Who Owns the Media and How the People Can Take It Back
Okay, so we still need to know about Big Media. Only a few hands are writing our history these days, and the push for greater media consolidation is ferocious. Just this month, media titan Rupert Murdoch snatched up the Wall Street Journal. Of course, this consolidation has squeezed out other voices and media owners, particularly women and people of color. Consider two studies by the media reform organization Free Press, which found that just 7.7 percent of racial or ethnic minorities own full-power commercial broadcast radio stations, and 3.3 percent of this demographic own broadcast television stations.
This cleansing is poised to continue. Once again, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is trying to change media ownership rules to allow a handful of media giants to scoop up even more local television channels, radio stations and newspapers in a single market. Think of the media conglomerates as a child who hordes all of the Lego’s - only Big Media is playing for keeps.
Proposed rule changes by the FCC would give media a Botox injection - Ahh! All the newspapers and TV stations look the same - while further eroding our free press. After all, it’s not really free when we have to pay such a high price for it. And of course, that price is the drowning out of our voices, our concerns, our questions and our revolution as media is consolidated.
According to Free Press, “If… changes were approved, one company could potentially own the major daily newspaper, eight radio stations and three television stations in the same town.” Sign me up for a subscription to The Stifled Times!
As promised, the FCC has been charging around the country like a traveling circus to hold public hearings about the proposed rule changes. There may not be a Big Top, but there’s certainly an act - “See the FCC Commissioner Smile and Nod.” Only two more public hearings are scheduled, with the next one taking place in Chicago on September 20.
