When Media Mergers Limit More Than Competition

[Commentary] A merger between 21st Century Fox and Time Warner would reduce control of the major Hollywood studios to five owners, from six, and major television producers to four, from five.

Fox and Time Warner may no longer publish old-media newspapers or magazines, but they certainly disseminate information and opinions that may be even more vital to the “welfare of the public” today than the newspapers of Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black’s era.

How many news shows and opinion panels would be produced on TV under the ownership of a Rupert Murdoch, or for that matter, any other media mogul who controlled close to 40 percent of all major film production and nearly 20 percent of all television?

To look only at price competition and economic efficiency “makes no sense whatsoever” in the media context, added with Maurice Stucke, a law professor at the University of Tennessee. He posits that any analysis of competition in media mergers should include the impact on “the marketplace of ideas,” where competition “advances truth.”