Even as CNN's Ted Turner argues that
the pursuit of power and profit led sections of the media to advocate
war against Iraq, changes in the U.S. telecommunications law are expected
to pave the way for an increase in the concentration of media control.
Television viewers the world over have only just experienced the spectacle
of "embedded" correspondents delivering biased and periodically
wrong "reports" of "their" war in Iraq through the
global arms of the United States' media. Not surprisingly, the credibility
of the U.S. media among those with the willingness and the ability to
be objective has fallen to the lowest levels in recent history. What is
surprising, however, is the support these sections have received from
a leading icon of the U.S. media.
In the last week of April, Ted Turner, the founder of Cable News Network
(CNN), reportedly declared that Rupert Murdoch had helped start the U.S.
war against Iraq by using his newspapers and television stations to advocate
such a war.
It is indeed true that the New York Post controlled by Murdoch aggressively
advocated the war in Iraq and described the group of countries opposing
it as the "Axis of Weasel". It is also true that Bill O'Reilly,
a political commentator in Murdoch's News Corp-controlled Fox News television,
called for a boycott of French products in protest against France's opposition
to the war. But what makes Murdoch's behaviour different from that of
Turner's, who as Vice-Chairman of AOL Time Warner oversaw the operations
of CNN during the Iraq war and continues to do so till May, when he steps
down as part of an internal reshuffle? CNN and its sister companies could
hardly be cited as examples of news outlets that were critical either
of the Bush administration's decision to go to war or of the way the war
was conducted.
Turner's candour went far enough to provide an answer to these questions.
Speaking at a Commonwealth Club of California event in San Francisco,
he explained News Corp's advocacy of war in terms of Murdoch's desire
for profit. Murdoch promoted the war, he is said to have argued, "because
it's good for his newspapers and good for his television stations".
The cynical race for readership and viewership rather than belief, Turner
seems to suggest, motivated News Corp's reportage. And he does seem to
have won. Fox News' strategies have ensured that it has a larger audience
than competing networks, including CNN, CNBC and MSNBC.
Ted Turner is clearly not convinced that the war was necessary and wants
proof that Iraq had the weapons of mass destruction that provided the
Bush administration with its justification of the war. "I want to
see the proof," Turner is reported to have said, "I want to
see what we went to war for." This implies that, despite the views
he now espouses, CNN adopted the stance it did either because of the fact
that he is not in control or because of the competition from Fox News
and other channels.
Turner possibly thinks it is a bit of both. He admitted that he was soon
stepping down as AOL Time Warner Vice-Chairman overseeing CNN and other
networks because he had been "fired". So the network must have
been slipping out of his control. But he went on to say that the U.S.
media was too concentrated, and that the big five groups in the broadcasting
business (News Corp/Fox, AOL Time Warner/CNN, Disney Co/ABC, Viacom/CBS
and General Electric/NBC), which control 99 per cent of what Americans
see and hear, "don't have the public's interest at heart". Turner
is reported to have rued the fact "that the media is too concentrated...
Too few people control too much, especially considering that I'm not one
of them."
This candid statement of the connection between media power, the search
for profit and events such as war from a leading insider, supports much
of what critical commentators such as Ben Bagdikian, Noam Chomsky, Edward
Herman and Robert McChesney have been arguing for quite some time now.
Writing in 1997, Bagdikian pointed to the fact that over the previous
five years, a small number of private corporations had acquired unprecedented
control over public communications power, including the news. This was
disturbing since many of these entities were the prime or sole source
of information to a section of the American public. In support, he noted:
"Of the 1,500 daily newspapers in the country, 99 per cent are the
only daily in their cities. Of the 11,800 cable systems, all but a handful
are monopolies in their cities." A few corporations were acquiring
a number of these and that trend, he argued, would accelerate in the aftermath
of the passage of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which liberalised
rules regarding mergers and acquisitions. "At issue is not just a
financial statistic," he warned. "At issue is the possession
of power to surround almost every man, woman and child in the country
with controlled images and words, to socialise each new generation of
Americans, to alter the political agenda of the country." Turner
has merely speculated on one consequence of that prediction, which has
meant mass murder and devastation for the people of Iraq.
The danger now is that this power of a few media corporations is likely
to increase. On June 2 this year, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission
(FCC), chaired coincidentally by Michael Powell son of U.S. Secretary
of State Colin Powell, is to meet to vote on a report that is expected
to recommend far-reaching liberalisation of even the existing diluted
regulation of the media. The report being prepared by Ken Ferree, the
director of the media bureau of the FCC, is the result of a biennial review
of media laws mandated by the 1996 Act.
Powell, who took charge of the FCC in January 2001, is known to be committed
to relaxing controls on telecom and media ownership and favourably disposed
to the big media corporations. His problem is that the FCC has four Commissioners,
besides himself, two of whom are Democrats and two are Republicans. Thus,
with the two Democrats (Michael Copps and Jonathan Adelstein) ranged against
his proposals, he needs the support of the two Republican Commissioners
to change the law as well of the courts that are the ultimate arbiters
of telecom and media rules. In February this year, he attempted to push
through measures that would help reduce burdensome competition between
local Baby Bell telecom operators. He failed, however, because Kevin Martin,
one of the Republican Commissioners, chose to oppose the move even at
the cost of being dubbed by some as a Republican renegade.
Deregulation of the media is even more controversial, since there has
been strong opposition to some of the changes being advocated from unions,
trade associations, consumer activists, think-tanks and academicians,
who understandably fear that these would only increase the power of the
media barons to manipulate public debate. The regulations currently in
place that are being reviewed include the following:
- The TV-Radio Cross-ownership Rule, prohibiting one party from owning
a television and radio station in the same market, although entities
in the 50 largest media markets can obtain waivers.
- The Dual-Network Rule, which prohibits one broadcast network from
owning another.
- The Local Television Ownership Rule, prohibiting one party from owning,
operating or controlling two or more broadcast television stations,
unless one is ranked below the top four.
- The National Television Ownership Rule, in which no single owner can
reach more than 35 per cent of television households, nationally.
- The Broadcast-Newspaper Ownership Rule, prohibiting broadcasters from
owning a daily newspaper and broadcast outlets in the same city.
- The Local Radio Ownership Rule which allows one entity to own only up to eight commercial radio stations.
It should be obvious that given the past record of the big media players
in the U.S., relaxing one or more of these regulations would set off a
merger-and-acquisition wave that would concentrate power over the media
even further. The opposition to deregulation is based on the twin dangers
of lack of diversity and media manipulation. Common ownership can result
in the same selectively chosen information and the same opinions being
purveyed by different media outlets. That this does happen was acknowledged
as far back as 1978 even by the U.S. Supreme Court which in FCC vs National
Citizens Committee for Broadcasting, argued: "It is unrealistic to
expect true diversity from a commonly owned station-newspaper combination.
The divergence of their viewpoints cannot be expected to be the same as
if they were antagonistically run." If this lack of diversity is
combined with an urge to manipulate the news, the effects would obviously
be disastrous.
Critics point to the results of the last experiment with relaxation of
rules to defend this apprehension. The 1996 Telecommunications Act had
partly liberalised rules allowing media companies to acquire as many television
stations as they wanted so long as their reach does not exceed 35 per
cent of U.S. households. The results were as expected. At the moment,
CBS owns 21 stations; ABC 10; NBC 13; and Fox 33.
That Act also singled out radio for massive ownership deregulation. Since
the passing of the Act, Clear Channel Communications, the leading radio
and concert conglomerate in the U.S., has expanded from 40 stations to
1,225 stations. The net result is that there has been a 34 per cent decline
in the number of radio station owners, a 90 per cent rise in advertising
rates, evidence from artists that they are "shackled by the anti-competitive
practices of the conglomerates", and complaints of an increase in
indecent broadcasts. As a result, even Michael Powell, who normally argues
that media ownership rules do not reflect the realities of a modern media
marketplace, had to admit before a Senate Commerce Committee hearing that
he was "concerned about the concentration, particularly in radio".
Despite the opposition and the evidence, it is more than likely that the
FCC would approve major changes in rules in June, since the differences
between Kevin Martin and Michael Powell are not too sharp. Martin is reported
to have said: "The courts have been looking at our decision to keep
these rules with increased suspicion. We need to recognise that there
are new voices in the marketplace." Martin is reportedly also not
averse to cross-ownership between newspaper and broadcast outfits, and
only in favour of using a simple "diversity index" to decide
on retaining such regulation in particular small markets.
If in addition Martin is right about the attitude of the courts, deregulation
is in the air. Going by Ted Turner's assessment, this means that the American
public and the world at large just have to wait and watch for the next
devastating adventure that an even more concentrated media would advocate.