The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) held its fifth official media ownership hearing on Thursday, September 20 at the Rainbow PUSH Coalition headquarters on the South Side of Chicago.
The issue involves Big Media’s desire for the FCC to lift the restrictions on broadcast cross-ownership and allow one company to own more television stations in a single market, says Bethany Broida of Legal Times. “The companies argue that the cross-ownership rules relating to newspaper and television station ownership unfairly limit newspaper owners while not subjecting owners of other media, such as cable television and the Internet, to the same restrictions — which, they say, violates the First Amendment.”
The goal of the hearing is to offer Chicago residents an opportunity to voice their concerns to the five FCC commissioners regarding the lack of media diversity in Chicago specifically, and nation as a whole.
Opponents of a “relaxation” by the FCC of cross ownership rules point to statistics to make their point.
Racial and ethnic minorities make up 33 percent of the US population, yet they own 7.7 percent of full-power radio stations [and] 3.2 percent of television stations, according to stopbigmedia.com. With that in mind, opponents say that the big media companies are not playing fair.
For example, Chicago has one of the lowest levels of minority ownership among markets of its size and diversity, says the website www.commondreams.org. Research conducted by Free Press, the national media reform group, found that racial and ethnic minorities make up nearly two-thirds of Chicago’s population but own only 5 percent of the city’s full-power commercial radio and TV stations. Despite comprising half of the population, women own just 6 percent of the city’s radio and TV stations.
According to stopbigmedia.com, if big media is successful, “these changes would diminish the diversity of voices and viewpoints and reduce coverage of local issues that matter to communities.”
On the surface, it does appear that the “media” does a poor job of representing minorities. A recent study done by Northwestern University’s Readership Institute concluded “in an analysis of more than 700 newspaper front pages, we see that only 18 percent of front page stories include a face of color.” “If we look more closely at the types of front-page stories most likely to picture a face of color, we see that 26 percent are about police or crime compared to 15 percent of photographs with white faces.”
The media companies are challenging a set of proposed media ownership rules developed by the FCC in 2003. “At the time, the Republican-led FCC voted along party lines to loosen some of its cross-ownership restrictions and revised rules concerning the number of radio and television stations that can be commonly owned in a particular market,” says Broida
The companies are using the law to bolster their case. “Furthermore, broadcasters argue that regulations on the number of radio and television stations that a company can own violates the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which, according to a brief submitted by the National Association of Broadcasters, “eliminated or relaxed virtually all of these media ownership rules,” according to Law.com
According to a Rainbow PUSH press release, “More than 800 people attended the hearing at Rainbow PUSH Coalition headquarters. Rainbow PUSH Coalition board chairman Martin King submitted testimony on behalf of Rev. Jackson, who was returning from a successful protest rally in Jena, Louisiana.”