Geroge Orwell rolls in his grave...again

Come one, come all! Let the hording begin...now! Have you been a struggling newspaper salivating at the thought of owning your very own television or radio station? Well now you can. Thanks to the Federal Communication Commission ruling on Dec. 18, newspaper companies can tap into a 32-year-old banned market of broadcast stations, and vice-versa, and start gobbling those suckers up!

The FCC ruled 3-2, along party lines (Republicans voted yes), to remove the ban. It used to be that cross-ownership, as it's called, was a threat to allowing independent media voices time on the airwaves. Now, media companies in the top 20 media markets in the U.S. - big cities like New York, Los Angeles and Chicago - can buy one another up regardless if they're print or broadcast companies. There are a few exceptions that allow merging outside of the top 20 markets.

Republican FCC Chairman Kevin Martin said the move was a "relatively minor loosing" of restrictions, while Democratic FCC Commissioner Micheal Copps said the decision was "one that would make George Orwell proud." Well, not really. Orwell feared information being in the hands of a few in his book, "1984," with such memorable catch phrases as "Big Brother is watching." This ruling paves the way for just that.

First, some context. The passing of the Telecommunications Act of 1996 allowed the FCC to start dropping the restrictions on broadcast stations to buy one another up. What resulted was a feeding frenzy, a gorge if you will. In 1995, there were 29 big media corporations, not including newspapers. In 2006, that number shrank to eight - News Corporation, Disney, TimeWarner, Viacom, NBC Universal (owned by General Electric), Yahoo!, Microsoft and Google. Now most of the media so regular in our lives, like MySpace.com, CNN, FOX, Time magazine and YouTube, are owned by one of these eight giants.

Together, these eight corporations had a market value of about 1.2 trillion in 2006. That's a hell of a lot of buying power! With money like that, those corporations can buy stations and newspapers like college students buy coffee.

The main argument for this media consolidation revolves around profit and efficiency. But there are plenty of reasons to be alarmed. For one, media turned into a business, focusing on profit rather than content. Also, corporations are not agents of a democratic society, they're businesses. Why would a business sell a product nobody likes, or rather, thinks is too out there for their tastes? Well they don't, cause a business can't make money that way.

In that vein, more is better. More choices for people wanting to watch television, listen to the radio, pick up newspaper. As the big eight continue to gobble up media, the message becomes less diverse and access becomes restricted to people with views that may hurt the business. And with newspapers and broadcast stations allowed to buy one another up, who knows what feeding frenzy may endure in the coming years.

The first of it came July 31, when News Corp bought one of the few national newspapers left, The Wall Street Journal, for $5 billion. Since it served a national market, it did not fall in the now-dismantled ban.

Back to the FCC. In 2003 it made the same ruling only it removed the ban for the top 170 media markets. Congress and the courts said hell no, and the ruling was, well, overruled. The courts did say that the ban itself wasn't necessary anymore, and that was a major reason Martin said he went ahead with removing the ban yet again.

All this in the name of local media. Martin thinks that removing the ban will benefit local news coverage. Yet, in a 2004 report by the FCC, which it destroyed, it turns out that locally owned media does a better job at local news coverage. Locally owned television stations provide more time for news than when its not locally owned. Interesting.

So what's the real motivation behind this ruling? One can speculate, but this move is not going to create more access to diverse ideas and information. It isn't going to be good for democracy either. The Senate and the courts could strike down this ruling like they did the 2003 one. Poor Orwell, dead for 27 years and he's still not getting the rest he deserves.

Photo: Kevin Martin, FCC Chairman. Taken from http://www.fcc.gov.