September 2014

The Alliance for Community Media, the Alliance for Communications Democracy and Common Cause asked the Federal Communications Commission to block the deal for AT&T to acquire DirecTV.

The groups say the deal is misguided and will further hurt local media and PEG channels throughout the US. In their joint petition to deny, the groups outline both the flaws of the transaction and the inability of AT&T to support public interest requirements such as PEG Access channels. “Having justified its promotion of state video franchising laws with the promise that it would bring landline, cable-based competition to incumbent cable operators, AT&T through this transaction now apparently seeks to renege on that promise by fleeing to DIRECTV’s DBS service. The Commission should not reward that bait-and-switch.” The groups argue that AT&T would better serve consumers by improving the quality of its U-verse video service, or by investing in broadband buildout rather than further reducing video competition.

In letters to the editor, Mercatus Center’s Thierer argues that Leo Hindery Jr. gets it right when noting, "Consumers and viewers won't gain a thing from regulators blocking the media-distribution industry's natural evolution." While Penn State’s Brown says Hindery’s argument's premise is that the industry will end in a true monopoly and that these mergers (as well as earlier and future ones) are just part of the inevitable, final state. This is a deterministic argument made with no substantive evidence or logic.

House Communications Subcommittee Chairman Greg Walden (R-OR) is not happy with the Federal Communications Commission’s responses to the subcommittee's ongoing look into commission processes and plans to make that clear at a hearing Sept. 17.

"Since our last hearing with Chairman [Tom] Wheeler, the subcommittee has examined additional aspects of the FCC’s operation including, management of backlog and current workload, staffing, its budget and operating expenses, as well as other related issues through inquires and information requests to the agency. The FCC’s responses to our questions, reports submitted by the Inspector General and reports in the media raise serious concerns as to whether the FCC’s house is in order," he plans to say in his opening statement for the hearing. He also takes aim at the FCC argument that it is trying to do more with less money. "[C]ontrary to Chairman Wheeler’s oft-touted remedy, the solution to the commission’s woes is not simply to throw more money at the problem, but to use the money available to the commission more effectively. Nowhere is this more evident than in the FCC’s IT expenditures."

After registering slightly higher trust in 2013, Americans' confidence in the media's ability to report "the news fully, accurately, and fairly" has returned to its previous all-time low of 40%.

Americans' trust in mass media has generally been edging downward from higher levels in the late 1990s and the early 2000s. Prior to 2004, Americans placed more trust in mass media than they do now, with slim majorities saying they had a "great deal" or "fair amount" of trust. But over the course of former President George W. Bush's re-election season, the level of trust fell significantly, from 54% in 2003 to 44% in 2004. Although trust levels rebounded to 50% in 2005, they have failed to reach a full majority since. Americans' trust in the media in recent years has dropped slightly in election years, including 2008, 2010, 2012, and again this year -- only to edge its way back up again in the following odd-numbered years. Although the differences between the drops and the recoveries are not large, they suggest that something about national elections triggers skepticism about the accuracy of the news media's reporting.