Overview
In 1945, the Supreme Court declared that “the widest possible dissemination of information from diverse and antagonistic sources is essential to the welfare of the public, that a free press is a condition of a free society.” As the federal agency charged with regulating the mass media, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) has long had rules in place to promote “the widest possible dissemination of information from diverse and antagonistic sources.”
Over the years, however, many of the rules designed to foster production of independent news and entertainment have been weakened. Today, only a limited number of rules remain that prevent any person or company from owning all of the media outlets in a small or medium sized city or from owning media outlets that blanket the country.
Already Congress has virtually eliminated the rules restricting radio ownership to allow a single company, Clear Channel, to own radio stations in every market and own the majority, if not all of the radio stations in any single market. This lets Clear Channel select music based on whether artists pay Clear Channel promotional fees or whether Clear Channel agrees withy their politics or message. Clear Channel’s cost saving measures and “efficiencies” have virtually eliminated local music and local news, relying on national play-lists, centralized news services, and technology that allows central programmers to add local “color” at delivery. Clear Channel also determines which talk show hosts get syndicated on its stations, ensuring carriage of one point of view in every market to the virtual exclusion of all others.
Radio provides an object lesson as to what can happen to television, cable and daily newspapers. In its capacity as a public interest law firm intimately familiar with communications law and, perhaps more importantly, the politics of the FCC, MAP has helped facilitate the development of an impressive coalition of citizens groups, consumer groups, labor unions, and independent content producers to fight to preserve the existing rules.
In addition to fighting to save the rules, MAP also challenges specific mergers at the FCC that threaten the principle of a diverse mass media grounded in localism and accountable to local communities and the general public. MAP also actively litigates on behalf of local citizens or local groups to expose violations of the FCC’s ownership or affiliation rules that remove local accountability or local programming control.