Decrying ‘photocopy journalism’, news watchdog spotlights Denver TV station merger

The sprawling greater-Denver metro region is in news-media crisis. In the information age, when there seems to be more and more to know, there is less and less being reported by the diminishing number of local mainstream news outlets here. So it comes as little surprise that media watchdog organization FreePress this week is highlighting the Denver news market as a negative example for the nation.

The organization reports that, on top of shrinking newspaper reporting, the local TV news market is host to a “severe” form of the kind of sly consolidation that media corporations have been effecting across the country for nearly a decade. FreePress says this “covert consolidation,” where direct ownership is never transferred, is gaining momentum and that it skirts federal ownership laws and erodes market variety and competition. Over the last two years, Denver news stations Fox 31 KDVR and CW 2 KWGN have entered a “shared services” agreement through which station operations are merged. The stations share broadcast scripts and reporting, for example, the same way they share staffers, equipment, management personnel and studio and office space. “Just because the name on the letterhead hasn't changed, doesn't mean that the spirit of media ownership laws hasn't been violated,” FreePress Program Director Josh Stearns told the Colorado Independent. He said the owners of the stations are squatting on public airwave space that could be taken up by another company or organization, which would hire its own writers, reporters and producers to deliver an original and rival product to KDVR and the other stations in the market. Stearns believes the KDVR-KWGN agreement effectively tramples regulations meant to guard against media “duopolies,” where a single company owns two or more stations that serve the same community.