Page 272 - Battleground The Media Volume 1 and 2

Med a Reform | 1

is a classic example of a deregulation law that encouraged media companies to
concentrate their ownership of radio stations. In 1995, one owner could own
no more than 65 radio stations nationwide; after the act, one owner could
own an unlimited number of radio stations. By the year 2002, the corporation
Clear Channel owned 1,300 stations across the United States. In 2003, another
phase of deregulation began, because the 1996 Telecommunications Act re-
quired the FCC to review ownership laws every two years.
In late 2002, the FCC proposed that similar deregulation policies take
effect in the television and newspaper industries. Unlike 1996, when there
was minimal citizen awareness of media ownership issues, in 2003 a broad-
based coalition of bipartisan organizations, citizen groups, academics, media
workers, artists, and consumers organized and inundated the FCC and the
U.S. Congress with over 2 million comments stating that the change in own-
ership laws was unnecessary and bad for democracy. Despite this unprece-
dented outcry, the FCC approved the ownership changes. However, a lawsuit
brought by the low power FM activist group, Prometheus Project, and the
public interest law firm, the Media Access Project, successfully got a stay on
the enactment of the law. The appellate court decided that the FCC had failed
to adequately research the impact of concentrated ownership on diversity
and localism.

ThE inTErnET anD BroaDBanD
Despite the seeming ubiquity of the Internet, many Americans are still without
access to the Internet. Media reform is concerned with a variety of aspects related
to the Internet and broadband connectivity (high-speed Internet access). Media
and information technologies are increasingly converging, or coming together to
be accessed on the same “pipe” or connection. Telecommunications policies are
being designed currently, yet there is limited debate about the direction of these
policies that will dramatically affect the future of the Internet. Media reformers
work to bring awareness of the potential impact of these policies.
In 2006, Congress took up a major overhaul of the Telecommunications Act
called the Communications Opportunity, Promotion and Enhancement Act of
2006, or COPE Act. This act attempted to encourage increased deregulation of
the telecommunications industry. Included in this act was a stipulation that
would have ended network neutrality, commonly known as “net neutrality.”
Despite over $175 million spent on lobbying by larger corporations, the COPE
Act was successfully resisted by media reform organizations. Net neutrality is
one of the key design principles of the Internet that ensures that the network
does not discriminate between types of information or the types of parties in-
volved and that information transmitted through the Internet can be equally
accessed by all Internet service providers and users.
While the 2006 COPE Act was defeated, corporations are still lobbying for a
rewrite of the Telecommunications Act that would have significant implications
for the future of the Internet. Media reformers are seeking to write net neutrality
into the law.