proposal to the FCC and Congress. The U.S. Third Circuit Court of Appeals then rejected the rules, setting the stage for the FCC to reconsider them, a process which it announced this summer. Watch for possible FCC hearings in your community this fall.
If the rules are weakened – as they already have been for radio -- more big media companies will be allowed to own both the largest newspaper and the largest television station in nearly any city. Big broadcasters will also be allowed to own nearly all of the TV stations in a small or medium sized city.
A “diverse and antagonistic” media, to use the Supreme Court’s words, is one where locally-owned newspapers actually have local reporters who are aggressively competing with the reporters at the locally-owned TV station to break stories and offer the best possible coverage of the doings of local governments and local corporations.
Big media companies, instead, would prefer to operate national media conglomerates where they may own all of the media outlets – most of the radio and television stations and the newspaper, too – in any town, and report the same recycled, probably non-local news in all of those outlets, and also in the other arms of their conglomerate in other towns. That’s cheaper for them, but it’s bad for democracy. The American people deserve better.
