Page 285 - Battleground The Media Volume 1 and 2

| M nor ty Med a Ownersh p

that interest minorities are less likely to be aired. They point to a number of
studies that have found links between minority ownership and increased pub-
lic affairs programming and news relevant to minority audiences. They con-
tend that government should actively promote more minority ownership by,
for instance, reviving a 1978 program to allow a capital gains tax break to
anyone selling an outlet to a minority buyer stemming from the Statement of
Policy on Minority Ownership of Broadcast Facilities and the Failing Station
Solicitation Rule of 1999 to make it easy for minority bidders to buy stations
through an auction process.
The leading advocates for increased government regulations to promote mi-
nority media ownership include the Media Access Project, Minority Media and
Telecommunications Council, National Telecommunications and Information
Administration, Office of Communication of the United Church of Christ, and
the Media Access Project.
Generally, media executives, free-market advocates, legislators, and regulators
(mostly Republicans) muster in the opposing camp. They gather under the big
tent of deregulation. They believe that government should do as little as pos-
sible to compel broadcast owners to meet their public interest obligations. Allow
companies to compete for customers, they contend, and the public interest will
be served because companies will be forced to give the public what it wants or
go out of business. They don’t believe that minority ownership necessarily pro-
vides programming diversity. Based on this view, BET, now owned by Viacom,
still has to give its African American audience meaningful content or it will lose
money. So even if small black-owned outlets go out of business, black consumers
will still be able to get black-centric content from BET, the deregulation camp
contends.
List-leading proponents of free-market solutions to achieve diversity include
former FCC commissioner chairman Michael Powell, Adam D. Thierer of the
Progress and Freedom Foundation, and Mara Einstein of Queens College in
New York City.
The primary theater for this battle was the six public meetings that the
FCC scheduled in 2006 and 2007 for discussion of its media ownership rules.
The FCC’s six media ownership rules in question limit the number and types
of media outlets a company can own. The FCC, dominated by deregulation-
minded commissioners, revised the rules in 2003, generally allowing any one
entity to own more and different types of media. But the U.S. Court of Appeals
for the Third Circuit in Philadelphia (Prometheus Radio Project v. FCC, 373 F.3d
372 [2004]) ruled that the FCC made irrational and inconsistent assumptions in
reaching its justifications for easing ownership rules. The court also ordered the
FCC to consider proposals to promote minority ownership.
How further deregulation of media ownership limits might affect ownership
by minorities and women was an important question for debate at those public
hearings. Media reformists argued that without ownership limits, media con-
glomerates are likely to buy more broadcast stations, newspapers, magazines,
and Web sites that target minorities and dilute their distinctive ethnic-centered
content and coverage of issues important to people of color.