Page 283 - Battleground The Media Volume 1 and 2

| M nor ty Med a Ownersh p

2005—Comcast acquires substantial interest in the new TV One, targeting African Ameri-
cans.
2005—Time Warner acquires previously black-owned Essence magazine.
2006—The FCC starts public hearings on its proposal to revise media ownership rules.
2007—Federal regulators approved the sale of Univision to Broadcasting Media Partners
Inc.

whaT DoEs “minoriTy ownED” mEan?
“Minority owned” doesn’t quite mean what it used to. In the past, minority
ownership typically meant full financial ownership of a media company. During
the latter part of the twentieth century, however, minority ownership required
only 51 percent of a company’s voting stock be held by one or more minority
members under federal law. In the twenty-first century, however, federal law-
makers and regulators are considering whether federally regulated broadcast
outlets may be merely minority controlled. That would mean minorities who
run but own less than 51 percent of stock in a radio or television station would
still qualify for government tax breaks and other incentives, even though whites
own the majority of stock in the company.

why givE inCEnTivEs To EnCouragE minoriTiEs
To own raDio anD TELEvision sTaTions?

First, the Federal Communication Commission (FCC) regulates and awards
licenses to broadcasters. By law, the commission must regulate in the public
interest. The public interest is served in part by “the widest possible dissemina-
tion of information from diverse and antagonistic sources,” the FCC has said,
and media targeting minorities has long played a major role in bringing diverse
views to the public. The FCC, however, had operated for nearly 40 years be-
fore it first took race into consideration when awarding licenses to own and
operate broadcasting stations in 1973.
Under the First Amendment, print outlets cannot be regulated. Consequently,
a revision of the meaning of ownership would have no legal or regulatory au-
thority over newspaper, magazine, and book owners. Nevertheless, some are
troubled by the emergence of newspapers and magazines aimed at minorities
but not fully owned by them. Historically, a minority media outlet’s audience
was its owner’s community. For the most part, owner and audience shared the
same cultural values, the same collective identity. And while profit was impor-
tant to minority media owners, the message was always as important, some-
times more, particularly with African American and Latino media owners. The
content they produced had political and cultural significance for their audiences
and challenged the white establishment.
Critics of minority-controlled media fear that the traditional political
and cultural message will be diluted under white ownership that sees its audi-
ence mostly as a commodity to sell to advertisers. In 2001, for example, the