JiscMail Logo
Email discussion lists for the UK Education and Research communities

Help for CYBER-SOCIETY-LIVE Archives


CYBER-SOCIETY-LIVE Archives

CYBER-SOCIETY-LIVE Archives


CYBER-SOCIETY-LIVE@JISCMAIL.AC.UK


View:

Message:

[

First

|

Previous

|

Next

|

Last

]

By Topic:

[

First

|

Previous

|

Next

|

Last

]

By Author:

[

First

|

Previous

|

Next

|

Last

]

Font:

Proportional Font

LISTSERV Archives

LISTSERV Archives

CYBER-SOCIETY-LIVE Home

CYBER-SOCIETY-LIVE Home

CYBER-SOCIETY-LIVE  2003

CYBER-SOCIETY-LIVE 2003

Options

Subscribe or Unsubscribe

Subscribe or Unsubscribe

Log In

Log In

Get Password

Get Password

Subject:

[CSL]: US DEREGULATION CONCENTRATES MEDIA OWNERSHIP

From:

J Armitage <[log in to unmask]>

Reply-To:

Interdisciplinary academic study of Cyber Society <[log in to unmask]>

Date:

Tue, 10 Jun 2003 13:49:08 +0100

Content-Type:

text/plain

Parts/Attachments:

Parts/Attachments

text/plain (369 lines)

DEREGULATION CONCENTRATES MEDIA OWNERSHIP
United States: an unfree press
http://mondediplo.com/2003/06/08halimi
Le Monde diplomatique

June 2003

This month the Federal Communications Commission, despite sharp
party-affiliated divisions, voted to relax key media ownership restrictions
in the United States, permitting greater concentration of companies. The
once admired standards of American journalism have been shamed by scandals
at the New York Times and by over-close, compliant relationships with
political power before, during and after the war in Iraq.
By SERGE HALIMI

THE news director of the rightwing French TV network, TF1, which is not
known for its independence, said earlier this year: "Those famous United
States networks we have heard so much about as examples of professional
integrity are acting like propaganda tools for the Bush administration. They
have lost all critical distance" (1). But what happened to the US media did
not start with President George Bush II. As Bernie Sanders, one of the most
progressive members of the US House of Representatives, said: "One of our
best-kept secrets is the degree to which a handful of huge corporations
control the flow of information in the US. Whether it is television, radio,
news papers, magazines, books or the internet, a few giant conglomerates are
determining what we see, hear and read. And the situation is likely to
become much worse" (2).
In 1983 the US had roughly 1,700 daily newspapers, 11,000 magazines, 9,000
radio and 1,000 television stations, and 2,500 book publishers. At that time
50 multinationals, "all interlocked in common financial interest with other
massive industries and with a few dominant international banks" (3),
controlled the majority of the big outlets. Clearly, something had to be
done. And so it was. But not what you would expect.
In 1996 the US Congress granted broadcasting frequencies worth some $70bn
(and a lot more now) at no cost to the recipients. Viacom, Disney and
General Electric - owners of the CBS, ABC and NBC networks - were the main
beneficiaries. Protesting against the gift, Senator John McCain, a
Republican, said during the congressional debate: "There will be hardly any
talk of this decision on radio or TV because the radio and TV networks are
the ones directly affected." In fact, during the nine months that elapsed
between the introduction of the legislation and its final approval, the
three main news networks devoted just 19 minutes to the subject. The
question of whether the largest communications companies could afford to pay
for the frequencies that the US government awarded them was never raised at
all.
There is always a payoff for deeds such as these. Between 1996 and 2000,
while Bill Clinton was president, the 50 largest media corpor ations and
four of their trade associations spent more than $111m to lobby Congress and
the White House. They poured political contributions into the coffers of the
two parties. And as everyone knows, under the US system of political
financing, "those who sign the cheques write the laws".
SINCE the 1980s control of the US media has grown ever more concentrated. By
1996 the two largest radio chains owned 115 stations. Today they own more
than 1,400. Meanwhile the number of station owners has dwindled by a third.
This year 10 giant companies reign over the information age (4). Three
companies own half of the stations in the US. Clearly, something has to be
done. And it will be. But, again, not what you would expect.
According to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), which largely
determines US media policy, large conglomerates are too restricted by legal
limits on market share. So the solution is a sweeping deregulation of the
field, to be announced this month. A US Federal Court has ordered the FCC to
reconsider its rule preventing broadcasters from reaching more than 35% of
households in the US. Since everyone knows that FCC chairman Michael Powell,
who was appointed by President Bush and is the son of Secretary of State
Colin Powell, opposes such limits, the court order will encourage big
broadcasters to swallow smaller ones.
The FCC is reconsidering many of the rules that have previously preserved
some media diversity, such as the regulation preventing the owners of a
broadcast station from buying a newspaper in the same city, and vice versa,
or from owning more than one TV station in the same market. This
cross-ownership ban guarantees that communities will not find that their
only local daily paper has been bought by one of the television networks.
Also at stake is the regulation barring major television networks - ABC,
CBS, Fox, NBC - from merging with each other. Michael Powell keeps repeating
"the market is my religion" - summing up the mindset of the administration,
which has successfully merged religious fundamentalism and greed. Lack of
political diversity hardly bothers Powell: "I'm not so sure that Disney and
Murdoch's personal political interests are ever permitted by the board of
directors or Wall Street to trump anything that would maximise value" (5).
That "maximising value" may in itself be an ideological slant hardly seems
to have crossed Powell's mind.
What do conglomerates say? Companies such as News Corporation and Viacom
protest that existing regulations deprive them of their first amendment
rights to free speech. The rollback of the last checks on media
consolidation seems likely. A further drop in quality and originality is
therefore likely when newspapers are absorbed by the television industry or
when journalists tailor their skills toward producing "content" which can
immediately be used for television (6).
Mergers and cooperation between former competitors are multiplying: The
Washington Post, which lost regular foreign distribution of its stories
because the New York Times forced a buyout of the Post's stake in the
International Herald Tribune, will have its stories in the European and
Asian editions of the Wall Street Journal. The Post has a similar
arrangement with NBC, which features Post reporting on its MSNBC and CNBC
cable television channels. During the war in Iraq, it was very hard to tell
which outlet, the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post or NBC, was the
most hawkish.
The FCC argues that technologies such as the internet offer Americans access
to more information than ever, so that worries about monopolies are
unfounded. But studies also show that most Americans receive their news from
a handful of outlets. And much of what appears on the internet is repackaged
from those outlets. The leading 20 internet sites and cable channels are
owned by GE-NBC, Disney, Fox, Gannett, AOL-Time Warner, Hearst, Microsoft,
Cox, Dow Jones, the Washington Post and the New York Times. In 1999, 110
companies attracted 60% of the time web-users spent online; by 2001, just 14
com panies had the same market share.
The question of concentration is most acute at local level. In many
communities, all activities are covered by only one institution. The
concentration of power that should be abhorrent to all conservatives who
preach for local control and individual participation is only assailed by a
handful of them. Radio stations sound the same and dictate music sales.
Companies that own multiple platforms - print, television, radio and
internet - in the same city are integrating their news production process,
using do-it-all journalists to create content for many media at once. The
new regime often undermines a paper's capacity to meet its own standards.
Journalists get burned out performing several jobs at once. Because of
meagre press coverage, most people probably have no idea what is happening.
What are the consequences? The libertarian newspaper columnist, William
Safire, was a strong pro-Reagan type and is now pro-Bush, except on
questions of civil liberties. He wrote: "You won't find a movie nominated
for an Oscar with the heroine - fighting to expose the domin ance of media
conglomerates in the distribution of entertainment - crushed by the giant
corpor ation that controls film financing, distribution and media criticism.
You won't find television magazine programmes fearlessly exposing the
broadcast lobby's pressure on Congress and the courts to allow station
owners to gobble up more stations and cross-own local newspapers, thereby to
determine what information residents of a local market receive. Nor will you
find many newspaper chains assigning reporters to reveal the effect of media
gigantism on local coverage or cover the way publishers induce
coverage-hungry politicians to loosen antitrust restraints" (7).
Truly independent coverage of big media is vanishing. Television is where
most Americans get their news and, without exception, every major network is
owned by a huge conglomerate that has enormous conflicts of interest. Fox
News Channel is owned by Rupert Murdoch, a rightwing Australian who already
owns a significant portion of the world's media. His "fair and balanced"
network has close ties to the Repub lican party, and among his commentators
is Newt Gingrich, former Republican speaker of the US House of
Representatives and a leading hawk.
NBC is owned by General Electric, one of the largest corporations in the
world, with a long history of anti-union activity. GE, a major contributor
to the Republican party, has substantial interests in weapons manufacturing,
finance and nuclear power. Former CEO Jack Welch was a leader in shutting
down US plants and moving them to low-wage countries such as China and
Mexico. NBC had used Ronald Reagan as a salesman for corporate values in
1954 and for some years after. Reagan then became enraged at taxes - he made
a lot of money from the gig when marginal tax rates were up to 91%: that was
before the Reagan revolution.
ABC is owned by the Disney Corp, which, besides movies, produces toys and
products in developing countries with notoriously poor wages and working
conditions. CBS is owned by Viacom, another huge media conglomerate that
owns, among other entities, MTV, Showtime, Nickelodeon, VH1, TNN, CMT, 39
broadcast TV stations, 184 radio stations, Paramount Pictures and
Blockbuster Inc.
A danger of concentrated ownership is that news organisations embedded in
conglomerates will promote their own products or fail to in vestigate their
vested interests critically. The website of ABC News heavily promoted a
movie about Pearl Harbor produced by Disney: it was a Hollywood movie, but
it was promoted as if it had historical value. Most networks and stations
have refused to report on the news leading to the forthcoming decision of
the FCC. Moreover, as most US news companies are governed by people with
business degrees and backgrounds, concerns about "maximising value" drive
the reorganisation of media enterprises.
When news becomes just another commodity, the distinctions between
journalistic "products" - information, entertainment, infotainment - lose
their significance, as do substantive reports. A synergy collision happened
in 1997 at CBS News when reporters were spotted wearing the Nike swoosh logo
at the Olympics, the unfortunate byproduct of a lucrative deal between CBS
Sports and Nike. Meanwhile a CBS journalist was facing delays in her
investigation of Nike's labour practices.
Vertical integration of news and entertainment organisations goes with
unreliable reporting. With consolidation, the balance of power is in the
hands of a few companies with interests and investments across the media
landscape - companies more interested in delivering viewers to advertisers
than in serving the public.
Foreign policy coverage has been hit for the past 15 years. Before 11
September 2001, the Boston Globe explained: "International news coverage in
most of America's 1,500 mainstream papers has almost reached the vanishing
point." Foreign stories accounted for about 10% of the average paper's news
content in 1972 but have shrunk to less than 2%. News magazines have
followed the trend. From 1985 to 1995, Time, Newsweek and US News and World
Report cut their foreign reporting from about 22% of the magazine to 12%.
Editors explained then that foreign news was "less urgent" (Time), "less
relevant" (US News) and meant a 25% drop in newsstand sales (Newsweek). The
trend affected television news. Ten years ago, 40% of the three networks'
news programmes were devoted to foreign news. That has slipped below 12%
(8).
This has consequences: according to a poll made public by Fox News, 40% of
Americans said they were not sure whether the US or Slobodan Milosevic had
won the war in Kosovo. That was in 2000, the year after the war. And 40% of
Americans believed Saddam Hussein had something to do with 11 September
2001. In non-war situations, even when news organisations do cover foreign
events, they rely on a narrow range of local specialists, often speaking
only English and drawn from the business sector.
IN the spring 1999 issue of Foreign Policy, the bias was explained this way:
"Even the richest and most powerful news organisations, such as the New York
Times or the Wall Street Journal or Reuters or Bloomberg, can find
themselves stretched thin, with correspondents in the largest and most
important countries often responsible for covering a wider region. Smaller
countries such as Argentina or Chile might share a journalist from a single
publication. The result is harried reporters turning to the 'experts'. Part
of the problem is that the usual suspects in one capital talk to their
counterparts in another as though they represent their entire countries,
which they do not. The representatives of the Washington consensus on
economic policies speak to the representatives of the Moscow consensus or
the Sao Paulo consensus. But Moscow no more represents all of Russia than
rich Sao Paulo speaks for the poor populations of Brazil's northeast.
Analysts - themselves members of the elite - assess these situations based
on what they hear from people just like themselves: other elites."
The events of 11 September, and the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq, have
not changed this. Foreign coverage, which remains rare, is increasingly
mediocre. During the war in Iraq, most US journalists did not speak Arabic
and could not care less: wasn't the Pentagon there to take care of all their
questions? Foreign policy cover remains marginal, according to the last
study by the Columbia Journalism Review, trailing far behind local crime and
celebrity news. The marketing bias is so overwhelming that even when
journalists know that diplomatic news matters more than local crime, they
cannot give up pursuing the details of the crimes, even at the cost of
overlooking the bigger picture.
The US has just been through some of the biggest business scandals in its
history, partly because of the extreme lack of curiosity of most
journalists. In 2001, CEO Gerald Levin was on the cover of Fortune (owned by
AOL-Time Warner), as "among the smartest people we know". Shortly after, the
merger he had engin eered was a disaster. Some star journalists, who were
financially profiting from the stock market bubble, had little reason to
challenge its long-term viability. And big journalistic names have taken
corporate money: David Brinkley, Robert Novak, David Gergen, Cokie Roberts,
Christopher Matthews, Larry King, Mark Shields, Fred Barnes, George Will and
Michael Kinsley (who memorably said, "I didn't do it for years, but it
became more socially acceptable").
Most but not all journalists with Enron connections were free-market
apologists on the right politically (9). Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy
Noonan was paid for speechwriting. Lawrence Kudlow of CNBC and National
Review said that he should have disclosed earlier he was paid $50,000 for
consulting and research. The Weekly Standard editor Bill Kristol received
$100,000 from the Enron advisory board, and sees nothing wrong about that. A
Weekly Standard piece once praised Ken Lay and Enron for "leading the fight
for competition" (10). As one revolutionary company after another has
crashed, taking its retirement funds down with it, and uncovering in its
wake greed, fraud and political payoffs Americans are asking what sort of
business reporting they got from big media.
Corporate radio is overtly biased. There are dozens of rightwing talk shows.
Rush Limbaugh, G Gordon Liddy, Bob Grant, Michael Savage, Michael Reagan and
Pat Robertson pound a neoconservative or religious fundamentalist drumbeat
into the US heartland. Together with the Republican party and its satellite
thinktanks and advocacy groups, the network of partisan outlets - including
the Washington Times, the Wall Street Journal editorial page and
conservative talk- radio shows - is an echo chamber where
Republican-friendly stories can be promoted, repeated and amplified.
SINCE its 1996 launch, Murdoch's Fox News has become the motor of the
conservative movement's media machine. Murdoch is not shy about his
politics. A few weeks before the war in Iraq, he explained: "I think Bush is
acting very morally, very correctly, and I think he is going to go on with
it. The fact is, a lot of the world can't accept the idea that America is
the one superpower in the world. The greatest thing to come of this for the
world economy, if you could put it that way, would be $20 a barrel for oil.
That's bigger than any tax cut in any country" (11).
Fox's founder and president, Roger Ailes, was for decades one of the
roughest Republican operatives in Washington, a veteran of the Nixon and
Reagan campaigns. (He is most infamous for his role in the media strategy in
the 1988 senior Bush presidential race; this featured the publicity given to
a black convict who had raped a white woman after he had been paroled by
Massachusetts governor and Democratic presidential candidate Michael
Dukakis.) Fox's managing editor is Brit Hume, a former ABC News White House
correspondent and contributor to conservative American Spectator and Weekly
Standard magazines.
Even public television has been affected. PBS broadcast a series about the
global economy sponsored by major corporations - including Enron - with a
clear interest in the content of the programmes. The series got a rave
review from the Wall Street Journal: "PBS Likes Capitalism More Than the
Commercial Networks Do" - the series was a "paean to private enterprise".
Many Americans, however, still say that the US has a problem with the
leftwing tilt of its media.
Yet, as Bernie Sanders has argued, "the essential problem with television is
not just a rightwing bias, it is not even the transformation of politics and
government into entertainment and sensationalism, the constant bombardment
of advertising. It's that the most important issues facing the middle-class
and working people are rarely discussed." He points out that despite the
economic boom of the 1990s, the average US worker now works longer hours for
lower wages than 30 years ago. This is rarely investigated on television.
Workers in unions earn 30% more than non-union people doing the same work.
There are many programmes about how to get rich by investing in the stock
market, but never any specials on how to form a union. The US has the most
unfair distribution of wealth and income in the industrialised world, but
few programmes stress that the richest 1% own more wealth than the bottom
95%. Or that the CEOs of major corporations earn 691 times what their
employees make (that was only 41 times in 1980).
Major US newspapers do not only participate in the promotion of inequality
at home. They can also become leading players in diplomacy. On 30 January
the Wall Street Journal's front page was led by a story headlined "European
Leaders Declare Support for US on Iraq: Letter From Eight Countries Isolates
France, Germany, Smooths Path for a War". The reporter, from the London
bureau, wrote: "In a broad statement supporting the US in its effort to
strip Iraq of weapons of mass destruction, eight European leaders signed an
op-ed article publicly calling for unity with the US position, further
shifting the global political calculus toward support for war."
Proud pro-war role
Most op-ed articles are solicited by the section's editors, as was the case
here. As the Los Angeles Times noted, "The paper orchestrated a declaration
of support for a Bush administration policy which its own editorial page has
unstintingly supported, and then reported the event as news?" According to
Wall Street Journal editor Paul Gigot, the piece originated with Mike
Gonzalez, deputy editorial editor of the European edition. "After the flap
about France and Germany opposing the US on Iraq," Gigot said, "Mike called
the offices of two other heads of state, [Italy's] Silvio Berlusconi and
[Spain's] Jose Maria Aznar, offering them the opportunity to do separate
pieces on their positions. Aznar's office apparently got the idea that they
should see if they could get other prime ministers and heads of state on
board. They took it from there and got [Britain's] Tony Blair involved and
it all snowballed. At that point, our only concern was to make sure it ran
in our paper."
In an editorial, the paper proudly acknow ledged the political, pro-war role
it had played: "Our sin seems to be that we assisted in exposing as
fraudulent the conventional wisdom that France and Germany speak for all of
Europe, and that all of Europe is now anti-American. We've been in favour of
ousting Saddam Hussein for years, going back to the Gulf war and long before
President Bush made it his policy. If the op-ed by Europe's leaders somehow
helped Mr Bush's diplomacy in addition to selling newspapers, that's fine
with us" (12).
Gonzales claimed in the same issue: "The Journal is an independent newspaper
. . . I placed a call to a source in the Italian government. I asked right
away, 'So are you going to let the French and the Germans speak for all of
Europe? Why doesn't Berlusconi write us a piece?' "At first, the response
was tepid. But then, as Gonzales explained, "I was at a museum, trying to
ease my disappointment with a dose of Brueghel and Rubens, when my wife's
cellphone rang." Blair (reached through Alistair Campbell), Aznar and
Berlusconi instantly replaced Rubens and Brueghel.
Two things stand out. First, the link between economic policy and diplomacy.
It is probably because of its unstinting support for the free market
economic policies of Berlusconi, Aznar and Blair that the Journal, highly
influential in corporate circles, gained the extraordinary leverage enabling
it to call these leaders and directly advise policy on war in Iraq. Hardly
any other newspaper, except the Financial Times, could be imagined directly
lobbying for policies at this high a level in several countries at once. And
if you want to understand the plight of the US press today, imagine what the
reaction might have been if a US leftwing, pro-union paper had directly
lobbied foreign heads of state to make a statement opposing US foreign
policy.

(1) Robert Namias, head of information at TF1, Le Monde, 29 January 2003.
Jean-Claude Dassier, general director of LCI (the cable news network owned
by TF1), added: "I used to admire American television newscasts. But, now
instead of informing the public, they are exciting the rabble", Stratigies,
Paris, 14 February, 2003.
(2) Op-ed column, The Hill, 14 June 2002.
(3) Ben Bagdikian, The Media Monopoly, 6th Edition. Boston: Beacon Press,
2000.
(4) Eric Klinenberg, "Dix maitres pour les midias amiricains", Le Monde
diplomatique, April 2003. Some of the data quoted have been drawn from this
article.
(5) "FCC chairman: Consolidation hasn't inhibited variety, fairness", Boston
Globe, 17 April 2002.
(6) Eric Klinenberg, "Journalistes - tout-faire de la presse amiricaine", Le
Monde diplomatique, February 1999.
(7) William Safire, International Herald Tribune, 21 January 2003.
(8) Serge Halimi, "Myopic and cheapskate journalism", Le Monde diplomatique,
English language edition, September 1998.
(9) Liberal New York Times columnist Paul Krugman was involved with an Enron
advisory board before joining the paper.
(10) Howard Kurtz, Washington Post, 30 January 2002.
(11) Newsweek, February 17, 2002.
(12) Wall Street Journal, 3 February 2003.

************************************************************************************
Distributed through Cyber-Society-Live [CSL]: CSL is a moderated discussion
list made up of people who are interested in the interdisciplinary academic
study of Cyber Society in all its manifestations.To join the list please visit:
http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/lists/cyber-society-live.html
*************************************************************************************

Top of Message | Previous Page | Permalink

JiscMail Tools


RSS Feeds and Sharing


Advanced Options


Archives

March 2024
February 2024
January 2024
December 2023
November 2023
October 2023
September 2023
August 2023
July 2023
June 2023
May 2023
April 2023
March 2023
February 2023
January 2023
December 2022
November 2022
October 2022
September 2022
August 2022
June 2022
May 2022
March 2022
February 2022
October 2021
July 2021
June 2021
April 2021
March 2021
February 2021
January 2021
December 2020
November 2020
October 2020
September 2020
July 2020
June 2020
May 2020
April 2020
February 2020
January 2020
December 2019
November 2019
October 2019
September 2019
August 2019
July 2019
June 2019
May 2019
March 2019
February 2019
January 2019
December 2018
November 2018
October 2018
September 2018
August 2018
July 2018
June 2018
May 2018
April 2018
March 2018
February 2018
January 2018
December 2017
November 2017
October 2017
September 2017
August 2017
July 2017
June 2017
May 2017
April 2017
March 2017
January 2017
December 2016
November 2016
October 2016
September 2016
August 2016
June 2016
May 2016
April 2016
March 2016
February 2016
January 2016
December 2015
November 2015
October 2015
September 2015
August 2015
July 2015
June 2015
May 2015
April 2015
March 2015
February 2015
January 2015
December 2014
November 2014
October 2014
September 2014
August 2014
June 2014
May 2014
April 2014
March 2014
February 2014
January 2014
December 2013
November 2013
October 2013
September 2013
August 2013
July 2013
June 2013
May 2013
April 2013
March 2013
February 2013
January 2013
December 2012
November 2012
October 2012
September 2012
August 2012
July 2012
June 2012
May 2012
April 2012
March 2012
February 2012
January 2012
December 2011
November 2011
October 2011
September 2011
July 2011
June 2011
May 2011
April 2011
March 2011
February 2011
January 2011
December 2010
November 2010
October 2010
September 2010
August 2010
July 2010
June 2010
May 2010
April 2010
March 2010
February 2010
January 2010
December 2009
November 2009
October 2009
September 2009
July 2009
June 2009
May 2009
April 2009
March 2009
February 2009
January 2009
December 2008
November 2008
October 2008
September 2008
June 2008
May 2008
April 2008
March 2008
February 2008
January 2008
December 2007
November 2007
October 2007
September 2007
June 2007
May 2007
April 2007
March 2007
February 2007
January 2007
2006
2005
2004
2003
2002
2001
2000


JiscMail is a Jisc service.

View our service policies at https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/policyandsecurity/ and Jisc's privacy policy at https://www.jisc.ac.uk/website/privacy-notice

For help and support help@jisc.ac.uk

Secured by F-Secure Anti-Virus CataList Email List Search Powered by the LISTSERV Email List Manager