Newspaper Ownership, Unions Divided Over Crossownership Ban

The newspaper unions and ownership are definitely of different minds on lifting the ban on newspaper-broadcast cross-ownership. That is according to testimony for a June 11 House Communications Subcommittee hearing on the Federal Communications Commission's media ownership rules.

While Newspaper Association of America (NAA) senior VP Paul Boyle tells the subcommittee that the ban is outdated and hurts investment in local journalism, Bernard Lunzer, president of the NewsGuild-CWA, asks Congress to "maintain the status quo on Cross Ownership between print and broadcast" and says that claims that combinations will allow for more coverage is "just not the case."