Media Consolidation

Media Consolidation

In 2007, Kevin Martin, chairman of the FCC (Federal Communications Commission), attempted to pass a regulation that would allow one news corporation to own all of the radio, TV, and newspapers in a city. “This legislation changes technical provisions but is simple in its message and effects,” said Rep. Dave Reichert. “We want local media to remain local, diverse and free.” Although this decision would benefit the big companies that produce the news, it would be a very negative change for the American people and American democracy. If the media is allowed to become further consolidated, it could limit the number of opinions and stories in the news, make it harder for small news companies to exist, and make already under-reported issues barely reported at all.
The passing of this legislation would limit the variety of opinions and stories available in the news. When a singular news corporation owns most or all of the news in a city, the decisions on what stories and what opinions are represented all come back to the head of that company. If you watch Fox News every evening, and read the New York Post every morning, you are reading and hearing stories that are decided on by one man, whose name is Rupert Murdoch. So, if there are opinions being voiced that Mr. Murdoch doesn’t agree with, he has the ability to not let them be reported on at all. "… Six huge conglomerates control everything, well, basically everything that you see, hear, and read,” says Matt Thompson, a media reform activist. If much of the news is controlled by these six companies, the diversity in the media opinions doesn’t really go beyond those voiced by those companies and what their owners believe. When more of the news outlets are owned by big corporations, small news companies have a harder time existing. For example, one radio company, Clear Channel, owns over nine percent of our nation’s radio. This may not sound like a lot, but it’s almost five states worth of radio. When that much radio is owned by a big corporation, it is hard for independent companies to get airtime. With the passing of the FCC’s legislation, more of the radio could be owned by large companies, effectively pushing smaller shows and stations off the air. The same effect could happen in the area of newspapers and TV networks. Another dangerous effect of the legislation would be the absence of under-reported stories in the news. Today, news corporations choose what to report on based on how many people would be interested in the story. This leaves other topics that don’t get main media attention to be reported on by smaller sources. “It’s like the thing you care the most about is the climate crisis… Media should really be your second issue, because ultimately, yeah, it’s gonna be difficult to make the kind of progress you want in your fight if you're not getting the kind of media attention you need,” says one contributor to the HP Alliance, a group the works with Stop Big Media, the organization that stopped the FCC’s legislation when they tried to pass it the first time around, in 2003. Since the legislation would allow big companies to own more media, the stories that need media attention will be receiving less and less.
Some people argue on the side of the corporations and say that the legislation will provide immediate help to corporations. “There’s a couple companies that have been pushing for this for a long time. One is the Tribune Company, which is the only corporation to own a newspaper and a broadcast television station in the three major markets: LA, New York and Chicago,” says Eric Klinenberg. Although this may help large corporations, it will hurt small companies who really need the help much more. Other people say that the corporations are doing a really good job reporting, so having them control more media is not a problem. Well, since the eighties, reporting on foreign news has decreased by eighty percent. The absence of foreign news has been replaced by sports, weather, and celebrity gossip. For example, CNN, MSNBC, Fox News, NBC, CBS, and ABC ran twelve times as many stories on Tom Cruise and fifty times as many stories on Michael Jackson in 2005 as they did on the genocide in Darfur. That would hardly be called responsible reporting.
This bill would have negative effects on American media and the American people. It would limit diversity of opinions in the media, make it harder for small news companies to exist, and make the under-reported stories that need attention barely relevant. Even though it may give quick benefit to big corporations that are already practically monopolizing the media, it would push out small companies that are reporting on stories and giving opinions that aren’t being voiced by the main media. Do you really want a few big companies to control everything you see and hear?