June
3, 2003, 8:45 a.m. Media
Merger Madness
The
FCC does the right thing.
he
Federal Communications Commission voted yesterday to relax rules on media
ownership so that, among other things, broadcast networks can buy up more
stations. Or rather, the Republicans on the commission voted that way.
It was a contentious issue. I'm writing this Monday afternoon, but I expect
the Tuesday papers to be filled with lamentations: This is a sad day for
democracy, the country will become more and more homogenous, a few media
moguls will have more and more say over what we watch, etc.
By next month, the
usual scolds will have gone back to complaining that the media fragments
our culture. For now, however, the media's conversation about itself seems
to be trapped in 1969. Walter Cronkite is still the most trusted man in
America, everyone watches the three networks, they're basically identical,
and yet it's scary to think what would happen if they merged.
A few questions should
be asked about today's scary scenarios. If the interests of the owners
determine the content of the media, why is it that everything I've seen
or read about the FCC vote has been against deregulation? Tom Shales had
a long attack on the idea in the Washington Post's Style section
on Monday morning; he said that deregulation was a right-wing plot to
enrich the networks. But his own newspaper has editorialized against the
position of the company that owns it. And if Shales is right that the
result of deregulation will be that Fox News takes over the universe —
a vision that appears to give him cold sweats — how can it make sense
for Shales to praise the farsightedness of the National Rifle Association,
which opposed deregulation on the supposition that it will make the media
more left-wing? They can't both be right, can they?
A lot of our confusion
in thinking through these issues is that we don't think of the airwaves
as a public resource, rather than as property. There's no reason save
habit that we have to think of them that way. Once we stop, the illiberalism
of that habit becomes apparent. Adam Thierer of the Cato Institute puts
it thus: "We wouldn't limit the number of printing presses that the
New York Times or National Review could use. So why limit
the number of broadcast stations someone can own? We're limiting the number
of soapboxes someone can get up on."
Deregulation is supposed
to spell the death of localism. Presumably people will still want to hear
about local news, sports, and weather. It is true that it will be possible
for networks to buy up a bunch of local stations. That's how Fox got started.
The effect was to increase, not to reduce, competition. (Which is why
Rupert Murdoch was allowed to break the usual media-ownership rules.)
And when it comes to a story like the war in Iraq, it takes such networks
to provide coverage. A mom-and-pop operation in the heartland isn't going
to do it. As a result of Fox's existence, we didn't have to rely as heavily
on Peter Arnett as we did during the previous Gulf war. (We did have to
put up with Geraldo Rivera, but life is full of trade-offs.)
Opponents of the
FCC's move portray its chairman, Michael Powell, as a deregulatory zealot.
But let's not forget that the same antitrust rules that apply to every
other industry would still apply to the media under the new dispensation.
It's just that this one sector of the economy would no longer operate
under special rules. (Actually, the rules are more particular than that,
since broadcasters have been regulated more tightly than print —
as Thierer's comment above suggests.)
Powell is not acting
on his own initiative, either. The 1996 telecommunications-reform act
passed by Congress ordered the FCC to undertake regular reviews of its
regulations with an eye to abolishing those which no longer made sense
under contemporary conditions. In today's media world, the ownership rules
don't make sense. The FCC's review has reached the right conclusion. Congressmen
are welcome to try to enact the restrictions by law if they disagree.
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Federal Communications Commission voted yesterday to relax rules on media
ownership so that, among other things, broadcast networks can buy up more
stations. Or rather, the Republicans on the commission voted that way.
It was a contentious issue. I'm writing this Monday afternoon, but I expect
the Tuesday papers to be filled with lamentations: This is a sad day for
democracy, the country will become more and more homogenous, a few media
moguls will have more and more say over what we watch, etc.
