Media - Federal Conglomeration Commission

November 20, 2007

by Faiz Shakir, Amanda Terkel, Satyam Khanna, Matt Corley, and Ali Frick

MEDIA

Federal Conglomeration Commission

When French political philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville came to the United States in the 19th century, he marveled at the country's "division of the influence of the press." "In America there is scarcely a hamlet that has not its newspaper," he wrote. "All the political journals of the United States are, indeed, arrayed on the side of the administration or against it; but they attack and defend it in a thousand different ways." Yet as Federal Communications Commission (FCC) member Michael Copps observes, two centuries later, the United States doesn't fully have "media capable of keeping democracy strong." FCC chairman Kevin Martin's new plans to loosen media ownership limits -- which are endorsed by billionaires such as Rupert Murdoch and Samuel Zell -- will only worsen this state and smother local voices. These plans are largely opposed by the American public. Nearly 60 percent oppose allowing a company to own both a newspaper and a television station in the same market, and 70 percent describe media consolidation as a "problem."

CONSOLIDATING MORE THAN 120 MILLION AMERICANS: In 1975, the FCC enacted a rule prohibiting a company from owning a newspaper and a television station in the same city. In 2003, President Bush's then-FCC chairman Michael Powell attempted to loosen these rules, sparking a strong public outcry. More than three million people protested his actions, and Congress overturned one of his rule changes. The rest were halted by a federal court "for not being properly justified and sent...back to the FCC to be rewritten." As Common Cause notes, Martin's current proposals are "eerily similar to what happened in 2003." His changes would "enable a media company to own both a newspaper and either a radio or smaller television station in the nation's 20 largest markets." While Martin has tried to portray his proposal as "relatively moderate," Copps and fellow FCC member Jonathan Adelstein, who both oppose the rule change, note that these 20 markets "account for over 43% of U.S. households" and directly affect more than 120 million Americans. Additionally, Martin has rushed to schedule a vote on the issue for Dec. 18, permitting the public just 19 working days to submit comments.

CROWDING OUT LOCAL AND MINORITY VOICES: Martin's rushed Dec. 18 vote comes even though the FCC has not yet finished its study on how the changes would affect local media ownership, nor has it forwarded "comprehensive ideas to increase women and minority ownership of broadcast outlets." Adelstein notes that the FCC has collected 44 recommendations from "expert outside organizations" on this topic, but they continue to sit "on the shelf of the FCC, just gathering dust." Even under the current rules, "[w]omen and people of color -- who comprise two-thirds of the population -- own only about one-sixth of commercial radio and TV stations." African-Americans and Latinos own "only 33 of the nation's 1350 TV stations" and six percent of the 10,000 radio stations. Martin's plan would further shut out diverse voices. Cross-owned stations, which Martin's change would increase, produce less local news and lead "other stations in the market to collectively curtail their news output by about 25 percent." Economists have documented that when stations provide Spanish-language local news, "voter turnout among Spanish speakers increases significantly." Center for American Progress Senior Fellow Mark Lloyd notes that while Martin reportedly conducted 10 studies on "tied to the media ownership review," none focused on "the impact of local media diversity on democratic engagement, or on the diversity of information available to minority communities." Lloyd and Fordham University's Phil Napoli have developed a "Metric for Local Media Diversity" to measure local media diversity and "determine what level of media diversity actually supports strong local democracies."

A 'MISGUIDED AND HARMFUL' PLAN: As in 2003, Martin's rules change has ignited bipartisan outrage from Capitol Hill. Today, "24 House Republicans plan to deliver a letter to Mr. Martin, chiding him for a 'misguided and harmful' proposal that would give the FCC more authority to regulate the cable industry." They further call his plan "inappropriate at best and contradicts the statute at worst." Yesterday, Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI) wrote to Martin and expressed concern that he may be "selectively collecting and releasing information to support its pre-conceived agenda," citing the fact that the FCC last year decided to not release "two reports that raised questions about potential negative impacts from further media consolidation." Sens. Byron Dorgan (D-ND) and Trent Lott (R-MS) have introduced legislation to postpone the FCC's vote, ensure 90 days for public comments, and "complete a separate proceeding to evaluate how localism is affected by media consolidation." Contact your lawmakers and urge them to support The Media Ownership Act of 2007.

JUSTICE -- HATE CRIMES ON THE RISE AS BUSH THREATENS VETO: Yesterday, the FBI released statistics showing that incidents of hate crimes rose by nearly eight percent in 2006, as there were 7,722 criminal incidents "targeting victims or property as a result of bias against a particular race, religion, sexual orientation, ethnic or national origin or physical or mental disability." These statistics do not include the recent rise in the number of nooses that have followed the widely-publicized incidents in Jena, LA. Last Friday, Rev. Al Sharpton and Martin Luther King III led a march of nearly 20,000 people around the Justice Department to protest what they saw as the Department's failure to aggressively prosecute hate crimes. "There's Jenas everywhere," Sharpton said at the march. President Bush has vowed to veto a provision expanding hate crimes law to include crimes motivated by the gender, sexual orientation, or disability of the victim, calling the expansion "unnecessary and constitutionally questionable."

MEDIA -- O'REILLY RUNS AD FOR 'VILE' MOVIE THAT HE CLAIMS HELPS 'THE TERRORISTS': For two months, Fox News host Bill O'Reilly has criticized Brian De Palma's controversial new film, Redacted, which was financed by Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban. The film centers around a fictionalized portrayal of "the true story of a group of U.S. soldiers who raped and killed a 14-year-old Iraqi girl and murdered members of her family." O'Reilly kicked off his campaign against the film with a column in September, saying the filmmakers "should be ashamed" because "they are hurting their own country." He sharpened his attacks last week, calling for a boycott of the "vile," "anti-American" film during multiple segments on his show. In a second column, O'Reilly compared Cuban and DePalma to Charles Manson. Cuban responded to O'Reilly's criticism by claiming that the Fox News star is mischaracterizing the film and attacking it without having seen it. Last week, Cuban bought ad time for the film during The O'Reilly Factor. The ad ran during the Nov. 15 edition of the show. Cuban says the point of the ad buy was to see if the issue "really was important to Mr. O'Reilly, or whether" he "would say whatever he needed to say to get more people to watch." Cuban said he had no problem whatsoever obtaining the time. Watch a compilation of O'Reilly's attacks on Cuban and the ad he aired.

ETHICS -- NOVAK ATTACKS BUFFET AS A 'HYPOCRITE' WITH 'PHONY MESSAGE': Last week, billionaire investor Warren Buffett urged Congress "to maintain the estate tax, saying that plans to repeal the tax would benefit a handful of the richest American families and widen income disparity in the United States." Fewer than one percent of the nation's super-rich pay the estate tax. "For this year, individual estates valued at more than $2 million are taxed at a top rate of 45 percent." In the last 20 years, tax laws have allowed the "superrich" to become richer, according to Buffet. Buffet -- who pays the estate tax -- argued, "A progressive and meaningful estate tax is needed to curb the movement of a democracy toward plutocracy." This weekend on Bloomberg Television, right-wing pundit Bob Novak fumed over Buffett's altruistic testimony, attacking him as a hypocrite who "should be ashamed of himself for putting out that phony message." Bloomberg's Al Hunt responded, "Bob, there's only two differences between you and Warren Buffett: $40 billion and a conscience."

"New Orleans lost out in the competition to host one of the 2008 presidential debates Monday after the commission that selects the sites decided that the city has not sufficiently recovered from Hurricane Katrina to handle such a major event."

CQ reports that Senate Judiciary Chairman Patrick Leahy (D-VT) "is ready to play nice when considering President Bush's latest round of nominees to fill a raft of vacancies in the upper echelons of the Justice Department." After Bush reportedly called him at home, Leahy pledged, "I'm going to try to move as quickly as I can on them."

CBS's "60 Minutes" is gathering information in Alabama about the case of incarcerated former Gov. Don Siegelman. Siegelman's prosecution was opposed by Justice Department prosecutors and was reportedly interfered with by Bush administration political operatives.

While the violence in Baghdad declines, "northern Iraq has become more violent than other regions as al-Qaida and other militants move there to avoid coalition operations elsewhere." "What you're seeing is the enemy shifting," Army Maj. Gen. Mark P. Hertling told reporters yesterday.

Law professors David Cole of Georgetown University and Jules Lobel of the University of Pittsburgh published a Report Card on the war against terrorist networks in this weekend's Los Angeles Times. The chart combines visual and statistical depictions of the cost of the administration's failing strategy. View it here.

When the House voted on Iraq redeployment legislation last week, three Republicans -- Reps. Chris Shays (CT), Jim Walsh (NY) and Phil English (PA) -- "voted to order withdrawal for the first time," likely influenced by the tough re-election campaigns they face in '08.

"US contracts in Iraq and Afghanistan more than doubled from 2004 to 2006 to over 25 billion dollars but government oversight of the firms involved has slackened," reports the Center for Public Integrity. Former Halliburton subsidiary KBR topped the list with more than $16 billion in U.S. contracts.

"Apparel retailer Gap is canceling half of its orders with a vendor in India and promises to donate $200,000 to improve working conditions there. The move comes after revelations that some of its clothes were made by children as young as 10."

And finally: "Robert Novak is a prince, all right, and every member of royalty needs a chariot befitting his title. That must be why the right-leaning columnist and author of 'Prince of Darkness' was spotted pulling up to the Capitol on Friday in his sleek (and slightly menacing-looking) black Corvette convertible."

According to the United Nations, new infections of the deadly AIDS virus "have been dropping each year since they peaked in the late 1990s."

CALIFORNIA: "The nation is watching whether California will join Massachusetts in enacting universal health care."

PENNSYLVANIA: "Mayor John Street, once regarded as an enemy of the gay community for opposing same-sex partner benefits, is to preside over his first same-sex commitment ceremony this weekend."

POLITICS: A Pennsylvania college is "trying to start a movement to ban politicians from holding closed meetings restricted to supporters on all campuses in the nation."

THINK PROGRESS: Fox News chief Roger Ailes lectures West Point cadets About "the military and the media."

WINDOW ON WASHINGTON: Homeland Security Adviser France Townsend's goodbye to President Bush: "You are such a man."

ERIC BLACK INK: "The mood" in the Minnesota U.S. attorney's office is "a combination of relief and euphoria" after Rachel Paulose announced she is leaving for a job in the Justice Department.

DAILY KOS: A "return to normalcy" has been claimed during every single year of the Iraq war, without any lasting normalcy.

"One of the good things about [columnist Robert] Novak is that...he breaks stuff that always turns out to be right. He is never proven wrong. He is always right."
-- Political analyst Dick Morris, 11/19/07, on Fox News's Hannity and Colmes

VERSUS

"An Illinois Republican source tells us former Speaker J. Dennis Hastert (R-Ill.) plans to resign November 6 this year instead of finishing out his term."
-- Novak, 8/22/07

VERSUS

"It's time for this legislator to return to being a private citizen."
-- Hastert, 11/15/07, announcing his resignation

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