crossownership Archive

In a nutshell today’s conservatism is one standard for me, and another for you. Here’s the world according to the typical teaparty conservative:

• When I complain its my right because its my free speech, but when you criticize back its a violation of my free speech
• The First Amendment applies to broadcasting because “congress shall make no law…abridging the freedom of speech…” If a liberal builds a transmitter and starts broadcasting on my favorite AM talk radio blowhard’s frequency then have them arrested, because congress can make such a law after all.
• Insure my investments through the FDIC, and increase the limits so my millions are safe, but don’t touch the banks that put them in jeopardy because that’s big government at work.
• Watch me hold my “No Socialism” sign high, at least until I have to put it down to get to my medicare-reimbursed doctor’s appointment
• And make sure the streetlights are on and the roads don’t have any potholes so that I can get to the tax protest without damaging my car.

The folks at ceasespin.org are angry, and they have good reason to be. The media lie and even when you catch them at it, the government seems powerless to stop them.  They’ve got a plan to change things, but like so many plans that arise from anger, they haven’t thought things through. Much of their outrage is tied to the reversal on appeal of a wrongful termination verdict in 2003 stemming from a case in which reporters for WTVT, Tampa, refused to air the statements of Monsanto employees that they personally knew to be false.

This is a sad commentary on the nature of the media, but its also a case where hard cases make good law, and the ceasespin.org site should be a great resource for journalism schools everywhere, because in just a few web pages, the site illustrates the conundrum of how objectivity can be achieved and who decides what is fair.  For instance, they’ve not yet been able to come up with a standard:

Note: this prototype is for informational and educational purposes only. It demonstrates what quality criteria might be used in an actual news quality rating system and how that translates into a quality rating score. The actual news quality standard is still in development and will be published on this and other websites further into the development cycle.

This is not surprise to any third or fourth year journalism undergraduate who has considered the difficulty of who decides. There is a clear danger in any system that places the government in control of media content, and while there are today few first amendment questions for licensed broadcast media (NBC v. United States 1943 pretty much decided that), government regulations must be reasonable and necessary.

So, after a lot of hue and cry, ceasespin winds up posting a self-policing system that is essentially what should be taking place in any good newsroom and has been taught in j-schools at least since the 1930s. Other suggestions like the fairness doctrine and media deconsolidation are much better solutions, but they’re hardly the province of ceasespin. In fact, the fairness doctrine probably is not necessary if there’s diversity of ownership, which was the original concept behind getting rid of it.

In fact, if ceasespin were to apply the standard it wants to see in others to its own coverage of the Fox news decision, it would have to check “no” to at least 6 of its criteria, and probably more. There are reasons that the FCC policies are not laws, but those aren’t cited in the ceasespin story, because it would undercut its own movement. So its own score on its own test: FAIL.

They’re scared. The newspaper crossownership restrictions that the FCC loosened in late 2007 may be an early target of the Obama administration’s desire to help return some diversity to legacy media, and the arguments are already beginning.

Broadcasting and Cable posted their “Open Hopes” yesterday in a pleading editorial that would have made George Orwell proud:

“Diversity can mean helping preserve TV and radio stations by allowing those in smaller markets to combine resources and ensuring that the government does not try to silence its critics.”

That’s got to go down with “less is more” and “obedience is freedom,” as a truly great oxymoron, so let me make this real simple for the obviously confused guardians of our public airwaves. Diversity is more people owning fewer media outlets. That means the local newspaper does not get to buy the local television station.

In the 1930s this was newspapers' biggest fear

In some cases, that is going to result in newspapers going out of business, sometimes the very same newspapers that tried to run radio stations out of business in the 1930s, until United Press threw in the towel and started putting wire services in radio stations.

The Broadcasting and Cable “Open Hopes” editorial tries to finesse its point by talking about “stations in midsized markets” and then changing the subject as quickly as possible to Bush’s embedded reporters and wholesale classification of embarrassing government reports. That’s not the point, in fact its counter-intuitive. If we had more diversity, somebody might actually have called Bush out on those issues at the time!

Broadcasters: you have two choices. Either start providing a range of opinions on your properties so that you can point to diversity on your own outlets, or get ready to be forced to divest them or to face that dreaded “fairness doctrine.” If you had been doing your jobs, there’d be no reason for any of this.

And stop trying to play this off as being somehow driven by troubles at midsized stations in small markets. It was the Chicago Tribune sale that caused FCC Chief Kevin Martin to ram this through, followed by Rupert Murdoch’s acquisition of Dow Jones.

And if you’re looking for “synergy” (meaning you get to buy the local television station), think again. The public airwaves are not there to pay for your red ink. If you need a new delivery medium, look to the Internet.