[wordup] The Great Media Gulp

[Adam Shand]

Via:http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/lessig/blog/archives/2003_05.shtml#001222
From: http://www.nytimes.com/2003/05/22/opinion/22SAFI.html

The Great Media Gulp
By WILLIAM SAFIRE

ASHINGTON

The future formation of American public opinion has fallen into the lap 
of an ambitious 36-year-old lawyer whose name you never heard. On June 
2, after deliberations conducted behind closed doors, he will decide the 
fate of media large and small, print and broadcast. No other decision 
made in Washington will more directly affect how you will be informed, 
persuaded and entertained.

His name is Kevin Martin. He and his wife, Catherine, now Vice President 
Dick Cheney's public affairs adviser, are the most puissant young "power 
couple" in the capital. He is one of three Republican members of the 
five-person Federal Communications Commission, and because he recently 
broke ranks with his chairman, Michael Powell (Colin's son), on a 
telecom controversy, this engaging North Carolinian has become the swing 
vote on the power play that has media moguls salivating.

The F.C.C. proposal remains officially secret to avoid public comment 
but was forced into the open by the two commission Democrats. It would 
end the ban in most cities of cross-ownership of television stations and 
newspapers, allowing such companies as The New York Times, Washington 
Post and Chicago Tribune to gobble up ever more electronic outlets. It 
would permit Viacom, Disney and AOL Time Warner to control TV stations 
with nearly half the national audience. In the largest cities, it would 
allow owners of "only" two TV stations to buy a third.

We've already seen what happened when the F.C.C. allowed the 
monopolization of local radio: today three companies own half the 
stations in America, delivering a homogenized product that neglects 
local news coverage and dictates music sales.

And the F.C.C. has abdicated enforcement of the "public interest" 
requirement in issuing licenses. Time was, broadcasters had to regularly 
reapply and show public-interest programming to earn continuance; now 
they mail the F.C.C. a postcard every eight years that nobody reads.

Ah, but aren't viewers and readers now blessed with a whole new world of 
hot competition through cable and the Internet? That's the 
shucks-we're-no-monopolists line that Rupert Murdoch will take today in 
testimony before the pussycats of John McCain's Senate Commerce Committee.

The answer is no. Many artists, consumers, musicians and journalists 
know that such protestations of cable and Internet competition by the 
huge dominators of content and communication are malarkey. The 
overwhelming amount of news and entertainment comes via broadcast and 
print. Putting those outlets in fewer and bigger hands profits the few 
at the cost of the many.

Does that sound un-conservative? Not to me. The concentration of power — 
political, corporate, media, cultural — should be anathema to 
conservatives. The diffusion of power through local control, thereby 
encouraging individual participation, is the essence of federalism and 
the greatest expression of democracy.

Why do we have more channels but fewer real choices today? Because the 
ownership of our means of communication is shrinking. Moguls glory in 
amalgamation, but more individuals than they realize resent the loss of 
local control and community identity.

We opponents of megamergers and cross-ownership are afflicted with what 
sociologists call "pluralistic ignorance." Libertarians pop off from 
what we assume to be the fringes of the left and right wings, but do not 
yet realize that we outnumber the exponents of the new collectivist 
efficiency.

That's why I march uncomfortably alongside CodePink Women for Peace and 
the National Rifle Association, between liberal Olympia Snowe and 
conservative Ted Stevens under the banner of "localism, competition and 
diversity of views." That's why, too, we resent the conflicted refusal 
of most networks, stations and their putative purchasers to report fully 
and in prime time on their owners' power grab scheduled for June 2.

Must broadcasters of news act only on behalf of the powerful broadcast 
lobby? Are they not obligated, in the long-forgotten "public interest," 
to call to the attention of viewers and readers the arrogance of a 
regulatory commission that will not hold extended public hearings on the 
most controversial decision in its history?

So much of our lives should not be in the hands of one swing-vote 
commissioner. Let's debate this out in the open, take polls, get the 
president on the record and turn up the heat.