The Seattle Times should be commended for its editorial on media cross-ownership and trying to convince Congress to do the right thing. Currently, it is up to the House of Representatives to “represent” its constituents.
“The U.S. House of Representatives has a chance to do what it would not in 2003: take a stand against media consolidation, which is one of the greatest threats to democracy.
The U.S. Senate worked in the public’s interest when it passed a “resolution of disapproval” of media consolidation in May. The House has been content to sit on its companion piece, which would kill a new Federal Communications Commission rule that essentially lifts the media cross-ownership ban.”
Hip-Hop artist Nas performed recently on the Colbert Report and told a great little “ditty” about Fox “News”, C’BS’ and many other media outlets (including some of the companies owned by his label, Universal and parent company Vivendi); for more on media ownership and how it may or may not have an effect on what is delivered to consumers, check out our earlier post. Nicely done, Nas for proving the trend wrong!
Sam Zell is a real estate magnate and the head of The Tribune Company which owns the Chicago Tribune, the LA Times, the Chicago Cubs as well as a number of TV stations and smaller newspapers. Slate.com on Monday had a piece titled, “Words, Words, Words” written by Michael Kinsley about the upcoming changes within the Tribune Company’s newspapers, such as the new policy shift taken by Tribune management to measure “Reporters’ Value By the Inch.” In an article written last week on Editor and Publisher’s website, Jennifer Saba says,
“One of the main strategies outlined by Tribune Chief Operating Officer Randy Michaels involves measuring the productivity of journalists. “This is a new thing,” he said. “Nobody ever said, ‘How many column inches did someone produce?’”
The Washington Post’s Harold Meyerson makes a compelling argument today why Sam Zell is eligible for life in prison for his massacre of the LA Times. In response to Slate’s article mentioned above, Meyerson starts,
“On Oct. 1, 1910, a bomb set by James McNamara, an operative of the Iron Workers union, then embroiled in a ferocious dispute with the Los Angeles Times, blew up the Times building, killing 21 pressmen. McNamara was arrested the following April, convicted and later sentenced to life in prison. He died in San Quentin in 1941. The question for today is: Would a similar sentence be appropriate for Sam Zell?”
Meyerson ends this very fair rant by putting things in perspective for us.
“Great newspapers take decades to build. We are discovering that they can be dismantled in relatively short order. The Los Angeles Times was a hyperpartisan, parochial broadsheet until Otis Chandler became its publisher in 1960 and began the work of transforming it into the paper of both record and insight that it’s been for the past half-century. The diminution of such a paper diminishes its city, which is why L.A.’s otherwise disparate civic elites have periodically tried to restore the Times to local control since the Trib bought it at the turn of this century. Instead, in Zell, what Los Angeles has is a visiting Visigoth, whose civic influence is about as positive as that of the Crips, the Bloods and the Mexican mafia. Life in San Quentin sounds about right.”
Continuing the post about media ownership and how transparency in control is of the utmost importance today, Wired.com brings us to the world of hacked satellite TV through the eyes of someone who played both sides of the game. Christopher Tarnovsky has made a career out of hacking satellite signals. Starting with the US Army, moving on to the NSA and then employed by the leading manufacturer of smart cards used in DirecTV’s receivers, Tarnovsky also created hacks for these same cards, and perhaps even a competitor’s card.
The interview and story are of interest to anyone with a geek side, but more importantly to anyone who cares about the independence of where you are getting your information from and who is controlling that feed, even if you’re using a hacked system. NDS, the leading smart card maker, is owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp., which formerly owned DirecTV as well. With Tarnovsky controlling both the NDS card encryption and the hacks supplied to international dealers for a number of years, it was left up to him to not only control whether you could watch the Super Bowl in 2001, but also whether or not your hacked satellite TV system provided news feeds. Hacked or unhacked, transparency in media control needs to be held to a higher standard. Not necessarily more regulation from government, but just more complete and thorough coverage by independent media. Thanks to Wired.com for perhaps unwittingly providing this coverage.
The Project Censored team, consisting of Bridget Thornton, Brit Walters and Lori Rouse and affiliated with Sonoma State University, has available on its website a great report detailing corporate and institutional influence and cross-industry conflicts in mainstream media. They list the 10 largest media companies, each one’s board of directors and the other industry, non-profit and academic institutions these board members are also involved with… Of course this doesn’t mean that all of your information is biased, but it would be hard to remain objective given all of these circumstances. Also, please note this list is from 2005 and there has been even more industry consolidation since that time which we have not documented here.
The 10 largest media conglomerates detailed are (not listed in order of size): Gannett, New York Times, Washington Post, Knight-Ridder, The Tribune Company, News Corp., AOL/Time Warner, General Electric, Walt Disney and Viacom. The areas of influence these companies have include: Newspapers (local and national), TV networks (local and national), TV stations, magazines, book publishers, radio (local and syndicated), movie studios, movie distribution, movie theaters, record labels and cable and Internet providers.
Companies where the media board members also hold additional board seats are involved in the following, to list a few: Defense contractors, pharmaceutical manufacturers, universities (including journalism schools), banks, retailers, auto manufacturers, technology companies, airlines, food and consumables manufacturing and distribution, law firms, foreign governments, insurance companies, non-profit institutions (including those responsible for recognizing and awarding independence in journalism), etc.
Again, we want to reiterate that just because GE owns NBC and a member of GE’s board also sits on the board of the Boston Museum of Science does not mean that the individual curators at the Museum are unduly influenced by the connection with NBC. However, it is important we maintain a certain level of transparency when it comes to media ownership in order to decide for ourselves what may or may not be biased information.
A person or entity with an obligation to report the news who instead shirks this responsibility and creates false dogmas. Aside from ignorance, reasons include financial gain and self-love.
