FCC Commissioner targets media consolidation

The Federal Communications Commission is beholden to media conglomerates to the exclusion of minority- and women-owned media companies, FCC Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein said in Denver. "I think we've really fallen down on the job in the last eight years," Adelstein said at a Symposium on Media and Democracy sponsored by Common Cause. "We've forgotten that the airwaves belong to the public and not to special interests." Commissioner Adelstein was a staffer to several Democratic senators before his appointment to the commission in 2002. He said he has pushed against a majority on the panel for regulations restricting cross-ownership of media properties in local markets. "Fewer and fewer companies are consolidating control of the means of creating and distributing ideas. Ownership is the key to getting yourself heard," he said. Media companies have pushed for ownership of newspapers, TV stations and radio stations in the same market during a time of dwindling ad revenues and intense competition from the Internet. But in an interview after the forum, Commissioner Adelstein said pairing "ailing newspapers with ailing broadcast stations" is not the solution.