A Call To Protect Media Diversity

By Jeffrey Chester, AlterNet. Posted October 24, 2002.

Editor's Note: The Federal Communications Commission, led by Michael Powell, plans to introduce several important rules that will dramatically undermine diversity in both media content and ownership. These new rules are currently in the Comment/Reply period, which means that concerned citizens still have time to either contact their member of Congress or file their concerns with the FCC. The Center for Digital Democracy's Executive Director Jeff Chester outlines the issues at stake and lists the important questions that need to be raised in comments to the FCC.

The FCC has initiated a proceeding that will lead to further dramatic changes in our media system. It's clear the FCC Chairman Michael Powell and the Bush-controlled Federal Communications Commission plan to end or weaken federal policies that have served as an important "check and balance" system for much of our media.

These changes will have an impact in every community in the US, where there will soon be even fewer owners of TV and radio stations, newspapers, and cable systems. Nationally, a smaller number of conglomerates will control most of the major media outlets. Given the Powell FCC's recent policy decisions on the Internet, the few remaining dominant owners of "old" media will have their power extended to the new online medium as well. In short, this is a huge giveaway of public resources and political power to a tiny few.

The commission launched its "Notice of Proposed Rulemaking" (NPRM) on September 12, 2002, with the clear intention of eliminating or drastically weakening several key rules that were designed to protect the public's First Amendment rights to a diverse media marketplace of ideas. This proceeding is likely to craft a new "public interest" framework for communications in the U.S. Federal rules designed to enhance "diversity, competition, and localism" will be axed, likely replaced by a system that basically permits the biggest media companies to "serve the public interest, convenience, and necessity" by focusing on their corporate bottom lines.

In a strange and twisted "déjà vu," the FCC's Notice points to policy findings made by the Reagan-era "marketplace-is-supreme" FCC as the foundation for its many current assumptions. Mark Fowler, Reagan's first FCC chairman, is clearly the spiritual father of Michael Powell. Fowler infamously said that public interest rules for television were unnecessary since TV was just another appliance, "a toaster with pictures."

Like Fowler, Michael Powell sees a media world in which public policies are unnecessary. For Powell, we live in a new golden age of media, in which the emergence of Fox News and other new cable channels preclude the need for meaningful federal policy designed to ensure the public is served as citizens. Indeed, its striking that the NPRM mentions "citizens" only once, and doesn't discuss "civic engagement" at all. Consumers, however, are mentioned more than three-dozen times, revealing the commission's assumption that the issue at hand is whether "viewers" have several choices for TV movies and sit-coms.

Powell alone cannot be blamed for this proceeding, however. It has also been spurred by the media industry lobby, which includes some of the most powerful companies in the US. GE/NBC, AOL Time Warner, Comcast, News Corp/Fox, and the Tribune Company are among those striving to dismantle what remains of already weakened limits on concentration of ownership. These companies have engaged in a tripartite strategy in an effort to remove any federal limits on their size and power. They have often gone either first to the FCC or the Congress to achieve their agenda. Failing success in one, they have gone to the other. And failing legislative or regulatory intervention, they have gone to court.

Over and over again these media companies have claimed that their corporate First Amendment rights are being violated by rules designed to protect the public's First Amendment rights. The media lobby has been spectacularly successful in its legal advocacy, especially with the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia. Given an FCC (under Powell and his democratic predecessor) that is either hostile or ambivalent to the public interest rules, it is no surprise that the court has recently declared some of the rules illegal, and ordered the FCC to review others.

In fact, the entire FCC review currently underway is part of the perverse legacy of the 1996 Telecommunications Act, a law that was principally dictated by industry lobbyists. In what only can be called a doomsday-like public-interest death device straight out of the movie "Dr. Strangelove," section 202 (h) of the 96 Act requires the Commission to "review its rules adopted pursuant to this section and all of its ownership rules biennially as part of its regulatory reform review under section 11 of the Communications Act of 1934 and shall determine whether any of such rules are necessary in the public interest as the result of competition. The Commission shall repeal or modify any regulation it determines to be no longer in the public interest." In other words, the FCC must now document every two years why the ownership rules are necessary, using the standard of "competition" as its framework.

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