Newspaper-TV Mergers Are Not in Democracy's Best Interest
I've finally found a reason to disagree with Richard Doak about something.
There is no one in American journalism I admire more than this Register former editor and (actually continuing) columnist, who's now lecturing at Iowa State for some very lucky students. (I just wish he was here in Iowa City.)
Not just for months or years, but for decades, I have been agreeing with virtually everything he's written. In fact, I've urged him to put some of those columns in a book for those who care about Iowa and who might just build a future for Iowa based on his blueprints. (He's so far been too modest to do it.)
So it was with a sense of relief, of sorts, that I found myself disagreeing with his column last Sunday. Richard Doak, "Get best of modern media world — allow newspaper, TV ownership," Des Moines Register, November 11, 2007. It's probably not a good idea to agree with anybody all the time.
Doak's column advocates that we'd all be better off if media corporations were permitted to own both newspapers and television stations in the same town.
For years this kind of media concentration has been prohibited by the FCC even though it has, over the last 30 years, continued to erode more and more of the specific regulations that once defined the Congressional licensing standard: "public interest, convenience and necessity." Now the current industry-dominated agency is proposing to do away with the prohibition. Doak thinks it would be a good thing if it did.
In order to respond to his arguments I must first set out excerpts from them in his own words rather than my characterization of them. I will number what I believe to be a rough breakdown of the categories.
1. More news. "the sum of the news it ["a combined newspaper-television newsroom"] could deliver to readers-viewers would be greater than either part could deliver alone.Here's my response to each of these arguments in turn.
The television broadcasts at 6 and 10 p.m. could carry more news because the station's small staff would be augmented by the reporting power of the newspaper's large staff.
The newspaper could broaden its news gathering even more if its reporters didn't have to staff the same events being covered by the TV reporters."
2. Better Web Sites. "Best of all, a combined newspaper-television station could produce a killer Web site.
A local Web site that had both comprehensive text and compelling visual presentation would be unbeatable. A merged TV-newspaper newsroom could create a site everyone in town would automatically log onto first, not only for news but also for community information, entertainment, discussions, weather and links to databases and government agencies.
It would be a convenient, indispensable, one-stop source for text and visual information. Every community should have one.
American communities never will, however, unless the Federal Communications Commission allows 'cross ownership' of newspapers and television stations."
3. Limit numbers, not co-ownership. "Opponents of allowing cross ownership raise the fear of media being concentrated in too few hands. If that's the problem, the way to address it is by limiting the total number of stations a company may own, not by prohibiting the natural convergence of print and broadcast news in local communities."
4. Promote convergence. "Convergence is the right word. It used to be a theoretical concept. Now it's here. The lines are blurring between print and electronic media as they converge onto one platform, the Internet.
* * *
But newspaper staffs aren't great at visuals, and TV staffs aren't great at text. Combined staffs could be, and a lot of unnecessary duplication of assignments could be eliminated in the process."
5. Make media more Wal-Mart-like. "Requiring newspapers and local television stations to remain separate would be like requiring hardware to be sold only in hardware stores and clothing to be sold only in clothing stores, thus denying Wal-Mart the ability to sell both in its supercenters.
The time has come for supercenters of another kind."
6. Blogs eliminate information monopolies. "Another argument against cross ownership is that it would allow one company to monopolize the news in a community. That's an obsolete concept. In an age when anyone with a computer can launch a blog, an information monopoly is impossible.
Having an information supercenter in your community would leave plenty of room for boutique information shops around town."
7. What's good for general media is good for the country. "Of course, it's possible that the motives of FCC commissioners who want to allow cross ownership are not entirely pure. Perhaps they are succumbing to the blandishments of media moguls who want to expand their empires.
If so, it would be an instance of self-interest coinciding with the public interest. A strong merged newspaper-TV newsroom in a community would serve the public better than two weak separate operations, even if media companies made more profit in the deal."
1. More news. The track record so far, as A.J. Liebling once observed (in his book, The Press), is that newspapers are like bars. Bars used to offer the "blue plate special" -- reduced price food with the drink. But as monopoly or oligopoly bars took the place of competition, the first thing to go was the blue plate special. Similarly, he observed, the first thing to go, following the merger of newspapers into a local newspaper monopoly, was the news.
There are significant differences between today's five major multi-media owners and the early notion of local ownership of what were then AM radio stations, "integration of ownership and management" as the FCC called it in picking the winners in comparative hearings, or as it was sometimes called, "mom-and-pop" owners.
As many have bemoaned, it is no longer enough that a chain-owned newspaper make a profit. It must make increasingly greater profits each year in order to convince Wall Street that its stock price should increase. Newspapers making 20% and more profit are cutting back on the number of journalists in their overseas and domestic bureaus and becoming even more responsive to the interests of their advertisers and the demographics they want to reach.
Television stations owned by media conglomerates are, if anything, even worse in terms of their solid news coverage, investigative reporting, and community service.
When newspapers, or stations, are locally owned they may still have conflicts of interest, and third-generation owners may be more committed to profit than journalism, but the community at least knows who they are. The owners feel some pressure from their neighbors, country club colleagues, and others in the community to provide a constructive service. Once public ownership takes the place of human ownership those restraints disappear. Many multi-media CEOs -- hired guns all -- probably couldn't even name for you all the properties their corporation owns.
In short, I just don't believe that permitting multi-media conglomerate corporations to own newspaper-television combinations within a given community is going to increase the quantity or quality of local news and public service. (And, although of lesser concern to me, a decline in the number of local media owners has also proven to be bad for local merchants and advertisers who, historically, have found themselves paying much higher advertising rates as media competition declines.)
2. Better Web sites. Doak argues that America "never will [have the "killer Web sites" he desires], however, unless the Federal Communications Commission allows 'cross ownership' of newspapers and television stations."
Virtually every media outlet in the country has a Web presence, from the New York Times and Washington Post, and all the major television networks, to The Daily Iowan -- and, not incidentally, Dick Doak's Des Moines Register. Many, like the Register, already combine online reproductions of their hard copy content with video and still picture features, blogs from their own reporters and other publication-certified bloggers, along with spirited contributions from readers in comment sections for each story and opinion piece. As if this was not enough, the Register also offers an "e-mail newsletter," "news text alerts," RSS feeds, and a new "mobile site" that can provide news on your cell phone. Want to know what's next? The Register is "redesigning" all of this and now offers it for inspection on a beta site.
It's hard to argue that none of this will be possible without a merger of a community's newspapers and television stations -- especially given what the Register is already doing.
Moreover, where there is co-ownership, such as with one of Iowa's few remaining locally owned newspapers and television stations -- The Gazette and KCRG-TV9 in Cedar Rapids -- the owner wisely maintains separate news staffs, and Web sites, for each rather than combining them into one. There are advantages, in terms of quantity and quality of coverage and maintenance of a little more competition, to not merging the two.
3. Limit numbers, not co-ownership. I agree that it would be advantageous to reduce the numbers of stations any one owner could control. I just don't think that has anything to do with the evils of joint ownership within a community.
Initially, as mentioned above, the notion was that an owner would just hold a license to one station. Over the years the limits were raised to what they were when I was an FCC commissioner during the 1960s and '70s: 7 AM stations, 7 FM, and 7 TV -- only 5 of which could be VHF stations. Today, with the continuing erosion of FCC standards, at one time Clear Channel held licenses to something like 1200 radio stations.
There are several, distinguishable, problems associated with media ownership. Conglomerate ownership (owning media and other kinds of businesses in the same market) can influence the owner's coverage of issues affecting its other businesses. Regional concentration can create an undesirable amount of political power in a single media owner. Increasing the number of media outlets a single licensee can control nationally increases its national political power and reduces the number of media voices. Multiple-media owners (those owning book publishing, movie studios, TV networks, cable systems and cable program providers, DVD sales and rental, newspapers and magazines) can use their market power to cross-promote products, unfairly compete, and raise the barriers to entry of new firms and the creative community.
Joint ownership within a community -- whether of newspapers and television, or just multiple radio stations -- is a distinct problem. Ultimately, the only persons with meaningful First Amendment rights are media owners.
There is a distinction between "matters of grace" and "matters of right."
A newspaper may decide to publish virtually all letters to the editor -- whether because doing so helps increase circulation, or as a community service -- as a "matter of grace." But no one has a legally enforceable right to have their letter published -- or their paid advertisement accepted for publication for that matter.
The Supreme Court has ruled, in effect, that with a newspaper's First Amendment right to speak, to publish, goes its First Amendment right to censor all others from publishing in that paper.
Thus, as a practical matter, the fewer media owners in a community, the smaller is the likelihood that there will be a diversity of voices, a competition among those with the potential to do investigative reporting and to stand up to powerful advertisers.
At a minimum, local concentration of media ownership is a different issue, with different risks and compromises, than the issues surrounding the total number of media outlets nationally owned by any single licensee.
4. Promote convergence. Convergence is already here, as my description of the Register's Web site, above, illustrates: newspaper copy created with printer's ink and newsprint and also on computer screens, delivery by newspaper carriers and also by cell phones, bloggers commenting about newspapers' stories and newspapers providing outlets for bloggers.
Convergence has, and will continue to, occur regardless of ownership patterns -- though there will be more of it if the FCC fails to approve the newspaper-TV station merger proposal.
Doak argues that co-ownership will prevent the "unnecessary duplication of assignments" that exists today when a television crew and a newspaper reporter are both sent to cover the same story. But it's that "unnecessary duplication of assignments" that is an "essential duplication of assignments" if we are to maintain a distinction between our media and the Soviet-style single voice that is the preference of dictators.
It is that "duplication" that makes for a marketplace for any product. When it comes to news, it's all that makes possible a "marketplace of ideas."
5. Make media more Wal-Mart-like. Doak writes: "Requiring newspapers and local television stations to remain separate would be like requiring hardware to be sold only in hardware stores and clothing to be sold only in clothing stores, thus denying Wal-Mart the ability to sell both in its supercenters.
The time has come for supercenters of another kind."
I suspect there are a good number of Iowans who are already questioning the supercenters represented by Wal-Mart, let alone "supercenters of another kind." This was probably not Doak's best choice of analogy.
In the context of the news business, "hardware" and "clothing" are more like "sports news" and "city council news." The issue is not whether there should, or should not, be separate sources of each variety of news. The issue is whether their combinations in "supercenters" (called "newspapers" and "television stations") should be combined and then controlled by corporations with the power, and consequences, of a Wal-Mart supercenter's impact on local merchants or whether more, and smaller, locally owned "supercenters" would better serve the needs of citizens in a self-governing democracy.
6. Blogs eliminate information monopolies. Doak says, "Another argument against cross ownership is that it would allow one company to monopolize the news in a community. That's an obsolete concept. In an age when anyone with a computer can launch a blog, an information monopoly is impossible."
That fewer media outlets, and owners, reduce diversity in sources of news is far from an "obsolete concept." And to say that because "anyone with a computer can launch a blog, an information monopoly is impossible" would be laughable if it were not presented as a serious argument.
The Los Angeles Times is the dominant newspaper in what is about an 8000 square mile area with a population, and readership, in the millions. Anyone in the LA basin who disagrees with a position the paper has taken, and who is excluded from the paper's pages, has the option of going to a commercial copy center, running off millions of copies of an 8-1/2 x 11 flyer, and delivering them to every home in LA. Could anyone seriously argue that this option makes the LA Times any less of a dominant information source? (That it is not technically a "monopoly" -- either with or without the availability of blogs -- is really irrelevant to the point that it is clearly disproportionately influential when it comes to LA news and opinion.)
The same goes for blogs. As a blogger myself, I can assure you of that.
7. What's good for general media is good for the country. Doak argues: "Of course, it's possible that the motives of FCC commissioners who want to allow cross ownership are not entirely pure. Perhaps they are succumbing to the blandishments of media moguls who want to expand their empires.
If so, it would be an instance of self-interest coinciding with the public interest. A strong merged newspaper-TV newsroom in a community would serve the public better than two weak separate operations, even if media companies made more profit in the deal."
Doak has it right when he suggests that FCC commissioners are "succumbing to the blandishments of media moguls who what to expand their empires." But I believe he is dead wrong when he argues that "A strong merged newspaper-TV newsroom in a community would serve the public better than two weak separate operations, even if media companies made more profit in the deal" -- for all the reasons I've set forth above. It is precisely the financial community's pressure for the merged, publicly-held company to make "more profit in the deal" (made easier by the elimination of competition) that results in the problem.
Given the media moguls' adoption of the kind of arguments that Doak puts forth, the unwillingness of either members of Congress or of the FCC to argue back, or otherwise stand up to these firms, their lawyers, lobbyists and campaign contributions, and the expected failure of the mainstream mass media to present the issues to the public, it is likely this outrageous change in policy will probably come to pass.
But one cannot help but hear the voice of the ghost of Congressman Luther Johnson calling to us from the 1920s, when Congress was both more courageous and prescient, and reminding us of his warning from the floor of the House:
American thought and American politics will be largely at the mercy of those who operate these stations. For publicity is the most powerful weapon that can be wielded in a Republic, and when such a weapon is placed in the hands of one, or a single selfish group is permitted to either tacitly or otherwise acquire ownership and dominate these broadcasting stations throughout the country, then woe be to those who dare to differ with them. It will be impossible to compete with them in reaching the ears of the American people."67 Cong. Rec. 5558 (1926).
Woe be to us, indeed.
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