Big media slams proposal to roll back cross-ownership rule

Rarely has one Federal Communications Commission filing provoked as much ire as this. Thirteen major broadcast and newspaper groups have filed lengthy denunciations of a public interest group's appeal to redo the FCC's recent relaxation of its TV station/newspaper cross-ownership ban. Their comments once again expose the enormous divide between public opinion and big media on this issue. Common Cause, the Benton Foundation, the National Hispanic Media Coalition, and three other groups opposes the FCC's new media ownership rule outright. But the groups knows that FCC Chair Kevin Martin's Republican majority isn't going to rescind it. They are instead asking the Commission to eliminate the complex waiver rules the agency added to their three-pronged merger criteria, especially the "four factor" test. These new provisions "provide no mechanism by which to hold applicants accountable for promises made while seeking waivers once their waivers are granted," the petitioners write. "If after receiving a waiver, an applicant who promised to increase local news or exercise independent news judgment does not follow through," the Commission's Order provides no way to undo the merger or discipline the license holder. "The Commission should deny the petition," insists CBS. "CBS has submitted hundreds upon hundreds of pages of comments, facts, and studies in this proceeding, all with the goal of demonstrating that the FCC's broadcast ownership scheme is woefully and perilously out of sync with the realities of today's media marketplace. To that end, we have urged the Commission to deregulate all of its media ownership rules." CBS, Clear Channel, Fox Television, Gannett, Media General, the National Association of Broadcasters, the Newspaper Association of America, Tribune, and five other parties are responding to a plucky March 24th Petition for Reconsideration filed by Common Cause et al.
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