Thousands are expected to gather June 5 to 8 in Minneapolis-St. Paul for another National Conference on Media Reform. The agenda focuses on four main concerns: (1) the domination of America’s media by an oligopoly of giant corporations, (2) the future of the Internet, (3) the role of the public media, and (4) the quality of the media’s output.
(1) More than 90 percent of all media in the United States are owned by six corporations: General Electric, Time Warner, Walt Disney, News Corporation, Viacom, and Bertelsmann. While the public pays for the media’s products, their owners get to use the airwaves for free and can make billions in profits. In exchange, they are to serve the public with quality programs for all segments of society, including the local communities. Yet, numerous complaints persist that the media giants ignore local needs and gut local newsrooms.
The fewer owners compete in America’s media market, the more limited the range of covered topics and views has become. Entertainment is preferred over education, infotainment is increasing, the commercialization of media content is growing more intense, investigative reporting is decreasing, and, most of all, management strives to grow earnings at the expense of quality. In Edward R. Murrow’s words, broadcasting has turned into just another “money-making machine.”
According to the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) data, from 1996 to 2003 the number of commercial radio stations rose 5.9 percent while the number of station owners fell 35 percent. The concentration of ownership followed a 1996 rewrite of telecommunications law that eliminated the 40-station national ownership cap.
Last week, by a near-unanimous vote, the U.S. Senate voted to throw out the FCC decision that would let the largest media companies swallow up even more local media. Now the campaign against more ownership concentration moves to the House. President Bush has promised to veto this bill. The only people who continue to support more media consolidation are the big media bosses, their lobbyists, and the White House.
(2) Looming on the horizon is the struggle to preserve the open Internet and affordable access to high-speed networks, free from interference by government and powerful telecommunications interests. Yet, ownership patterns on the Internet are beginning to resemble those of television and radio. America Online (AOL), Yahoo, and Microsoft together account for more than half of all user time spent online. Numerous organizations and small businesses, as well as millions of individuals are banding together through SavetheInternet.com to keep the Internet untaxed and as unregulated as possible.
(3) Public media, such as National Public Radio (NPR) and Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), have developed into a distinctly different, not profit-driven contributor to America’s communication culture, offering diverse national and local fare. Yet, the public media also encounter distracters, such as people saying, “Who needs subsidized media in a time of media abundance?” or “Who needs an elite service in a time of populist media?” or “Who needs protection for public media when there is a relatively unprotected Internet out there?” Would Americans be better informed if there were only commercial media?
(4) For a democratic society, the quality of the media’s output crucially depends upon the operators’ willingness to make programming as unbiased as possible and to resist censorship by omission. One of the most recent violations of the public trust occurred when it was discovered that networks colluded with the Bush administration by allowing allegedly "independent" military experts to function as propagandists for failed government policies, particularly in the Middle East.
Too often, insufficiently informed commentators are masquerading as “analysts” who then condescendingly arrogate to themselves the ability to tell the listening public what to think. Too often, governments on all levels resist operating in the sunshine of disclosure and criticism, particularly when they obstruct investigative reporting.
In a democracy, the pursuit of media reform never ends because freedom of the press never ceases to be endangered.