Media Mergers Are Damaging U.S. Democracy

MEDIA MERGERS ARE DAMAGING US DEMOCRACY
[SOURCE: Financial Times, AUTHOR: FCC Commissioner Michael Copps]
[Commentary] Americans have always been crazy for news. When Alexis de Tocqueville toured the nations back roads nearly two centuries ago, he marvelled at the astonishing circulation of letters and newspapers among these savage woods. De Tocqueville chalked this up to our uniquely local politics. Under a centralized government, a handful of national newspapers might have been enough. But America offered the utmost national freedom combined with local freedom of every kind. Today, the US is richer and more powerful than when de Tocqueville visited. But do we still have media capable of keeping democracy strong? Not by a long shot. Newspaper competition has died in most cities and towns. Radio, television and the Internet have replaced them but these are primarily national, not local, and geared towards selling products through entertainment. In the last off-year elections, more than half of local newscasts contained no campaign coverage at all. Why and how has this happened? A leading culprit is the staggering consolidation among communications companies in recent years. A handful of conglomerates now controls nearly all the mainstream media. An even smaller group of network providers controls Internet access. These two trends are not typically thought to be related. But both are attempts at stifling competition by seizing control of content and distribution. The fight against consolidation is not liberal versus conservative or red state versus blue. It is a grassroots, all-American campaign to preserve the very democracy that de Tocqueville saw in America. Every citizen is a stakeholder in the outcome and every citizen should be part of the decision-making.
http://www.freepress.net/news/16168
(via Free Press)