Archive for November, 2009
Tuesday, November 10th, 2009 by Stevie Converse
The FCC kicked off its 2010 media ownership review with a series of workshops with scholars, public interest groups and broadcasters. The Nov. 6 podcast of Media Minutes focuses on the public interest panel.
At the broadcasters workshop, representatives from Hearst, Media General and the National Association of Broadcasters called for increased opportunities to gobble up more media properties. Panelists from the National Hispanic Media Coalition and the National Association of Black-Owned Broadcasters told a different story: Media consolidation is squeezing smaller stations out of business.
You can hear the debate about including minority- and women-owned ownership issues in the FCC’s media ownership review in this week’s Media Minutes Extra!. The transcript is below:
Transcript: Media Minutes Extra!
The Federal Communications Commission opened its 2010 review of media ownership rules this week with a series of three panels groups — scholars, public interest groups and broadcasters — to help the commission take a new approach to researching and shaping media ownership rules. The Nov. 6 edition of Media Minutes focuses on the public interest panel and ideas for research and data gathering.
One of the longstanding — and long-neglected — issues in the FCC’s management of media ownership is lack of minority- and women-owned television and radio stations.
Big media broadcasters spoke of the FCC’s goals of competition, localism and diversity, yet held firm in speaking out for increased opportunities to gobble up more media properties. George Mahoney of Media General called for the outright removal of the longstanding ban on one company owning both a newspaper and a broadcast station in the same market.
George Mahoney: My task is to address the commission’s 34-year-old ban on the common ownership of newspapers and television stations in the same market. In sum, the ban is an anachronism. But it’s not just an innocent relic of the past. It’s an actual, serious detriment to my industry, and it hurts consumers, and it hurts local communities.
Jessica Gonzalez of the National Hispanic Media Coalition disagreed.
Jessica Gonzalez: We need media ownership rules. I disagree that they are unconstitutional. This proceeding has always considered, first and foremost, the public interest, and that includes diversity, competition and localism. And so I don’t think we’re off base here in asking that those considerations remain part of this debate.
James Winston of the National Association of Black-Owned Broadcasters also countered Mahoney, saying media consolidation was to blame for squeezing out small broadcasters.
James Winston: We continue to view the consolidation of the industry over the course of the last decade since the enactment of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 as a source of many problems that minority broadcasters have faced and why we have seen our numbers diminish over that period of time.
Since 1996, the number of African-American-owned broadcasters has dropped by about 35 percent.
Gonzalez urged the FCC to replace its broken process for reviewing media ownership rules with a fact-driven review that takes minority ownership into consideration.
Jessica Gonzalez: We see this as a great first step toward a thorough and fact-driven review – one that properly considers how the current structural media ownership regulations, and any proposed changes thereto, might communities of color, both in terms of minority ownership as well as in terms of access to diversity points. This must be addressed in this proceeding, especially now, as only 7 percent of broadcast radio stations are owned by people of color, despite that we make up 33 percent of the population. And as Latinos own just 2.9 percent of radio stations, despite that we comprise 15 percent of the population.
Winston said the FCC’s diversity goal must include the ownership of broadcast stations. But the public notice about the media ownership review didn’t mention minority ownership.
James Winston: The commission has historically regulated broadcasting, seeking to balance three policy goals; localism, diversity and competition. Unfortunately in the past, when the balance has been struck among these conflicting goals, the goal that always receives short shrift is the goal of diversity.
Media General’s Mahoney said he is interested in getting clear rules for competition in the market. He doesn’t want the commission to undertake the issue of minority ownership. Instead he wants to rely on tax laws to create change.
George Mahoney: In the past there have been tax certificates, there have been some industry initiatives to work on ways using the tax laws to promote diverse ownership. And we’re absolutely in favor of those kinds of things. It’s good for the industry, it’s good for minority ownership. It’s the kind of thing that the commission can go champion up on the Hill. I don’t think that it’s the kind of thing that this ownership proceeding can get bogged down on, or should get bogged down on, pending some action up on the Hill.
Winston agreed that tax credits are needed. But he argued that it is the access to capital from lenders that is the real problem for minority owners and prospective broadcast owners, and that those problems stem from a consolidated market.
James Winston: In recent years, capital has not been accessible for new entrants, because if you come into an investment house and say, I’m looking to purchase a stand-alone radio station in X market, the first thing they do is look at the competitive market and say, well, you’re going up against X company that has eight stations in the market, you’re going up against Y company that has five stations in the market, you’re going up against Z station – a company that has four stations in the market. We don’t think you can be financially viable with one stand-alone station. And so what happens is the capital is denied to that new entrant. So the ownership rules are very much involved in the access to capital issue. And they can’t really be separated out.
The workshops can be watched in their entirety.
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Friday, November 6th, 2009 by Megan Tady
Media ownership rules were in the spotlight this week at three consecutive workshops held by the Federal Communications Commission.
The commission is required to review its media ownership rules every four years. This time around, the rules are being given particularly close attention because of court appeals of FCC findings and challenges to the agency’s decision to loosen newspaper-broadcast cross-ownership restrictions.
Free Press Research Director S. Derek Turner was on hand Tuesday to offer testimony, and praised the commission for conducting the workshops – a radical departure from past proceedings.
“Let me start by saying that this workshop itself, and the public notice requesting comment on the analytical framework for the 2010 quadrennial review comes as somewhat of a stunning surprise to those of us who have become quite cynical about the commission’s concern for quality public interest focused analysis,” Turner said.
Turner gave the FCC several recommendations for how to conduct its analysis of the media ownership rules with accuracy and transparency.
To hear more, listen to this week’s Media Minutes podcast.
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Thursday, November 5th, 2009 by Jordan Berg
Imagine if a CNN anchor were allowed to talk for 60 minutes every night about how black people are spreading “tuberculosis, leprosy, malaria” in America.
Imagine if a CNN anchor were permitted to spout for 60 minutes every night that blacks are criminals and that blacks are on welfare and rotting in jails, costing Americans billions of dollars while contributing nothing to society.
Imagine if a CNN anchor used talking points from a group whose founders believe “some races of people are genetically and intellectually superior to other races.” Imagine that this same anchor warned of a secret plot by blacks to take over the country.
You’ll have to use your imagination because no one would be given a platform on CNN to spew such obscene racist remarks about black people.
And yet, because these “news segments” are about undocumented workers in the United States, CNN permits this hate speech almost every night on anchor Lou Dobbs’ show. Why? Is it less racist because it’s about Latinos?
No matter your views on immigration policy, surely hate speech is not acceptable on “America’s most-trusted news source.”
Dobbs is so extreme that CNN had to scrub a transcript when he made racially charged comments about former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. The network should exercise the same vigilance when Dobbs makes similarly racist comments nightly about Latinos.
Immigrant and Latino rights groups are no longer just changing the channel; they’re protesting Dobbs’ program and urging CNN to enforce journalistic standards.
Last month, CNN presented “Latino in America,” a documentary series about the fastest growing demographic of Americans. The series is a good effort to accurately reflect the complexity of the Latino community and fairly covers the important debate on immigration that our country faces.
But the irony of a network that produces such a documentary while simultaneously permitting hate speech was not lost on Latino groups across the country, who have launched campaigns, including BastaDobbs.com and DropDobbs.org, to oust Dobbs.
Even the Latinos featured in “Latino in America” have come out to oppose Dobbs.
As the New York Times explained:
Isabel Garcia, a civil rights lawyer who was featured in the documentary and attended an protest against Mr. Dobbs in Tucson on Wednesday, said that she felt censored by CNN after the channel edited her comments about the anchor out of an interview.
She said she called Mr. Arpaio [Sheriff Joe Arpaio of Arizona] and Mr. Dobbs ‘the two most dangerous men to our communities,’ and added that ‘because of them, our communities are being terrorized in a real way.’ She also asserted that CNN was ‘promoting lies and hate about our community’ by broadcasting Mr. Dobbs’s program. The comments were not included when the interview was broadcast.
CNN should be accountable to its viewers, who are demanding unbiased quality journalism. Judging from CNN’s declining viewership (Dobbs can count me as a former viewer) and the growing grassroots campaigns against Dobbs, the message is clear: Racist reporting won’t be tolerated, whether it’s about blacks or Latinos.
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Tuesday, November 3rd, 2009 by Megan Tady
Television broadcasters in the Aloha State have been quietly embarking on an underhanded media merger for more than a year.
In August, the CBS, NBC and MyNetwork affiliates in Honolulu announced that they were folding into one of the “largest television news operations” in Hawaii, combining the stations’ staff and newsrooms. The three news stations will now be housed in the same place, sharing reporters and editorial ideas, but they will broadcast from separate channels, appearing as distinct entities to viewers. Nearly 70 employees from the stations will lose their jobs.
The consolidated operation will be controlled by one company: Raycom Media. Raycom is among the nation’s largest broadcasters, with 46 television stations in 36 markets and 18 states. The company has been careful not to call the deal “media consolidation,” instead referring to it as an innocuous “Shared Services Agreement.” Raycom says the arrangement will save struggling news stations.
But one public interest organization in Hawaii isn’t buying Raycom’s PR spin. In September, the nonprofit group Media Council Hawaii, represented by Georgetown University’s Institute for Public Representation, filed an official complaint (PDF link) with the Federal Communications Commission. The complaint alleges that because Raycom will effectively control the local news programming, personnel and finances of all three stations, the agreement is actually an illegal license transfer that violates FCC local television ownership rules.
The FCC followed up on the complaint earlier this month by requesting additional information about the agreements from the broadcast stations and Raycom. In response, Media Council Hawaii reiterated its concerns: “If the Commission does not act promptly to stop this…run around its ownership limits, stations all over the country that are experiencing financial difficulties will enter into similar arrangements.”
Bypassing federal law
The FCC’s longstanding local television ownership rules prohibit an entity from controlling two top-four stations or more than two stations in the same area. The rules exist for a reason: to protect competition and viewpoint diversity in local communities.
It’s important that TV stations keep their news operations separate to ensure that viewers get varying information and viewpoints. We want media to compete for our eyeballs by serving up quality reporting.
Already, media consolidation has led to disastrous results for news in communities. As more and more absentee corporations have gobbled up TV stations in the pursuit of profit, local news has become increasingly cookie-cutter. News segments focus on cheap and easily produced programming. If we’ve learned anything from media consolidation to date, it’s that it degrades investigative journalism and quality reporting.
Raycom argues that its local news sharing doesn’t violate ownership rules because there was no “official” transfer of licenses. “We do not need any regulatory approvals,” Paul McTear, the company’s CEO, told KITV.com.
In reality, Raycom will control three stations serving Honolulu, two of which are among the capital’s top four stations. Hawaiians will get fewer reporters on the beat, with one company deciding what gets on the air.
“Better coverage” for communities, as Raycom suggests? Hardly. Sounds like covert consolidation to me.
‘Inroads’ into quality coverage
Local news sharing agreements aren’t just cropping up in Hawaii. In an attempt to cut costs, dozens of broadcast stations are now pooling news video. NBC, Tribune Broadcasting, and CBS are just a few of the media giants involved in similar agreements.
In May, three local TV stations in Washington, D.C., announced they were reducing expenses by pooling video of breaking news. “We’re in an economic time when [we] have to look for every efficiency we can,” Duffy Dyer, general manager of one of the stations, told the Washington Post. “It’s never made a great deal of sense to have 15 cameras at some scheduled news event or ribbon-cutting. This is a good place to start making some inroads.”
But where do these “inroads” lead? Dyer downplays the real ramifications of trimmed and consolidated news gathering operations: Fewer camera people on the streets and reporters on beats means we get less news coverage, period. And not just of the token ribbon-cutting ceremonies, but of real hard-hitting news that matters to the public.
Deals like the Hawaii agreement have happened in Peoria, Ill., and Syracuse, N.Y., with independent news stations folding their operations into larger news-generating entities.
Whether we call it media consolidation or “news sharing,” one thing is clear: gutting newsrooms, slashing reporting jobs and centralizing editorial power takes us further away from the quality journalism we need to function in a thriving democracy.
The FCC’s request for more information from Raycom is the first step in examining these agreements. The commission shouldn’t let media consolidation happen through the backdoor, regardless of what it’s called.
(This was originally published at In These Times.)
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