Page 250 - Battleground The Media Volume 1 and 2

Med a and the Cr s s of Values |

radio. Such decisions go hand in hand with the general legal attitude that forbids
“prior restraint,” the attempt of the government to prevent the publication or
broadcast of expression. Even this principle, however, has been abandoned in
a few cases of national security or other situations where media information
might present a “clear and present danger” to society. There are also legal restric-
tions against and punishment for libel, obscenity, and indecency. Pornography,
however, is protected as a case of freedom of expression. The distinction among
these items and the application of each term to a specific case is, of course, quite
complex. In most cases, consistent with the “prior restraint” principle, the Fed-
eral Communications Commission (FCC) or the courts are reactive rather than
proactive, waiting until after the questionable media message has been published
or transmitted and complaints are received.
The government has considerably more control over radio and television con-
tent and production because of the ownership situation of these media. Broad-
cast media, unlike books, newspapers, magazines, film, and sound recording,
make use of a portion of the electromagnetic spectrum that is seen as a limited
natural resource, like land and water, and therefore requiring distribution by the
government.
Meanwhile, the FCC, with its five commissioners appointed by the White
House, is often criticized in terms of the balance it should be maintaining be-
tween the interests of the industry owners and those of the consumers, as well as
its relationships with lobbyists, media corporations, and politicians. Like many
members of federal regulatory commissions, the FCC members are recruited
from and often return to the executive offices of the very industries they are sup-
posed to be regulating during their time in public office, raising the question of
conflicts of interests.

righTs anD oBLigaTions oF mEDia ownErs
Media ownership in the United States is corporate and profit-driven, as op-
posed to the paternalistic system in the United Kingdom and Canada, for exam-
ple, or the state control of the media in China or Cuba. This has led to a general
understanding of media ventures not as public services but as opportunities to
achieve gigantic profit. The Hollywood studios, the national radio and televi-
sion networks, and the newspaper giants have become some of the country’s
most profitable industries. This has led to the creation of a business oligopoly,
in which the smaller media operations cannot compete with the media giants.
In recent years, even this elite group of media owners has merged and concen-
trated media ownership into the hands of a very few media conglomerates, cre-
ating a situation where a megacorporation’s reach extends to every area of media
activity. (See “Conglomeration and Media Monopolies” for examples of the rise
of the major media corporations and their relationship to the FCC.)
The principles that govern corporate efforts to achieve maximum profitability
cannot automatically be applied to media corporations. Whereas McDonald’s
sells food products and General Motors sells automobiles, the product of media
corporations is: (a) information, which ideally should be helping to develop