Media Consolidation

Read these facts about media consolidation. Which one is the most disturbing to you?  Which one do you think affects you the most?

Comments

[Maureen Danaher]

FACT: The public owns the airwaves and the FCC grants licenses to broadcasters with the understanding they will serve the public interest.

To their corporate owners, media outlets do not exist to promote the public interest; they exist to make profits. But media companies don't manufacture widgets; they provide information. And information from diverse, competitive, and independent sources is vitally important to the health of a democracy

FACT: The FCC is in the process of making important decisions that will have a significant impact on our democracy. This appointed body is doing so without distributing the proposed regulations for public review and without allowing for adequate public review and comment.

"It is the purpose of the First Amendment to preserve an uninhibited marketplace of ideas in which truth will ultimately prevail, rather than to countenance monopolization of that market, whether it be by the Government itself or a private licensee. It is the right of the public to receive suitable access to social, political, esthetic, moral, and other ideas and experiences which is crucial here. That right may not constitutionally be abridged either by Congress or by the FCC."
--U.S. Supreme Court in the landmark 1969 case of Red Lion v. FCC

These facts were the most prominent and frightening to me. The media environment we live in today is already full of conglomerates that homogenize the information which we receive. Accordingly, it is the FCC's job to regulate the airwaves and ensure that broadcasters are "serving the public interest" yet the opposite seems to be occurring. If broadcasting stations are owned by these conglomerates with the soul purpose of making a profit, how could the number one interest be that of the public? Money trumps humanity, especially in this scenario.

I am disgusted by the fact that the FCC is proposing new rules and regulations which will have a significant impact on our democracy, yet they are withholding vital information and preventing the public from speaking out effectively against these rulings. I believe this is undeniably unconstitutional, and there needs to be proactive action taken against these rulings, before they are passed. The only question is how do we get our voices heard? Obviously people are speaking out, like the press conference for the public in Seattle, yet the FCC seems to be turning a blind eye to everything and anything we have to say about the issue.

[Brad Rhodes]

I find it disturbing that the media is owned by corporation instead of the people it serves.

I think George Carlin said it best with " the news media are not independent; they are a sort of bulletin board and public relations firm for the ruling class- the people who run things. Those who decide what news you will or will not hear are paid by, and tolerated purely at the whim of, those who hold economic power. If the parent corporation doesn't want you to know something it won't be on the news."

I'm certain there are several things we haven't been told because we aren't allowed to know, or they don't want us to.

[Katelyn Morgan]

FACT: Viacom owns CBS; General Electric owns NBC; Disney owns ABC; and News Corporation owns Fox Broadcasting Company. ABC's corporate parent is the Walt Disney Company.

Disney owns 10 television stations, 50 radio stations, ESPN, A&E, the History Channel, Discover magazine, Hyperion publishing, Touchstone Pictures, and Miramax Film Corp. Viacom owns 39 television stations, 184 radio stations, The Movie Channel, BET, Nickelodeon, TV Land, MTV, VH1, Simon & Schuster publishing, Scribner, and Paramount Pictures. General Electric owns 13 television stations, CNBC, MSNBC, and Bravo. News Corp. owns 26 television stations, FX, Fox News Channel, TV Guide, the Weekly Standard, New York Post, DirecTV, the publisher HarperCollins, film production company Twentieth Century Fox and the social networking website MySpace.

Currently, six major companies control most of the media in our country. The FCC could decide to relax media ownership rules, which would allow further consolidation and put decisions about what kinds of programming and news Americans receive in even fewer hands.

FACT: Since 1995, the number of companies owning commercial TV stations declined by 40 percent.

If the FCC votes to relax media ownership limits, it could further erode diversity of ownership at the local level and increase the influence of large media conglomerates. In 2003, the regulations restricting a broadcast company from owning stations that reach beyond 35% of American households were loosened to 39%.

Those two facts are very disturbing to me because the more you look at it the more you realize that the information we get from different stations is actually from the same companies. That is a huge sign that ignorance may soon be a huge part of our country.