Local Media Diversity Matters

LOCAL DIVERSITY MATTERS
[SOURCE: Center for American Progress, AUTHOR: Mark Lloyd & Phil Napoli]
[Commentary] Access to independent and diverse media outlets is essential to our democracy. That’s why congressional oversight over the pending FCC rulemaking will be so crucial to the agency’s congressionally mandated quadrennial review of local media ownership rules. But oversight and critique is not sufficient. Progressives must now offer a thoughtful and pragmatic alternative to the FCC’s business-as-usual approach to media ownership. The FCC does not have the means today to determine whether its policies are promoting or discouraging independent and diverse speech. The Center for American Progress has worked with a small but diverse group of media scholars and lawyers over the past year to develop a way to really measure local media diversity, and a way to determine what level of media diversity actually supports strong local democracies. What we have developed is a series of measurements that are clear and easy to understand, and not too burdensome for the FCC to perform. In brief, the “Metric for Local Media Diversity" is based on a set of four distinct but related measures: 1) Determine media markets in a way that captures the diversity of sources available to both the general public and significantly distinct “ethnic” audiences. 2) Count all “independent” media outlets that serve the local media market, including print, broadcast, cable, and Internet media; but include only those sources contributing locally produced news and public affairs. 3) Measure the potential audience of each particular media source in the market. 4) Measure the news workers for each media source in the market, with additional points given for gender and ethnic diversity.
http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2007/01/media_diversity.html

* See "Local Media Diversity Matters"
http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2007/01/pdf/media_diversity.pdf

* Progressives Push New Media Diversity Index
http://www.broadcastingcable.com/article/CA6411449.html?display=Breaking+News