L.A. to FCC: No More Media Consolidation
By Dawn Holian Iype
Posted on Thu Oct 05, 2006 at 03:22:36 PM EST
The FCC kicked off its series of public hearings on media ownership this week with a two-part hearing in Los Angeles. Community activists turned out in droves to rail against Big Media and the forces of consolidation. FCC Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein even remarked that "out of a hundred people we must have listened to, 99 thought that media consolidation was a bad idea. One thought it was a good idea. Which is pretty much representative of what the public at large thinks wherever we go."
Unfortunately there wasn't time for every member of the public who showed up at the hearing to speak. One of the people who was still in line when time ran out was Jim Rhyne, who has done terrific volunteer work on media issues as part of a reform group that's affiliated with Common Cause California. Jim and the rest of the team in Los Angeles have documented the sorry state of local news in their city and examined how media consolidation is contributing to the problem. You can get a copy of their report at
www.TakeBackYourNews.com.
Click
"Read More" to see what Jim planned to tell the FCC Commissioners at the ownership hearing on Tuesday. (Thank you to our friends at Free Press, who set up a video camera for people to tape their remarks after the hearing ended. Jim took advantage of this option, so his testimony will be part of the official record.)
My name is Jim Rhyne and I'm a citizen. I'm also part of a volunteer group here in LA concerned about news coverage. Recently we monitored the local news to get an idea of what kind of content is being delivered during the 10 or 11 pm broadcast--and to see if and how stations are fulfilling their public service obligations.
What we found? Crime coverage overwhelmingly dominated the airwaves--across all the stations that we monitored--accounting for 24% of the news. Stories about celebrities and other human-interest accounts made up another 21%--resulting in 45% of the news being about fear and fluff.
What we also discovered was a tremendous amount of news being shared--not only by stations owned by the same company like KCAL-9 and KCBS-2--but across the board. During our review meetings, we were amazed at the amount of news that came from other states--particularly if video accompanied the story. Chances were good that if it ran on one station, it ran on them all. Examples included reports about a cat falling out of a tree in Indiana or a criminal falling through a roof in Texas and a car chase in Miami.
Sharing content may be unavoidable especially for top stories of the day. But why can't stations at least share stories that enhance our education and understanding of our local society. In the study, we found that KCBS and KCAL shared about 60% of the stories on average. Of those only 2% were about local or state government. 36% were about fear and fluff.
My concern is that with the amount of news sharing that we see today--how much worse will our news get if there is even less local control? Will local news run even more stories that are easily and cheaply obtained so that big media companies can achieve economies of scale and increase profits? Is local news doomed to increased coverage of crime and animal stories that aren't even local?
I ask you to reject more media consolidation and relaxed cross-ownership rules. Los Angeles deserves local news that is not only local but that educates and informs us about being active participants in our democracy. Thank you.
Way to go, Jim!
Tags: Media and Democracy, California, media ownership, FCC (all tags)
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