FCC Republicans again attempt to weaken media ownership rule

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Kevin Martin, chair of the FCC, is now moving to implement a plan for weakening media ownership rules which, when Powell attempted it two or three years ago, created enough of a loud and bipartisan public outcry such that the plan was dropped, or more correctly, pushed out of sight for a while. He has now said he wants to get this done by this December.

This is a very important issue and I encourage everyone to make a lot of noise about it.

Who is Kevin Martin?

Quote:

Controversy
In October 2007, Chairman Martin proposed an advanced timetable for amending FCC regulations on media consolidation. Like his predecessor, Micheal Powell, Martin's plan is controversial because it "relaxes the decades-old media ownership rules, including repealing a rule that forbids a company to own both a newspaper and a television or radio station in the same city."[5] The plan has also raised eyebrows because of the speed with which Martin wants to enact his proposals and the lack of opportunities for accepting public and Congressional input on the matter.

[edit]Background
Martin, a Republican born in Charlotte, N.C., was selected March 16, 2005, by President Bush as FCC Chairman to replace Michael Powell, who announced in January 2005 that he was leaving the top post. "Because he already is a member of the FCC, Martin's promotion, which had been widely expected, does not need to be confirmed by the Senate." [6]

"Kevin Martin, was one of the first national Bush-Cheney people to arrive in Miami from Washington, on Nov. 8, 2000. He had been a deputy general counsel for the Bush campaign and before that worked for Ken Starr, the independent counsel in the Monica Lewinsky affair." [7] [8]

Martin previously worked in the Office of the Independent Counsel, at the law and lobby firm Wiley, Rein, & Fielding, and advised former FCC Commissioner Harold Furchtgott-Roth. [9]

Martin is married to Cathie Martin, former communications director for Vice President Dick Cheney and currently a member of President George W. Bush's communications staff. [10]

Affiliations
Special Assistant to the President for Economic Policy
Bush-Cheney Transition Team
Deputy General Counsel for the Bush campaign
Advisor to FCC Commissioner Harold Furchtgott-Roth
Office of the Independent Counsel
Associate at Washington, DC law firm Wiley, Rein, & Fielding
Judicial clerk, U.S. District Court Judge William M. Hoeveler, Miami, FL
Member, Florida Bar Association
Member, District of Columbia Bar Association
Member, Federal Communications Bar Association

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Kevin_J._Martin

re the bit in red...

Quote:

Defending fake news
In October 2006, Wiley Rein & Fielding law and lobby firm filed an appeal with the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC), on behalf of the Radio-Television News Directors Association (RTNDA), asking the agency to halt its investigation of 77 television stations found to have aired video news releases (VNRs) without disclosure. [2] [3]

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Wiley%2C_Rein%2C_%26_Fielding

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Bernie, the following is all i could find pertaining to the FCC - and the Washington affiliation. Senator Boxer will undoubtably be vocal if and when new FCC regulations are presented.

FCC to Review Media Study
Ron Orol
The Deal
September 18, 2006

Provided by The Deal
Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin Martin will review a contentious media ownership study that a former agency lawyer had said was destroyed.

Martin said he and his staff were unaware of the study, which suggested that looser limits on media mergers would hurt local television news coverage, according to a letter he sent late Thursday to Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif.

But he added that it brought up matters relevant to the commission's media ownership proceeding, which began in July, and he planned to include the study in the agency's body of data that will be reviewed.

"I was not chairman at the time that this report was drafted," Martin wrote in a letter to Boxer released late Thursday. "I had not seen, nor was I aware of this draft report before you brought it to my attention. No one on my staff had seen this report nor were they aware of it."

A former lawyer from the FCC's media bureau, Adam Candeub, said the agency ordered its staff to destroy all copies of the draft study written in 2004. Boxer released the study during Martin's Senate confirmation hearing on Tuesday.

Candeub, now a law professor at Michigan State University, said senior management at the agency ordered the report destroyed.

In July, Martin launched the agency's third attempt to craft media merger regulations. The new round of regulatory initiatives followed a 2003 effort completed by Martin's predecessor, Michael Powell, permitting more media consolidation.

Harold Feld, director of Washington-based public interest law firm Media Access Project, said Powell apparently sought only to produce studies that complemented his plan for media ownership rules.

"It appears that it was Michael Powell, not the public, who preferred to make decisions based on 'personal ideology,'" Feld said in a statement.

In 2004, a federal appeals court in Philadelphia rejected the agency's new criteria and ordered the commission to produce new media rules.

Martin is expected to try to eliminate the prohibition on one company owning a television station and the major newspaper in a particular market.

His letter responds to one Boxer sent him on Wednesday expressing dismay "that this report, which was done at taxpayer expense more than two years ago, and which concluded that localism is beneficial to the public, was shoved in a drawer."

Two economists in the FCC's media bureau conducted the study, "Do local owners deliver more localism?"

It analyzed a database of news stories broadcast in 1998. It showed that local ownership of television stations added almost 5-1/2 minutes of total news to broadcasts and more than three minutes of "on-location" news.

The FCC's media ownership rules are intended to protect diversity of local opinions available to consumers.

A study demonstrating that consolidation reduces the amount of local news available to consumers would make it difficult for Martin to proceed with plans to ease restrictions on media mergers.

Martin is expected to argue that consumers have access to more local news and information through the Internet and new community newspapers than they did even in 2003, the last time the agency considered changes to the media rules.

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The media cartel should be broken up as this same cartel is skewing public opinion with biased polls and reports. This media cartel is responsible for Darth War_dodger's Presidential election thefts. Of course, it is the Democratic mole Bill Clinton that enabled the media cartel to be born by allowing business mergers.

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stradee! well kisses and hugs to you

Here's the first part of a piece from todays NYT...

Quote:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/14/business/media/14media.html?hp

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bookmark

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smooches to you to

Read the complete article...quoting two paragraphs...

"But for media deals in the future, it is unclear whether the new rules will make it significantly easier for conglomerates to own both a newspaper and a station in most markets."

Most Markets???

and

"In announcing his plan, Mr. Martin said he sought to strike a compromise that would assist what he said was a financially ailing newspaper industry while trying to be sensitive to concerns about the effects of media consolidation on the quality of news coverage."

Good God!

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Moyers on this...
http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/11162007/watch.html

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Quote:

Bad reviews pile up for FCC chief's plan

Martin wants to loosen ownership rules and end debate within weeks. Lawmakers, activists and industry object.
By Jim Puzzanghera, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
November 19, 2007
WASHINGTON -- The last time federal regulators tried to change the rules on how many media outlets companies could own, the effort bombed like a bad movie. The sequel appears to be headed for the same fate.

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/business/newsletter/la-fi-ownership19nov19,1,4814325.story?ctrack=2&cset=true

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Amazing

BILL MOYERS: Last year, Haley Barbour was awarded GOVERNING magazine's "Public Official of the Year" for his stewardship of Mississippi in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. And last week, he easily won re-election for a second term and is now being talked up as the Republicans' vice presidential nominee next year.

Quote:

WASHINGTON -- The last time federal regulators tried to change the rules on how many media outlets companies could own, the effort bombed like a bad movie. The sequel appears to be headed for the same fate.

Monday, September 18, 2006

Washington, D.C. - Today, U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer (D-CA) wrote to FCC Chairman Kevin Martin bringing to light a second report on media ownership that seems to have been suppressed by the FCC.
Following is Senator Boxer's letter to Chairman Martin:

September 18, 2006

Chairman Kevin J. Martin
Federal Communications Commission
445 12th Street SW
Washington, DC 20554

Dear Chairman Martin,
Since I last wrote to you, another draft FCC report that was never made public has come to my attention.

I have now received a copy of the Commission's draft 2003 "Review of the Radio Industry." The report found, among other things, that while there was a 5.9 percent increase in the number of radio stations in the country between March 1996 and March 2003, there was a 35 percent decrease in the number of radio owners. The report also found that Clear Channel Communications, the largest radio group owner, went from owning 62 stations in 1996, to 1,233 in 2003.

For reasons I do not understand, this report was never finalized even though the FCC had released similar reports in 2002, September 2001, January 2001, and 1998. Moreover, the Commission has not released a "Review of the Radio Industry" report since 2002. This is in spite of the fact that this information would be highly relevant to the Commission's ongoing proceedings on localism and media ownership.

Recently, it was reported in Radio and Records that Clear Channel had visited two Commissioners' offices on August 31, 2006 "to influence their positions on expanding ownership cap limits in the largest radio markets."

I trust that you will update and release this report prior to the conclusion of the media ownership proceeding so that the Commission will be able to make its decision based on the most current industry data.

Chairman Martin, this is the second report in a week that I have received that appears to have been shelved by officials within the FCC and I am growing more and more concerned at these developments.

In light of this new discovery, I will ask the Inspector General of the FCC to thoroughly investigate not only the draft 2003 "Review of the Radio Industry" and the 2004 localism study, but also to examine whether it was then or is now the practice of the FCC to suppress facts that are contrary to a desired outcome. Although I understand that you were not Chairman at the time these documents were produced, I wanted to bring this new incident to your attention and urge your office's full cooperation with the Inspector General.

Sincerely,

Barbara Boxer
United States Senator

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Good Grief blatham, you are in danger of being assigned the official status of One Trick Pony.

Surely there is more to concern your formidable intellect with other than which ideological power controls the airwaves.

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No such danger, IMO. Thou protesteth too much. Blatham concerns himself with myriad issues. Maybe its that you just don't like hearing about this one.

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Finn dAbuzz wrote:

Good Grief blatham, you are in danger of being assigned the official status of One Trick Pony.

Surely there is more to concern your formidable intellect with other than which ideological power controls the airwaves.

As my old friend snood suggests, even a cursory examination would reveal that my neuroses manifest themselves in splendorous array.

But this one sits up near the top. If one holds, as I do, that the 'enemy' is not either or any party but rather the ease with which communities can organize themselves under authoritarian control, then one tries to understand the mechanisms by which this may be (and has been) achieved. Information control is essential to the authoritarian enterprise. Authoritarian regimes always demand it and they cannot continue when they do not manage to control information.

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The current ownership rules are an anachronism. They no longer reflect the current realities, principally of declining numbers of newspapers in American cities, and increasing numbers of TV and radio outlets. Prohibiting ownership in one city of both a newspaper and a broadcast outlet has become a silly relic of the past in an age of nationwide TV, cable and radio networks.

The real motivation for this issue is the commercial success of some conservatively oriented broadcast media in an otherwise liberal industry. What Democrats can't get or hold on to through persuasion they seek to keep through regulation.

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Hello george. Word of your foolishness precedes you.

Two years ago, I saw a broadcast of an interview with Ted Turner, founder of CNN. I'm unsure of the date of recording. It was a fairly relaxed affair, he and his interviewer surrounded by perhaps a hundred or so in the audience. I've forgotten but it may have been a birthday or some such that interview marked. Turner talked quite openly about his life, his marriages, his successes and his disappointments. But he recounted one story which particularly caught my attention. He'd recently been in London visiting Tony Blair, a longtime friend. Turner said that he'd expressed to Blair his misgivings on the political power that Rupert Murdoch had managed to gain in Britain through, particularly, his media holdings there and Turner thought this a dangerous turn of events which Blair ought to do something to manage. Turner quoted Blair's response to this, "If it weren't for Rupert, I wouldn't be the Prime Minister."

Do you credit this account, george? Why? Do you think it unimportant? Why?

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I would surmise that there are definite left leaning media such as NYT, Wash Post, L.A. Time etc , on the other hand I find local media (Denver/Albuquerque/Des Moines/Phoenix etc etc) etc that are more centrist/conservative. This appears to me to cover a broad range from radio to t.v. to print. Who reads/listens/watches what is somewhat a mystery to me but I imagine that I am the only house on my street that reads the NYT while all my neighbors read the Albuquerque Journal.
CNN/Fox News sucks no matter where you place it on the political political spectrum.

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georgeob1 wrote:

The real motivation for this issue is the commercial success of some conservatively oriented broadcast media in an otherwise liberal industry. What Democrats can't get or hold on to through persuasion they seek to keep through regulation.

Quote:

Martin has said the rule changes are small and would help bolster the financial health of the newspaper industry by allowing owners in the top markets to buy a TV or radio station.
If cross-ownership limits were eased or lifted, it could help some investors, such as real estate tycoon Sam Zell, who is leading a proposed leveraged buy-out of media group Tribune Co .
Zell already has asked the FCC to reaffirm waivers that allow Tribune to own daily newspapers and broadcast outlets in some markets. The timing of the FCC's decision could be important, since Tribune has said it expects the deal to close in the fourth quarter.
Martin's proposal also could nullify any ownership concerns raised by News Corp's proposed buyout of Wall Street Journal owner Dow Jones & Co . News Corp owns the New York Post newspaper and local stations in New York.

Source: reuters via The Guardian: US FCC official: media ownership plan has had lengthy study

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Lest we forget... from my original post

Quote:

"Kevin Martin, was one of the first national Bush-Cheney people to arrive in Miami from Washington, on Nov. 8, 2000. He had been a deputy general counsel for the Bush campaign and before that worked for Ken Starr, the independent counsel in the Monica Lewinsky affair." [7] [8]

Martin previously worked in the Office of the Independent Counsel, at the law and lobby firm Wiley, Rein, & Fielding, and advised former FCC Commissioner Harold Furchtgott-Roth. [9]

Martin is married to Cathie Martin, former communications director for Vice President Dick Cheney and currently a member of President George W. Bush's communications staff. [10]

Quote:

Defending fake news
In October 2006, Wiley Rein & Fielding law and lobby firm filed an appeal with the U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC), on behalf of the Radio-Television News Directors Association (RTNDA), asking the agency to halt its investigation of 77 television stations found to have aired video news releases (VNRs) without disclosure. [2] [3]

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Have I touched a sensitive point??? I was bemused by Blatham's story about the supposed conversation between (of all people) Ted Turner and Tony Blair concerning Rupert Murdoch. I take it that what was OK for Turner's media empire is thoroughly reprehensible when it is done by Rupert Murdoch. Amusing. I wonder if Bernie was even aware of the flagrant hypocrisy.

Interesting to observe the appetite for government enforced censorship on the part of our "liberal" posters here.

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georgeob1 wrote:

Have I touched a sensitive point??? I was bemused by Blatham's story about the supposed conversation between (of all people) Ted Turner and Tony Blair concerning Rupert Murdoch. I take it that what was OK for Turner's media empire is thoroughly reprehensible when it is done by Rupert Murdoch. Amusing. I wonder if Bernie was even aware of the flagrant hypocrisy.

Interesting to observe the appetite for government enforced censorship on the part of our "liberal" posters here.

No. When you touch a sensitive spot, I can be counted on to tell you that your eyes are like languid puddles.

Now, if you are going to bother responding here, do so with some order and integrity, please. Let's start here. First, are you suggesting then that such a conversation never took place or that Turner is lying? On what basis? Do you suppose, for example, that they are not friends at all?

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Bernie wrote-

Quote:

Turner said that he'd expressed to Blair his misgivings on the political power that Rupert Murdoch had managed to gain in Britain through, particularly, his media holdings there and Turner thought this a dangerous turn of events which Blair ought to do something to manage.

As is well known Bernie it is bread and circuses and as we have bread trying to burst the epidermis it is now just circuses and Mr Murdoch has by far the best circus with his Sky channels.

Thus those of us who are not intent on making a name for ourselves are in favour of him appointing Prime Ministers and we now have one who he didn't appoint and to nobody's surprise is sinking in the ratings daily. It may well be frowned upon in more eleveted circles but there you go.

To have influence within the portals of classical architecture you had to put on the public games even if you had to go into debt to do it.

He's okay.

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FCC Republicans again attempt to weaken media ownership rule

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