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Mccain consolidation control the news { May 16 2003 } Original Source Link: (May no longer be active)
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A61585-2003May15.htmlhttp://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A61585-2003May15.html
FCC Sees Local Gain to Age of Max Media
By Frank Ahrens
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, May 16, 2003; Page E01
Sen. John McCain was pushing hard to find out if media consolidation has led to control of the news. In his hand, the feisty Arizona Republican had a list. He wanted answers.
McCain squinted and leaned into the microphone at Tuesday's hearing before his Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee. His gaze was fixed on witness William Dean Singleton, president of both the newspaper industry's lobbying group and MediaNews Group, which owns 50 newspapers, including the flagship Denver Post. What followed was a telling moment, largely overlooked in that day's news coverage of the hearing, that illustrated the escalating tension on media ownership.
When the Federal Communications Commission was debating whether it should give away or sell $70 billion worth of digital broadcast spectrum in 1996, newspaper editorial pages weighed in. McCain's list, a consumer group survey, found that every paper favoring a giveaway was owned by a company that also owned television stations that, naturally, wanted the spectrum for free.
Every paper opposing a giveaway was owned by a company with no substantial interest in television.
"Do you think that's an anomaly?" McCain asked, referring to his list.
"I do," Singleton replied.
"So, it's a coincidence," McCain finished, with more than a little sarcasm in his voice.
None of Singleton's papers editorialized on the giveaway, but he happened to be the guy who wandered into McCain's cross hairs. He also happened to be testifying that the FCC should loosen its ownership rules to let newspaper companies buy television stations, meaning media companies could extend their influence even further than McCain suggested it already has reached.
The FCC is preparing to relax or eliminate several key media ownership rules, letting media companies buy more newspapers and television stations. The agency is set to vote on June 2 to drop the 28-year-old ban that prohibits a newspaper from buying a television or radio station in the same city, except in the smallest cities.
Should the rule be eliminated, several companies have made it clear that they will acquire stations, sparking concern from public interest groups and everyday news consumers worried that one company would control a greater slice of news in their city. Despite the FCC's arguments that today's viewers have more information sources than before, such as cable and the Internet, data show that most people still get almost all of their local news from their community newspapers and television stations. When a newspaper buys a station, say those who favor keeping the ban, it eliminates a competitor, possibly leading to price-fixing advertising rates in the market.
Eighteen months of research conducted by the FCC's Media Bureau on cross-ownership, however, has led to the belief that lifting the ban is good for local news, the bureau says.
There are about 50 cities where companies have received FCC waivers allowing them to own a newspaper and television station. The FCC data show that these stations produce 50 percent more local news than stations not owned by newspapers.
"From our selfish company point of view, we know that, for example, if we ever bought the TV station in a market where we have a newspaper, the quality of the news on that station would go up," New York Times Co. President Russell Lewis said in an interview earlier this year.
Singleton agrees. In an interview yesterday, he said that his MediaNews company would look to buy four stations, but none in Denver, in the months after the ban is lifted.
Fears of rapid consolidation are unjustified, he said.
"Gannett isn't going to buy Viacom and Viacom isn't going to buy Gannett," Singleton said, referring to the nation's largest newspaper company and the owner of CBS, respectively.
In brief interviews in recent days, Viacom President Mel Karmazin and News Corp. chief executive Rupert Murdoch said they are not interested in buying newspapers in cities where their companies own television stations.
The economic gains of cross-ownership are limited so far. In Phoenix, where Gannett Co. owns the Arizona Republic and KPNX, the top-rated television station, the company estimates synergy from the cross-ownership was worth an extra $8 million in revenue in 2002. To put that figure in perspective, KPNX earned $93 million on its own last year, estimates BIA Financial Network Inc., an industry analyst.
Jane Singer, an assistant professor of journalism at the University of Iowa, studied four cities earlier this year where the same company owns multiple media outlets and journalists are asked to share stories with onetime rival publications and often do more than one job.
In general, she found that the journalists think that local news is not hurt by combined ownership. Also, newspaper reporters believed it good for their careers when they appeared on their companies' television stations.
But there have been drawbacks.
In Tampa, where Richmond-based Media General Inc. has touted the integration of the news operations of its Tampa Tribune and WFLA television station, Singer found that the Tribune's reporters are asked to do extra work for WFLA for which they are neither trained nor paid.
In Dallas, where Belo Corp. owns the market-dominating Morning News, top-rated television station WFAA and the Texas Cable News channel, the Morning News told its television critic in 2000 that he was prohibited from writing about WFAA's news programming to avoid the appearance of conflict of interest, meaning Dallas readers were deprived of criticism of the top station.
"For every story like that, we find tremendous advantages and benefits in great news coverage, which is replete in the commission's filing," said Richard Wiley, senior partner at Washington communications powerhouse Wiley, Rein & Fielding, which is representing many of the media companies seeking to end the cross-ownership ban.
Wiley, who was the FCC chairman when the cross-ownership rule was adopted in 1975, recently found himself the subject of a localized media tempest.
Last month, he penned a commentary saying he no longer supports the cross-ownership ban he approved 28 years ago. He delivered it to Singleton, who gave it to the Denver Post's editorial page to print. Wiley was identified as a former FCC official but not as a lawyer for the newspaper lobby -- attribution that Wiley said he initially included. Denver Post Editorial Page Editor Sue O'Brien said Wiley's article arrived with no author identification, so she supplied one from a Google Internet search, which failed to point out his industry ties.
This prompted an angry letter to the editor accusing the Denver Post of deliberately concealing Wiley's role as a lawyer for the newspaper industry, adding to the swirl of media conspiracy theories. Wiley's opinion piece has since appeared in Singleton's Alameda Times-Star without identifying Wiley as an industry lobbyist.
Tempers are no cooler among newspaper owners. At Tuesday's Senate hearing, witness Frank A. Blethen, publisher of the Seattle Times, called Singleton a "threat to democracy" because he is an absentee owner of newspapers around the country who supports cross-ownership.
The next day, Singleton responded by calling Blethen "the village idiot of the newspaper industry."
© 2003 The Washington Post Company
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