Protect Media Diversity, CWA Urges the FCC

As the broadcast and publishing giants once again press to loosen limits on media concentration and cross-ownership, CWA this week filed comments in the latest FCC review process, urging the Commission to maintain current rules that insure diversity of local TV, radio and newspaper ownership.

"The Commission's broadcast media ownership rules are based on the First Amendment principle that the widest possible dissemination of information from diverse and antagonistic sources is essential to public welfare," CWA stated.

Media corporations are crying wolf when they claim that they must merge to survive, CWA said, noting that newspapers continue to earn profits in the range of 20 percent and local TV stations earn profits of 40 to 50 percent.

In the FCC's last review, beginning in 2002, CWA and other unions were part of a widespread grassroots movement that ultimately fought back, through congressional and court action, the worst of the Commission's proposed rule changes to allow greater cross-ownership.

Saying the Commission had violated the principles of diversity, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals threw out rule changes that would have allowed one company to own as many as three TV stations as well as the newspaper monopoly and multiple radio stations in the same community.

CWA's filing says the union continues to believe that the newspaper/broadcast cross-ownership rule provides the strongest protection against an overly concentrated local media market.

If the FCC is determined to try again to modify the rule, CWA said it must do so according to the methodology the appeals court laid out. If mergers are considered, the burden of proof must lie with the merging parties "to demonstrate that the combination is in the public interest; and with the requirement that the commonly owned media outlets maintain separate newsrooms and editorial staff," CWA stated.

"This proceeding is of profound importance to American democracy," CWA's filing concludes. "It is imperative that the Commission adopt strong structural rules to protect against further consolidation of the media into fewer hands, an outcome that would do serious harm to the free flow of ideas that is so essential to civic participation in our democracy."