Consolidating The Corporate Voice

(More sporadic posting today, by the way…)

FCC Chairman Kevin J. Martin wrote this editorial that appeared in the New York Times today (with a truly curious headline that makes no sense to me, though I could have missed something) in which he advocated even more relaxed media ownership rules, specifically the following…

A company that owns a newspaper in one of the 20 largest cities in the country should be permitted to purchase a broadcast TV or radio station in the same market. But a newspaper should be prohibited from buying one of the top four TV stations in its community.

I should add that Martin comes up with this after he spends the first four paragraphs of his column describing the dire financial straits faced by newspapers; I don’t understand how allowing a media company to expand its sphere of influence to even more broadcast media if it already owns a newspaper specifically helps the latter entity.

But to get an illustration of what Martin has in mind here, I would ask that you take a look at this map which notes the geographic location of television stations owned by The Sinclair Group. Then I would ask that you read about Sinclair from this link, where Source Watch described Sinclair as “the single largest operator of local television stations in the United States.”

Now, consider that, as noted in the article, Sinclair refused to broadcast an episode of Nightline with Ted Koppel in 2004 that was devoted to reading the names of all the soldiers who had died in the Iraq war to date. However, the group had no problem with trying to air the anti-John Kerry film “Stolen Honor: Wounds That Never Heal” by Carlton Sherwood that same year (they backed down after a huge outcry, though the article tells you that Sinclair aired a report on Kerry with film footage in October).

With all of this in mind, consider that, under the further relaxed rules Martin advocates, that blue Sinclair map would have a lot more stars in “blue” states and a lot more clout when trying to foist another piece of freeper agit prop on us again (and you KNOW they will next year just in time for the election).

And to get an idea of just what kind of impact the media ownership rule changes from the 1990s have had to date, consider the tale noted here regarding the decision of ABC News not to investigate its parent company, Disney, for “hiring practices (that) actually allowed the employment of convicted pedophiles at its parks and resorts” in the latter part of that decade.

This excerpt of Martin’s column caught my attention also…

Since 2003, when the courts told the commission to change its media ownership rules, the news media industry has operated in a climate of uncertainty.

That’s an interesting observation given the fact that, as noted in this link to information provided by “NOW With Bill Moyers,” a federal appeals court in Philadelphia blocked the implementation of proposed media ownership rule changes in September of that year. For most of 2003, what took place according to the timeline was a lot of jockeying back and forth between owners of media companies, the FCC, and U.S. senators, with a compromise on the TV ownership cap that favored Viacom and Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation reached in November and passed in January 2004; Martin is being disingenuous – and that’s putting it politely – to place any industry difficulty on the back of “the courts.”

Again, this is just an example of Martin trying to expand TV and radio ownership on behalf of already-Repug-friendly media companies in preparation for the election next year. Martin could care less about “the expression of independent thinking and a diversity of viewpoints” or the financial health of newspapers in general.

Finally, this E&P story tells us…

In an open letter to Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman Kevin Martin published in Sunday's Seattle Times, Editor at Large Michael R. Fancher argued that the elimination of rules against same-market common ownership of newspaper and broadcast would have "catastrophic consequences" for journalism and democracy itself.

The letter follows the FCC's final public hearing on ownership rules that took place in Seattle on Friday. According to published reports, a large majority of the speakers and audience opposed lifting the 1975 cross-ownership ban.

"What surprises me is how clearly the people get it," Fancher wrote. "On the left and on the right, they know that bigger media aren't in their best interest. That's what people from all walks of life told you Friday night."

And the fact that that message was communicated to Martin and he still concocted this drivel for publication in the Times speaks volumes about his true agenda as far as I’m concerned.

Update 1 11/14/07: I didn't get this completely right, and Marty Kaplan of HuffPo explains why here; Martin is proposing more ownership of newspapers by broadcast media outlets. However, the net effect of further entrenching the right-wing party line is as I described.

Update 2 11/18/07: Hat tip to Prof. Marcus for this...

Update 3 12/17/07: Martin is truly a motherf*cker for this...