Special Industry Report: Media

The media industry, already very highly concentrated, is continuing to consolidate. That means greater pressure on workers' jobs, benefits and opportunity whether in print or broadcast — often combined, along with online communications, within the same corporation.

Today, the industry is dominated by six huge companies: AOL-TimeWarner, Viacom, General Electric, Disney, News Corp. and CBS. Three newspaper chains control at least 25 percent of newspaper circulation, and two companies completely dominate the cable industry.

And corporations want even more consolidation. They continue to press the Federal Communica-tions Commission to ease the rules on media ownership, which now limit the media outlets that an individual corporation can own.

Investors are demanding extremely high financial returns over a short time frame and have not hesitated to call for the breakup or sale of a profitable operation, as in the case of Knight Ridder and Dow Jones and Co.

A new threat to small and medium-size publications is the extreme corporate-backed hike in postal rates that went into effect in July. Delegates to the CWA convention passed a resolution to overturn it, saying the huge rate increase threatens the survival of small, independent publications, including union newsletters, and that threatens democracy itself.

All the pressures mean media workers face a growing threat to jobs and to benefits like retirement and health care security. Media workers have seen their jobs contracted out, both in the U.S. and overseas, in commercial work and even in editorial positions. In bargaining, we face demands for givebacks in health care and the loss of opportunity to move into the new jobs that technology is creating.

The Newspaper Guild-CWA, NABET-CWA and the Printing Sector are fighting back, enlisting community allies to help maintain diverse and independent news operations, leading the fight to stop the FCC from allowing even more concentrated media ownership and pressing for full opportunity for workers for the jobs of the future.