As a senator, Barack Obama fought to prevent greater media consolidation.
In 2007, he opposed a vote by the Republican-led Federal Communications Commission to lift the ban on allowing one company to own a daily newspaper and a broadcast station in the same market.
“We must ensure that we have an open media market that represents all of the voices in our diverse nation and allows them to be heard,” the future president said before the FCC’s vote.
Obama co-authored letters to the FCC and newspaper opeds with Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., that warned about the dangers of more media consolidation and its impact on diminishing nonwhite and female broadcast ownership.
So why then is the Obama FCC reported to be pushing for nearly the same rule changes the Republicans tried and failed to carry out in the Bush years? Such efforts to further weaken media ownership limits have been rejected by the public, the courts and congressional leaders, including members of the Senate who passed legislation to overturn the FCC’s 2007 cross-ownership rules.
According to press reports, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski is about to allow for greater media consolidation despite public opposition, including from organizations of colour.
There are few media policy issues that have galvanized as much public opposition as runaway media consolidation.
When the FCC tried to gut its ownership rules in 2003 and again in 2007, the public was outraged.
Of public comments received by the agency, 99 per cent were opposed to greater media concentration. Organizations of colour such as the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, the National Association of Black Journalists, the National Urban League and the National Hispanic Media Coalition also opposed consolidation.
The courts have been no more welcoming of the FCC’s attempts to do big media’s bidding. In 2004, a federal appeals court rejected the rules pushed through by then-chairman Michael Powell. Last summer, the same court threw out ex-chair Kevin Martin’s loophole-ridden rules that undermined the longstanding ban on newspaper-broadcast cross-ownership. The court took the agency to task for failing to address the impact of its rule change.
Despite this, the Obama FCC appears determined to pursue the same failed policies as its predecessors. According to press reports, the FCC is about to introduce substantially similar rules to allow more companies to own a newspaper and a TV station in the same market.
Journalism organizations of colour and civil rights groups have opposed media consolidation because it has hindered the ability of people of colour and women to become broadcast station owners.
People of colour own just three per cent of all full-power TV stations and eight per cent of radio stations; women own just six per cent of all broadcast outlets.
Historically, broadcast owners of colour are more likely to hire people of colour and air programming relevant to communities of colour.
Last month, a coalition of civil rights groups wrote to the FCC lamenting that the agency “has no meaningful policies to address racial and gender inequities in media ownership and has ignored the impact of its media ownership rules on those inequities.”
The groups, which include the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, the ACLU, NOW and the NAACP, concluded, “As consolidation grows, people of colour and women become less significant players in the media ecosystem. The commission must acknowledge that fact and take action to remedy it.”
Fifty more media, women’s and social justice organizations (including Free Press, the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, the National Association of Black Journalists and UNITY: Journalists of Colour) have weighed in with another letter to the agency warning,
“The continued absence of FCC action in the face of deep and intractable ownership disparities is unacceptable.”
The signers are asking the FCC to take proactive measures to guard against further erosion of media ownership among these groups by maintaining existing media ownership limits.
We need media that truly represent, as Barack Obama himself said not long ago, “all of the voices in our diverse nation.”
— Scripps Howard News Service