Be The Media

FCC commissioner seeks disclosure of government-paid journalists

From National Journal Technology Daily, by Drew Clark:

"Television and radio journalists paid to promote viewpoints, and the broadcasters who air those views, must disclose the sources of funding or face prosecution under communications laws that bar "payola," an FCC commissioner said Thursday.

In an unexpected statement at the FCC's January meeting, Jonathan Adelstein called for the agency to investigate whether conservative commentator Armstrong Williams or broadcasters violated laws for failing to disclose that Williams was paid to espouse particular views.

Adelstein said a provision in the 1996 Telecommunications Act that bars payola, the practice of independent music promoters paying radio stations to play the songs of affiliated arts, also applies to journalists.

"I am going to insist that we investigate this incident and every incident that is reported to us," said Adelstein, a Democratic-selected commissioner who was reappointed last month to a five-year term by the Bush administration. He said the agency had received at least 12 letters of complaint about the matter."

FCC to get 12,500 'Armstrong' complaints

From Broadcasting & Cable, by John Eggerton:

"Anti-big-media activist group Free Press says it has sent 12,500 e-mail complaints about Armstrong Williams directly to Federal Communications Commission Chairman Michael Powell Thursday, and plans to send it to the offices of the heads of the House and Senate Commerce committees.

That news followed an FCC meeting at which Enforcement Bureau Chief David Solomon said he hadn't looked at several letters the commission had received about Armstrong, couldn't say whether or not they were complaints or whether the FCC was investigating the incident.

Free Press wants the FCC and Congress to investigate a deal in which Williams, a conservative radio and TV commentator and columnist, was paid $240,00 by the administration to promote its No Child Left Behind education policy. The administration has been criticized, including by the GAO, for several similar pay-for-promo deals, including video news releases on health care and drug-abuse prevention.

If Williams did not disclose that payment—which Williams has suggested he did—it would appear to be a violation of FCC policy against payola. If someone is paid to broadcast information, that payment must be disclosed to the station licensee, who must then include a sponsor identification with the broadcast."

FCC general counsel exits

From Broadcasting and Cable, by John Eggerton:

"Federal Communications Commission Chairman Michael Powell was effusive in his praise of outgoing general counsel John Rogovin Thursday.

Rogovin is exiting to become a partner in the communications law firm of Wilmer, Cutler, Pickering, Hale & Dore.

Calling Rogovin the best general counsel in the commission's history, Powell said the commission was losing "an extraordinary asset" who would be "sorely missed."

On hand to measure the shoes he would have to fill was Deputy General Counsel Austin Schlick, who Powell introduced as Rogovin's successor, currently as acting general counsel."

An obscene waste of energy

From Wired, by Adam Penenberg:

"Over the past year, a new media meme has begun to take root: Congress and the Bush administration should abolish the Federal Communications Commission."

"For example, in April 2004, Lynn Woolley, author of The Last Great Days of Radio, suggested scrapping the agency entirely, because the FCC "in its current form has proven itself to be so destructive to the industry — particularly radio — that it would be better to abolish it and start over."

In June, digital libertarian Declan McCullagh argued that the agency was "no longer necessary" and does "more harm than good." He estimates that some technologically backward decisions have cost Americans tens of billions of dollars.

Less than two months later, Ayn Rand Institute writer Robert Garmong called the FCC's very existence "a flagrant violation of the right to free speech." While the agency justifies regulating broadcast content because the airwaves are supposed to be public property, "just as the government does not own — and so has no legitimate control over — the presses of The New York Times, so it has no business regulating what may be broadcast over airwaves."

The media movement matures

From In These Times, by Aaron Sarver:

"In 2003, an unprecedented 750,000 Americans wrote the Federal Communications Commission, urging them not to relax media ownership rules. Since then, the movement to reshape national media policy has gained momentum, and the media reform organization Free Press (http://www.freepress.net) has been instrumental every step of the way."

"In These Times spoke with Free Press founder and In These Times contributing editor Robert McChesney about current media reform battles and the challenges of getting the word out about crucial but highly technical communications policy issues."

It's the media, stupid!

From Consortiumnews.com, by Robert Parry:

"America’s top political analysts are now mining Election 2004 for lessons learned: A front-page story in the Washington Post marveled at how effective the Swift boat smears were against John Kerry for the bargain price of $546,000. Columnist E.J. Dionne Jr. observes that “the sheer negative genius of the Bush campaign is worthy of close study.”

While both points may be true, they obscure a larger reality: The reason that negative attacks could work so well for the Bush campaign was the preexistence of a vast conservative media infrastructure that serves as both an echo chamber for Republican messages and a way to protect George W. Bush and other Republicans from attack.

Indeed, the conservative investment of tens of billions of dollars in media over the past quarter century may be the biggest – and least reported – money-in-politics story of modern American history. The conservatives’ ability to saturate the airwaves with their version of reality has changed how millions of Americans understand the world.

So, even when the Democrats can roughly match the Republicans in election fundraising – as occurred in 2004 with each side spending about $1 billion – the Republicans have a huge, built-in advantage because the conservative media reinforces their messages. This infrastructure also works between elections – day-in-day-out, year-in-year-out – to keep the Republican base engaged and the Democrats on the defensive."

Free Press, NAACP target TV license

By Bill McConnell in Broadcasting & Cable:

"As expected, media activists at Free Press and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People late Monday petitioned the Federal Communications Commission to deny Media General Inc.’s request for permission to keep both WMBB-TV Panama City, Fla., and the Jackson County Floridan, one of the market’s daily newspapers.

Free Press and NAACP said Media General has given no compelling reason why it should receive a waiver from the FCC's ban on crossownership of TV stations and newspapers in the same market.

The groups pointed out that the FCC has granted only four permanent waivers to the crossownership restrictions and, in each, the owners were required to demonstrate that they have tried and failed to sell one of the properties or that one of them would fail financially if the owner were forced to divest.

Because of a loophole in FCC rules, the commission can't stop a TV station owner from acquiring a local newspaper in the same market, and can't order the combo broken up until the station's license comes up for renewal.

Consequently, Media General was able to buy WMBB in spring 2000 and the Floridan in September of that year. The license for WMBB expires Feb.1.

Media General established the combo expecting the FCC to eliminate or at least greatly relax the crossownership restriction. The FCC did vote to relax the rule in June 2003, but a federal appeals court subsequently struck down the change and ordered the FCC to undertake a rewrite that remains pending.

"Media General took the risk of gambling that the newspaper-broadcast crossownership rule would be repealed or modified before the WMBB-TV license would come up for renewal. Media General lost that bet," wrote lawyers for Free Press and NAACP."

Puerto Rican media/community group urges FCC to yank license of Univision station in San Juan

From the Communications Workers of America:

"Citing "cultural insensitivity" and failure to live up to required local broadcast standards, an alliance of Puerto Rican media unions and community groups is urging the Federal Communications Commission to deny license renewal to the island's largest television station, WLII in San Juan, which is operated by U.S. media conglomerate Univision.

The Alliance of Puerto Rican Artists and Support Groups, whose acronym in Spanish is APAGA, charged that Univision has all but dropped local production of telenovelas and game shows in favor of canned programming from Mexico and Venezuela, the source of most of Univision's production. Puerto Rican programming has dropped from about 50 programs a week down to only three since Univision took over in 2002 under a local marketing agreement with station owner Raycom Media.

Besides causing substantial job loss locally, the station's shift to foreign news and entertainment programming has had an insulting and damaging impact on Puerto Rico's culture and language, APAGA stated."

Journalists petition FCC to challenge FOX license renewal

By Alexis Mueller in the Tampa Bay Business Journal

'Two TV journalists have challenged the broadcast license renewal of WTVT Fox-13 asserting it deliberately broadcast false and distorted news reports.

The challenge stems from what the reporters describe as a year-long experience working at the station where they resisted their managers who, they allege, repeatedly ordered them to distort a series of news reports about the secret use of an artificial hormone injected in dairy cattle throughout Florida and nationally.

The reporters charge in a release distributed Monday that station executives demanded the reports be falsified and slanted to avoid a threatened lawsuit by the hormone maker Monsanto, as well as potential loss of advertising from the dairy industry and others who objected to the reports.

The two reporters were fired after, they say, they refused to yield to management threats of dismissal."

99.8% of all FCC indecency complaints from just one organization

From MSNBC.com:

"FCC Chair Michael Powell insists that his conversion from a free-speech advocate to a harsh censor is based on public outcry.  Most of us have swallowed that excuse.  Well, this Mediaweek article demonstrates what nonsense Powell is spouting, whether he knows it or not.  It turns out that Powell’s FCC is shutting down free-speech on broadcast TV and radio entirely at the bidding of one lousy little conservative organization, which –all by itself—has generated, count ‘em—99.8 percent of the complaints about obscenity."