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babylonsister Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Mar-09-07 11:27 AM
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Mother Jones: Breaking the News
http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2007/03/breaking_the_news.html

Breaking the News

News: It's not the Internet that's killing newspapers. It's the equity-chasing investors and their friends at the FCC who have put outsize profits before a free press.

By Eric Klinenberg

March/April 2007 Issue


Senate reconfirmation hearings tend to be predictable affairs, marked by polite give-and-take and senatorial grandstanding, but generally free of surprise plot twists. And so it was supposed to go last September 12, when Federal Communications Commission (fcc) chairman Kevin Martin appeared before the Commerce Committee. In March 2005, following the departure of Michael Powell (Colin's son), President Bush had named the young Republican lawyer to head the extraordinarily powerful five-person panel that oversees the nation's media and telecommunications policies. Martin, a boyish-looking 40-year-old who'd been on the fcc since 2001, planned to carry on much of his predecessor's unfinished business, particularly stiffening penalties for on-air indecency and the sweeping deregulation of media ownership rules. But unlike Powell, who was confrontational and contemptuous of his critics, the bland and soft-spoken Martin seemed unlikely to attract controversy.

But controversy caught up with him when Senator Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) strayed from the script at his reconfirmation hearing. Boxer began by asking Martin about an fcc study, commissioned by Powell, on the impact of media ownership on local news. Unsuspecting, Martin said that it had never been completed. Then, as he watched glumly, Boxer brandished a draft of the study, which had, in fact, been written more than two years earlier, only to be buried by the fcc. The report found that locally owned television stations, on average, presented 5 1/2 minutes more local news per broadcast than stations owned by out-of-town conglomerates. The findings squarely contradicted the claims made by Martin, Powell, and big media companies, who have argued that lifting limits on ownership would improve local news coverage.

"Now, this isn't national security, for God's sakes," Boxer continued, unable to resist making Martin squirm. "I mean, this is important information. So I don't understand who deep-sixed this thing." Martin meekly said he had no idea, and promised he'd look into it. Within a week, a former fcc lawyer claimed that "every last piece" of the report had been ordered destroyed before it was leaked, and a second unreleased study came to light, prompting Boxer to refer the matter to the fcc's inspector general.

The discovery of the missing studies wasn't just bad for Martin's image, it was a blow to his pet project—trying to repeal what's known as the cross-ownership ban, a 31-year-old fcc rule that prohibits a single company from owning a newspaper and a TV station in the same regional market. Powell had repealed the rule in 2003 amid public outcry, only to have a federal court reinstate it the following year. Last April, Martin told the members of the Newspaper Association of America that he would renew the effort to end this regulatory relic from "the days of disco and leisure suits." Lifting the ban, he said, "may help to forestall the erosion in local news coverage." But now, the fcc's own internal findings confirmed what its critics had been saying for years—that letting one company dominate a city's news business actually undermines the quality of the local media that most Americans rely on for their news.

The renewed push to consolidate even more of the nation's newsprint and airwaves comes as the media are in profound transition. Although we are bombarded with a seemingly endless supply of media options—from cable television to blogs to satellite radio—more and more of the actual news and information we consume comes from a handful of giant media companies. (See "And Then There Were Eight") Meanwhile, locally owned outlets are being squeezed out of business or absorbed at an ever faster clip. In the past three decades, two-thirds of newspaper owners and one-third of television owners have shut down. Newspapers are particularly feeling the pinch: Fewer than 300 of the nation's 1,500 daily papers are still independently owned, and more than half of all markets are dominated by a single paper. The number of newspaper employees has dropped nearly 20 percent since 1990. Hardly a week goes by without another pundit lamenting the demise of the great American newspaper.

more...
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solara Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Mar-09-07 11:33 AM
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1. This is incredibly important k&r Thanks for posting it nt
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CrazyOrangeCat Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Mar-09-07 11:35 AM
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2. kick
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Monkeyman Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Mar-09-07 11:36 AM
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3. K&R
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waiting for hope Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Mar-09-07 11:41 AM
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4. I sure do like Boxer...
Go Babs Go!
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fasttense Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Mar-09-07 11:45 AM
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5. Very interesting, thanks for posting this. n/t
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rodeodance Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Mar-09-07 11:47 AM
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6. '"every last piece" of the report had been ordered destroyed before it was leaked, '
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annabanana Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Mar-09-07 09:59 PM
Response to Reply #6
15. A spectacular finding.... truly stunning...
The FCC was created to work for US. It has been perverted, like so many other agencies, to serve the big corporations that it is supposed to regulate.
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sinkingfeeling Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Mar-09-07 11:48 AM
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7. A really good article. Thanks.
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geiger Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Mar-09-07 12:05 PM
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8. Sometimes Boxer gets on my nerves, but I'm glad she did this.
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JDPriestly Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Mar-10-07 03:00 AM
Response to Reply #8
18. Why does Boxer sometimes get on your nerves?
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The Count Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Mar-09-07 12:31 PM
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9. Thanks for this! Rupert Murdoch is pushing for this big time!
In NYC he already has Faux & NY Post and wants more!
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AndyTiedye Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Mar-09-07 01:02 PM
Response to Original message
10. Time To Get More of These Printed Up

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EVDebs Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Mar-09-07 01:48 PM
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11. None of this does any good unless the OIGs aren't Republicans
Office of Inspector General need non-partisan holders. If the deck is stacked against the truth you get a situation like today.
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druidity33 Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Mar-09-07 07:03 PM
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12. Love the MoJo...
there's a good article about Ava Lowery as well, it's linked on the first page when you use the OP link...

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leftyclimber Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Mar-09-07 07:19 PM
Response to Original message
13. This is an excerpt from Klinenberg's latest book
Fighting for Air: The Battle to Control America's Media

Check out the book "on a local heat wave" he briefly mentioned on the third page of the Mother Jones piece, too. It's called Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago. Absolutely devastating, absolutely incredible.

-lefty, Klinenberg fan

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UpInArms Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Mar-09-07 09:04 PM
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14. The findings squarely contradicted the claims made by Martin, Powell, and big media companies
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truedelphi Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Mar-10-07 12:12 AM
Response to Original message
16. Thanks BabylonSister And It's not
Surprising to find the wonderfully out-spoken Boxer to
be taking center stage on this issue
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Bitwit1234 Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Mar-10-07 01:06 AM
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17. Another thing that's causing more and more newspapers to shut down.
Is the fact that - and I say this over and over - the middle class and the poor are the ones who read newspapers. They are the ones who watch most cable and network. The rich and powerful never read newspapers, they don't ride the rails or the bus to work holding on to their newspapers to pass the time. Since this lopsided ownership of the medias is republican and there is only the rights point of view given, readership and viewers are tuning out and turning off.

Answer me this, who wants to buy a newspaper that over and over and over is republican this, republican that. You never get any real news. Look at Fox news..republican - bush - cheney is all they spew. CNN has now hired delay along with Blitzer, and Beck. Today I programmed CNN out of my remote. Just think how many others do. It is a shame that we do not have a permanent website, where we can contact sponsors, and let them know, that we are no longer watching their programs. Just think the sponsors are paying all that money for advertisements, that we are not watching. That ought to make them sit up and take notice.
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freethought Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Mar-10-07 03:18 AM
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19. Did anyone see "Frontline" recently
The show was called "What's Happening to the News". The program actually opened with a clip of The Daily Show's usual satires of cable news media. The show went into more than that it also gave an excellent look at the same situation that is explained here.

The picture painted was nearly identical, private equity firms gobbling up newspapers and demanding deep cost cuts to raise stock value. One thing these equity firms were interested in doing was called "hyperlocalism"-reporting on town and community issues, and whoever won the pee wee league
T-Ball game. National, international, or investigative reporting? Those cost money, and any way who wants to read about government corruption or corporate crime. BOOOOOORRRRRIIIIIING!

Although, "Frontline" didn't interview anyone, (Lowell Bergman was doing the interviewing) who outright came out and said what I was thinking as I watched it. It was just another way of controlling/censoring the information that gets to you/us. Put the reporting emphasis on local stuff that's easy and lest costly to report on takes attention off of corporate malfeasance, government corruption, global climate change, accumulating national debt, deliberate decline of middle class, Iraq, Afghanistan, economic inequality, out-of-control executive branches, obscene executive pay, and all that other "stuff". The less the public knows the more that can be gotten away with. But look, little Timmy is batting .450 in T-Ball! Don't worry, be happy!

With regards to media, this country needs some deconsolidating. Screw GE if it is required to spin off its media division.
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ixion Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Mar-10-07 07:46 AM
Response to Reply #19
20. yep. just look at what Clear Channel did to local radio
it made it nearly extinct. News papers and broadcast stations will go the same route. :-(
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