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Mediasaurus
The dinosaur that devoured democracy
Editors’ note: The following story was created for the Association for Alternative Newsweeklies, of which we are a member. The reporter attended a March 8 public forum on media ownership in Rochester, N.Y. Last year, organizations and ordinary people across the country took a hard look at Washington, D.C. Specifically, they put their magnifying glass to some business before the Federal Communications Commission, which oversees radio, television, wire, satellite and cable. What they found was something like a new species of dinosaur. “One can say the media is big business, but one can say truly that media is the biggest business,” says Russell Newman, research director with the Media Reform/Free Press Network, a not-for-profit based in Northampton, Mass. “Ownership of the media has become incredibly consolidated. We’re entering an age when a media giant owns not just channels but controls the distribution of those channels.” He points to Comcast’s recent $50-billion-plus bid to take over the Walt Disney Company — a move he believes has “dire implications.” Even if that bid goes nowhere, the top corporate players will be thunder lizards indeed. According to a Media Reform chart, based on information from the Columbia Journalism Review, these are some of the dominant corporations: Disney, Viacom, Time-Warner and Vivendi Universal. Champ of the revenuers: General Electric. The scale of things hasn’t paralyzed Newman and his group. For one thing, they sponsored a National Conference on Media Reform last November in Madison, Wis. The conference drew unexpectedly large numbers of activists — and some congressmembers, as well. The buzzword “localism”
Conservatives have been hopping on this train, too. Last year, for example, New York Times columnist William Safire decried the FCC rules changes. He amplified his worries this February, asking, “If one huge corporation controlled both the production and the dissemination of most of our news and entertainment, couldn’t it rule the world?” An energetic populism — under the buzzword “localism” — has hit the road. It blossomed, for example, at a March 8 public forum in Rochester, N.Y, convened by Congresswoman Louise Slaughter, who’d attended the Madison conference. The medium-sized Upstate city is famous for homegrown photo giant Eastman Kodak and less well-known as the old hometown of the now Virginia-based Gannett Company (101 daily newspapers, 22 TV stations). On the Rochester stage was a panel including owners and directors of independent Rochester media. The main attraction, though, was FCC Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein, who last June cast one of the two dissenting votes against relaxing the ownership rules. Outside the forum, Adelstein parses the issues. Last year’s national response, he says, “was unprecedented in the 70-plus years of the agency.” Moreover, he says, opponents of the new rules included “huge numbers of people from the right and left, the National Rifle Association, the Catholic Conference of Bishops. Everybody thought this was a bad idea.” Adelstein says growing concentration will bring “ever less diversity at ever higher prices.” He makes some quality judgments, too. “We’re concerned about the homogenization of radio.” Individual stations “don’t have their own news, their own reporters. Very little in-depth coverage. There used to be a lot more of that, but it’s expensive.” He turns to many small newspapers’ prime domestic competitor, Gannett. “They’ve supported cross-ownership,” he says. They got what they wanted, he adds. The decency crusade
The FCC today is construing the public interest narrowly. It seems the commission is more concerned about Janet Jackson’s breast exposure or Bono’s F-wording than almost anything else. Part of this is the law. Adelstein explains that the commission’s statutory authority over content extends only to what’s considered indecent, profane or obscene. “I think the FCC is getting serious about enforcing rules that are on the books, to be sure they don’t step over the line. “It’s a good development,” Adelstein says — a proper response to “increasing coarseness over the airwaves.” Some observers take strong exception. For example, liberal commentator and cartoonist Ted Rall recently charged the recent decency crusade is merely “a new version of the Red Scare.” He says “new McCarthyites” have resorted to “censoring their opponents.” He also slammed the New York Times for dumping his editorial cartoons from its Web site. In regard to media monsters, the decency crusade may end up demonstrating the old Nietzschean principle dear to radio host G. Gordon Liddy: Whatever doesn’t kill them makes them stronger. But dinosaurs of any sort co-exist with pesky critters in the underbrush — and eventually the more adaptable life forms have their day. Certainly the Internet and Web-based populist efforts like indymedia.org are carving out space for themselves.
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Dec 2, 2008
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