FCC Chair Martin's New Media Strategy: Slick But Not Slick Enough

From the moment FCC chair Kevin Martin's plan to relax media ownership rules first leaked to the public, I've wondered what sort of substance the new chairman might be smoking.

After all, news about his proposed changes, including relaxing the rule barring companies from owning a major newspaper and TV stations in the same market, hit the public before the commission even had its last public meeting on ownership issues. That meeting was in Seattle on Friday, leaving little doubt that it had no impact on the rules proposal Martin released today -- which was also leaked beforehand.

Presidential candidates have already criticized Martin's leaked goal of passing a rule change by 2007's end and Congress seems poised to pass legislation halting it all. Still, Martin has made his proposal officially available, and now it seems obvious how he was going to try slipping more media consolidation past a public steadfastly opposed to it.

By disguising it as a cure for what ails the newspaper industry.

"Newspapers in financial difficulty often have little choice but to scale back newsgathering to cut costs," Martin wrote in an op-ed published today in the New York Times. "Allowing cross-ownership may help to forestall the erosion in local news coverage by enabling companies that won both newspapers and broadcast stations to share some costs."

The chairman's proposal sounds modest; allow a company to own a newspaper and TV station only in the top 20 markets, only if eight independently owned TV stations and newspapers exist after the ownership change and only if he TV station is not among the top four stations in the market.

Martin's problem is that big media companies are doing the exact opposite of what hes advocating. Belo Corp. recently moved to separate its broadcast and newspaper divisions, to isolate the more profitable TV stations from the problematic newspaper companies. Wall Street loves the idea and Media General generated some controversy by announcing it would not follow suit.

I also wonder what data Martin is using to justify such a move. One of the reasons the FCC is supposed to take so much time in considering these rules changes, is that they amass a mountain of data to prove why a rule exists or should be modified. This step is crucial -- it can keep the FCC from drafting rules which are later rejected by the courts, which is what happened to the rules revamp led by Martin's predecessor, Colin's son Michael Powell.

Cynic that I am, I wonder if Martin hasn't drafted a rule with little empirical proof -- why else would his op-ed say "allowing cross-ownership may" help the problem, instead of stating the case more definitively? -- so that subsequent court challenges can knock down the guidelines he's created.

One thing is obvious: Martin wants to cast this rules change, which seems drafted mostly to benefit big   companies such as News Corp. and Media General, as a boon to press freedom -- something I don't think the public is about to swallow.

Watching him try to tapdance this past a war-weary public and election-year Congress should be more fun than watching Mitt Romney take a question from the Snowman during the next YouTube debate.   

Comments

[Peter Rad]

Apparently you haven't been following Martin's illustrious carrier at the FCC, where every Corporate Giant gets what they want. Protecting the media from bankruptcy is NOT his job. His job is to protect consumers. But then that is why many are calling for the FCC to be abolished. Why spend the moeny when they sell their policies to Big Business?

[Elitism Fighter]

Oh, bleed my heart, Communist homosexual. Corporations are people who have a dream and achieve by striving to succeed and giving the public what it wants--real people in the real world, not being lazy bums sponging off the taxpayers. Perhaps if you'd been taught Horatio Alger, McGuffey's Reader and the Bible in Christian academies or home schools instead of "The Communist Manifesto" or "Heather Has Two Mommies" in government schools, you'd know that.

Of course, you and your Communist homosexual buddies want to take off what the MAJORITY of the American public wants and put on Communist homosexual propaganda and "Will and Grace's Homosexual Orgy" instead of wholesome family Christan patriot programming. You especially want to take off FOX NEWS CHANNEL, THE MOST POWERFUL NAME IN NEWS because it supports ordinary people who work for a living and is AMERICA'S NEWSROOM! NOT IN MY AMERICA, COMMUNIST HOMOSEXUAL!

[Scott]

In my America, people respect the opinions of others by stating their own, without the name-calling generally associated with thrid-grade school yard bullies.

[Brian Lupiani]

"Elitism Fighter" (by standing up for a half-dozen media conglomerates?) said:

"Corporations are people who have a dream and achieve by striving to succeed and giving the public what it wants--real people in the real world..."

There are real people in corporations, but corporations are by definition NOT natural persons - and their sole aim is to maximize profits. Some may do that in ways that real people might consider "responsible" or "enlightened", but corporations (other than non-profits) exist to make a profit.

That's not to say that makes them inherently evil - or good, for that matter - just that we shouldn't be under any illusion that corporations exist for some lofty ideal.

Oh yeah, and in my America people sign their name to their opinion.