Media Reform Movement

The modern media reform movement in the United States seeks primarily to counter a growing trend toward the concentration of corporate ownership of mass media outlets. Until 2003, the efforts to stem the tide of media concentration could barely have been called a movement. The policy drift toward removing limits on monopolistic media ownership had been proceeding apace from the 1980s through the 1996 Telecommunications Act and into the 2000s largely under the radar of public attention. The public was unaware of the dramatic changes taking place in their media landscape, because those very same media industries had kept the proposed changes out of the news, except for minor treatment in the business press. In 2003, however, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) went too far in seeking to grant major media conglomerates greater freedom to consolidate ownership across the industry. Its proposed rule changes set off a large-scale, grassroots response, organized in large part through the Internet. The campaign to oppose the FCC changes generated more than 2 million cards, e-mails, phone calls, and telegrams to Congress and the FCC. The unexpected popular response, cutting across the political spectrum, forced Congress to roll back some of the FCC's rule changes [Page 933]and put the industry and the FCC on notice that public opinion would have to be taken into account when considering further changes in the structure and regulation of the media industry.

The structure of the broadcast industry is a matter of vital importance to the health of a democratic system. An active citizenry has to be informed and have access to a diversity of opinion in order to make wise decisions about its own governance. By late spring 2003, many Americans were beginning to feel that the mass media had not served them well in the run-up to the Iraq war. Media critics documented how those who opposed the invasion of Iraq were virtually blacklisted from major network and cable talk shows, while the war's supporters dominated the airwaves. It was in this context that the FCC proposed rule changes that would have reduced diversity of views and further centralized media control in the hands of media executives.

Concern over bias in news media and the content of entertainment media as well cut across the political spectrum. Organizations as diverse as http://MoveOn.org and the National Rifle Association, NOW and the Eagle Forum, organizations from left, right, and center, coalesced on the question of media ownership regulations and the need to avoid monopolistic concentration. These and other groups used their extensive memberships and e-mail lists to mobilize opposition to the new FCC rules. Congressional staffers reported media ownership to be the issue ranking second in public communications in 2003, just after the Iraq war.

Not only was the public activism on media ownership rules bipartisan, but its explosive newness got the attention of Congress and the FCC. For years, the only parties paying attention to these seemingly arcane rules about the structure of the media industry had been the lobbyists for the media and communication industries and public interest groups such as Consumers Union, Consumer Federation of America, the Media Access Project, the Center for Media Education, the newer Center for Digital Democracy, and a few media scholars such as Ben Bagdikian, Robert McChesney, Mark Crispin Miller, George Gerbner, Sut Jhally, Susan Douglas, Brian Wilson, Nina Huntemann, and media watchdog groups like Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting and Rocky Mountain Media Watch. Ad hoc national formations that came together during the mid- to late 1990s also addressed media ownership concerns. A small working group at the founding convention of the Cultural Environment Movement, founded by the late George Gerbner, proposed a resolution adopted by the conference that anti-trust laws be used to break up media oligopolies. During the same period, two national conferences on media and democracy were held, one on each coast, and addressed, in part, growing concerns over media concentration. It wasn't until the regulatory battles of 2003 that the issue gained a national and broad-based momentum.

...