Cross-Ownership Doesn’t Create More Local News
Coverage of Friday’s early Hanukkah gift from Kevin Martin to Sam Zell shows that most people are still missing the fundamental flaw in the FCC Chairman’s argument for more media consolidation.
Chairman Martin — and his media industry backers — long have criticized the ban on one company owning both the daily newspaper and broadcast outlets in the same market as an outdated relic. They’ve even claimed that increased consolidation creates more local news. This simply is not true.
Fact No. 5: Cross-Ownership Doesn’t Create More Local News
In reality, cross-ownership results in a net loss in the amount of local news produced across local broadcast markets. The latest studies by Free Press, Consumer Federation of America and Consumers Union include detailed analysis of recent FCC data that conclusively demonstrates the harms of cross-ownership. Among their findings:
- Cross-ownership crowds out the competition. The presence of a cross-owned station leads other stations in a market to collectively curtail their news output by about 25 percent.
- Cross-owned stations — and markets with cross-owned stations — don’t produce more local news.
In markets without cross-ownership, local TV news stations generally take their cues from the local newspaper. Since these papers are independently owned, all the local TV news departments have reasonably equal access to the newspaper’s reporters and editors.
However, this mutually beneficial relationship is destroyed in markets with cross-ownership. Cross-owned TV stations are able to use their exclusive access to the local newspaper to shut out competitors from the stories that they would normally report. This leads these stations to curtail their local news operations.
Moreover, the data shows that cross-owned stations do not increase their own local news output. When cross-ownership is permitted, the public is harmed not only because they lose an independent voice, but because less news is available to them.
Ignoring the evidence
Martin is not unaware of this evidence. It has been filed in the official FCC docket and was presented to the commission at its Oct. 31 localism hearing in Washington, D.C. At that event, one of the other FCC commissioners even called it “a bombshell.”
Yet Martin moved forward anyway with a proposal that argues cross-owned combinations should be considered “in the public interest” in the top 20 markets and allowed elsewhere. This claim flies in the face of compelling evidence that reaches the exact opposite conclusion.
Over the next two weeks at StopBigMedia.com, we’ll be counting down the “10 Facts Kevin Martin Doesn’t Want You to Know” about his new media ownership rules, as exposed in our new report — Devil in the Details.
Next: Cross-ownership won’t solve newspapers’ financial woes
