Owning Up

[Commentary] To hear some of the public interest groups tell it, the near-economic collapse and ensuing financial fallout, with millions of jobs lost and many broadcast and print outlets operating on life support, is merely a cyclical downturn. There is no cause, they say, for taking a fresh look at rules that keep some broadcasters from creating a multiplatform model that is likely the future of journalism. This posture in fact exposes these groups' single-minded determination to make broadcasters pay for the sin of being stuck with too much debt when the economy tanked and their business model was turned on its head by the Internet. In their eyes, the recessionary steamroller becomes merely a cycle when the alternative might provide a legitimate argument for deregulation. Forget "might": The FCC needs to throw out the ban on newspaper-broadcast cross-ownership. It is an artifact of a world that has utterly changed. Some consolidation foes say, with a straight face, that the Internet does not represent a sea change in the media model, and that broadcasters are just using that ruse to get the deregulation they want. Even if that were the motive, it would not change the fact that the Internet has fragmented the audience to the extent that the model for making broadcast journalism work is in trouble. The reason the FCC is so concerned about localism and diversity in broadcasting is because broadcasting is so important to meeting the local information needs of the community.