Be The Media

MEDIA OWNERSHIP REFORM ACT Introduced

U.S. Representative Maurice Hinchey (NY-22) today introduced the Media Ownership Reform Act of 2004 (MORA). The bill seeks to restore fairness in broadcasting, reduce media concentration, ensure that broadcasters meet their public interest requirements, and promote diversity, localism, and competition in American media.

"The weakening of media protections, and subsequent consolidation of the media industry, has allowed companies to ignore their obligations to serve the public interest and severely reduced localism, diversity, and competition in today’s media," said Hinchey. "The current state of today’s media threatens the ability of our democracy to function because it does not allow for the wide dissemination of information from diverse sources and viewpoints, thereby shrinking the marketplace of ideas."

Hinchey's legislation cites the gradual erosion of public interest protections in the rules governing media ownership, beginning with the Reagan Administration's elimination of the Fairness Doctrine and culminating in the Federal Communications Commission's (FCC) decision to drastically weaken ownership rules last June.

Among other provisions, MORA will:
· strike down the FCC's June 2, 2003 decision in its entirety;
· restore the Fairness Doctrine and give it the power of law, requiring broadcast licensees to afford reasonable opportunity for the discussion of conflicting views on issues of public importance;
· roll back to 35 percent the portion of the national audience that a single party may reach through broadcast television ownership.
· prevent any single entity from owning more than five percent of the total number of AM and FM broadcast radio stations nationally;
· reform the FCC practices through which the commission has gradually weakened ownership rules;
· require broadcast licensees to report how they are serving the public interest;
· break up the monopolization of programming production and distribution.

Magazines: The drug war gravy train

By Daniel Forbes in Salon.com:

"At least six major U.S. magazines have submitted anti-drug articles they have published over the past year to the government's Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) in an attempt to qualify for thousands of dollars of financial credits under the same federal advertising program that has benefited the television networks, Salon has learned.

Those magazines whose articles have been deemed by the drug czar's office as "on-message" have qualified for the credits, which are awarded in lieu of advertising obligations. Those that failed the test have not.

The drug-control office has made some of the most lucrative ad buys from magazines that maintain an anti-drug editorial environment that it considers hospitable to its messages."

Lewis Lapham, the editor of Harper's, expressed no great shock: "The only surprise here is it hasn't happened sooner. Most consumer magazines a long time ago turned themselves into delivery systems for advertisers."

One of the writers whose story was submitted to the White House drug office for valuation stated, "This is a clear violation of journalistic ethics. It's really egregious."

"This shapes the type of reporting you're doing and what editors are asking for," continued the journalist, who requested anonymity. "If we ever did something like this as a writer — showed a story to a source ahead of publication, say — our career would be finished."

What is indisputable is that the U.S. government is using taxpayer money to, in effect, reward publications whose editorial content matches the government's views on drug control.

Besides the six magazines listed above, 20 others captured $11,935,000 of the drug-control office's ad budget in 1999. These included Essence ($124,000); Ladies' Home Journal ($148,000); Newsweek ($207,000); Reader's Digest ($1,392,000); Teen ($199,000); TV Guide ($232,000); and Vibe ($106,000).

A number of Time Warner publications also participated, including Sports Illustrated ($1,385,000); Time ($1,344,000); People ($743,000); People En Español ($160,000); Life ($111,000); and Family Life ($74,000). To date, Salon has obtained no evidence that any of these publications sought to swap editorial content for drug-czar financial credits.

Overall, the drug office's five-year, roughly billion-dollar ad buy enriched a wide range of media. Television, both local and network, got well over $80 million in fiscal year 1999; radio got more than $10 million; billboards, transit and the like got over $5 million, and in-school efforts got a similar amount. Print, both newspapers and magazines, received some $17 million, with about $10 million of that going to magazines, as detailed above.

Reporter apologizes for Iraq coverage

Editor and Publisher reports that a young columnist for a small paper in Fredricksburg, VA has offered an apology for his and his paper's failings in the run-up to the Iraq war:

"The media are finished with their big blowouts on the anniversary of the invasion of Iraq, and there is one thing they forgot to say: We're sorry," Rick Mercier wrote, in a column published Sunday in The Free Lance-Star.

"Sorry we let unsubstantiated claims drive our coverage. Sorry we were dismissive of experts who disputed White House charges against Iraq. Sorry we let a band of self-serving Iraqi defectors make fools of us. Sorry we fell for Colin Powell's performance at the United Nations. Sorry we couldn't bring ourselves to hold the administration's feet to the fire before the war, when it really mattered.

"Maybe we'll do a better job next war."

Mercier admitted that it was "absurd to receive this apology from a person so low in the media hierarchy. You really ought to be getting it from the editors and reporters at the agenda-setting publications, such as The New York Times and The Washington Post."

Music industry rips off consumers - I finally got paid!

I finally got paid - a whopping $20 - from being illegally overcharged for CDs bought between 1995 and 2000. Most people weren't aware of the settlement, let alone the lawsuit, because - SURPRISE - the music labels, newspapers, radio and TV stations are all owned by the same corporate parent! The labels wonder why so many people use P2P systems to get music. The kids already know what the parents suspected for many years - WE WERE RIPPED OFF. Gee, that $20 check will buy me one Compact Disc - NOT!

On January 7, 2003, Wired reported that there were "Few Takers For CD Settlement Cash." In September, the five top U.S. distributors of compact discs and three large music retailers agreed to pay $143 million in cash and CDs to settle allegations they cheated consumers by fixing prices. Bertelsmann, EMI, Warner-Elektra-Atlantic, Sony and Universal. Also included in the deal were three national retail chains: Trans World Entertainment, Tower Records and Musicland Stores.

The lawsuit alleged that the companies upset with low prices charged by some stores conspired with retailers to set music prices at a minimum level, effectively raising the retail prices consumers paid for CDs. Part of the settlement about $44 million in cash is earmarked to pay customers from $5 to $20, depending on how many people wind up dividing the money. By the end of December, only about 30,000 people nationwide had applied for a piece of the pie, a tiny fraction of the number the settlement could handle. "The response thus far has been fairly abysmal," said Washington Attorney General Christine Gregoire, who's been on morning radio shows to promote the settlement. Anyone who bought a CD, cassette tape or vinyl record at a retail store between 1995 and 2000 is eligible.

Don't Reward Deceitful Writers

Samuel G Freeman is a professor of journalism at Columbia University. He wrote a recent editorial in USA Today that I thought was interesting and appropriate for these days:

Only we journalists can restore our collective reputation, and the way to do it is to vow that when it comes to faking and stealing stories, one strike and you're out. You are banished from your professional community, your occupational family. Forever.

Kelley, Blair and the rest already have resigned or been fired from the newspapers and magazines they betrayed. But that is not sufficient punishment.

Journalists who fabricate never should be hired or contracted to write again. Their presence in any non-fiction publication damages me, and it damages all of my fellow journalists - including Kelley's hundreds of former colleagues at USA TODAY - who inconspicuously, obscurely and thankslessly play by the rules.

Fewer Players, Less Freedom

Miren Gutierrez looks at the failed Comcast/Disney merger and writes about the dangers of media consolidation for Inter Press Service:

"The principal reason people should care about the increasing concentration of the media has to do with independent thinking, freedom of thought and ideas," says Chuck Lewis, executive director of the Centre for Public Integrity, in an e-mail interview. "The fewer the outlets for information, the less intellectual range for political, ideological and other thinking," he adds. "Multiple sources of information help us to better assess overall credibility".

"Abraham Lincoln once said, 'I am a firm believer in the people. If given the truth, they can meet any national crisis. The great point is to bring them the real facts'," adds Lewis.

The marriage of media content (news, films, TV shows) with media distribution (TV or radio networks, Internet services and the like) further increases the control of media barons over the audience, as they use their sales power to batter their way into living rooms.

Apart from Comcast — the offspring of a merger in 2001 between a large cable firm and part of a big telephone company, AT&T Broadband — the other "six big sisters" are: Viacom-CBS-MTV; Murdoch-Fox TV-Harper Collins-Weekly Standard-New York Post-London Times-DirecTV; GE-NBC-Universal-Vivendi; Time-Warner-CNN-AOL; Disney-ABC-ESPN. In January 2001, the 165-billion-dollar mega-merger between AOL and Time Warner became the largest in history.

"If media moguls control media content and media distribution, then they have a lock on the extent and range of diverse views and information," says Lewis. "That kind of grip on commercial and political power is potentially dangerous for any democracy."

In his books, 'Rich Media, Poor Democracy' and 'The Problem With the Media', Robert W. McChesney, research professor at the U.S. University of Illinois, argues that the major beneficiaries of the so-called Information Age are a select group of wealthy owners and investors, advertisers and a handful of enormous media, computer and telecommunications corporations.

"(The big media) are not neutral observers," he says in a telephone interview.

In the United States, media corporations want to, "make sure that the media policy questions are not understood by the public and that they are discussed behind closed doors. There is a deliberate effort in making sure there is no sustained press coverage of these issues," according to McChesney.

In the United States, "it is fair to note that federal regulatory agencies are often captured by the powerful interests they have been established to oversee," says Lewis. "When a federal agency such as the FCC (Federal Communications Commission) accepts 2,500 all-expense-paid trips from the industry it is supposed to regulate, as my centre disclosed in May 2003 on our Web site, such a conflict of interest casts a pall over any regulatory decision."

"If there is one thing we all have been reminded of in the past couple years, it is that capitalism cannot function without democracy," he adds. "As we have seen with the Enron, Worldcom and many other recent business scandals, unmitigated greed and fraud not only are economically destructive, they undermine consumer and investor confidence and trust in general."

"Media corporations already enjoy a disproportionate amount of political power, for not only do they attempt to influence the public policy process like everyone else — with campaign contributions, free trips, lobbying - they actually control whether or not a politician's face or voice is on the airwaves. Now, that is real power!"

Performers denounce plan to hike FCC fines

From New York Daily News:

"Recording artists joined radio hosts yesterday in blasting proposed broadcast indecency legislation that could subject "nonlicensees" - including hosts, artists, guests and callers - to huge fines for inappropriate utterances.

Current House and Senate bills would let the FCC fine individuals up to $500,000 per violation. FCC rules now place most of the burden for violations on stations and owners, with a ceiling of $11,000 for individuals.

In the past, the FCC has almost never fined individuals.

The 80,000-member American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (AFTRA) says the proposed change "represents an unconstitutional threat to the First Amendment and would have an immediate and significant chilling effect on artistic freedom. Sadly, this has already begun."

An Indecent Proposal

John Nichols in The Nation writes:

"We are moving in the direction of undermining the First Amendment," said US Representative Ron Paul, the maverick Texan who was the only Republican member of the House to oppose the Broadcast Decency Enforcement Act of 2004. Paul, one of the least likely defenders of shock jocks like Howard Stern and Bubba the Love Sponge, is, of course, correct. The measure, which passed the House by a vote of 391-22 last week, was written with the intent of preventing broadcast personalities from engaging in certain forms of potentially offensive speech by threatening them -- and the stations on which they appear -- with financial ruin.

Under the legislation that passed the House, the fine for an on-air personality who violates the ill-defined decency standards applied by the Federal Communications Commission would rise from $11,000 to $500,000. The fine against the owner of the station on which the violation was heard and seen would rise from $27,500 to $500,000.

Representative Gary Ackerman, D-New York, was blunter. If implemented, the congressman said, the law would not have "a chilling effect." "It would have a freezing effect," he explained.

House votes, 391-22, to raise b'casters' fines for indecency

From the New York Times, March 12, 2004
By Carl Hulse

"Saying much of the public is fed up with indecent television and radio programming, members of the House voted overwhelmingly on Thursday to increase penalties on broadcasters and performers who violate federal standards.

Spurred by a racy Super Bowl halftime show, the House voted, 391 to 22, to raise fines to $500,000 for the holders of broadcast licenses and for entertainers, from $27,500 and $11,000, respectively. The measure would also force the Federal Communications Commission to act more quickly on complaints and move to revoke the licenses of repeat offenders.

"For too long, we have told the entertainment industry that the federal government is unwilling to hold them accountable for their actions," Representative Joe Pitts, Republican of Pennsylvania, said. "Today, we are saying, Enough is enough."

The Ghost of Nixon Haunting Public Broadcasting?

Sign the petition to save public broadcasting here

"Did you know...

Today's fight over public broadcasting bears an eerie resemblance to the past. Both the Bush Administration and some Members of Congress are supporting actions that could threaten the long-term funding and editorial independence of public broadcasting. These actions, if successful, will only exacerbate the downslide of quality programming brought on by the push for media consolidation.

But this is not the first time public broadcasting has come under fire. Former President Richard Nixon hated public broadcasting. In the 1970s, his aides, some of whom were planning and covering up Watergate during the same period, plotted to gain control over both the Corporation of Public Broadcasting (CPB) and the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) and eliminate what they saw as liberal public affairs programming on public television.

Sound familiar? It should. Today's opponents of public broadcasting are using some of the same old tactics in a new fight to end public broadcasting as we know it."