Why Newspapers Will Lose On Media Cross-Ownership -- Again

WHY NEWSPAPERS WILL LOSE ON MEDIA CROSS-OWNERSHIP -- AGAIN
[SOURCE: Editor&Publisher, AUTHOR: Mark Fitzgerald]
[Commentary] Even though lifting the ban on broadcast-newspaper crossownership makes a lot of sense, don't bet it'll happen. Prospects were a lot better in 2003 when an energetic FCC chairman, Michael Powell, opposed the ban and had a majority ready to vote with him. But the newspaper then shot itself in the foot and is likely to do it again. How? By treating this as an inside-the-beltway issue. "It's only a little exaggeration to say that newspapers and television imposed a blackout on the issue, writing almost nothing about the impending rule changes until the very eve of the vote." In the FCC's 2006 proceeding, the public is filing thousands of comments opposing lifting the ban. But how much is the press covering the position of the newspaper industry? How much is the industry engaging in public debate? "Newspapers and network television shamed themselves three years ago by telling the public little or nothing about media rule change that were in the works. It wasn't a failure of journalism, so much as a willful dereliction of duty to democracy." Fitzgerald concludes: "The industry seems to have convinced itself that it need not convince the public about the rightness of its case, so long as it can convince three out of five FCC commissioners. That hasn't worked before, and I'm betting it won't work this time around, either."
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