Media monopolization is big news sparking the NRA, NOW, the Parents Television Council and a staggering 2.3 million petitioners to form unlikely alliances against the FCC’s June decision to raise station ownership limits. An appeals court stepped in, but Congress was already out of the start gate. Quietly tucked into a spending bill, Congress is poised to allow media giants to lift a cap on television ownership from 35 to 39% and relax limits on cross-ownership of television and print outlets in same markets. Will media consolidation shut the door on real reporting? Will such media reform multiply voices and ideas or eliminate them?

• If new FCC rules stand, one company will be able to control half of a local news market and employ two-thirds of reporters in the same market.
  
  
• Since 1975, two-thirds of independent newspaper ownership and one-third of independent television ownership have disappeared.
  
  
• Currently, 5 television networks control programming for 75% of the national viewing audience.
  
  
• In a seven-month period following announcement of an FCC review of broadcast ownership rules, only one television network covered the story. It aired September 9, 2002 at 4:30 am.
  
  
• 13 of the 17 cable and satellite networks identified as broadcast network competitors are owned by the same company that owns a network - Disney (ABC, ESPN, History Channel), Viacom (CBS, UPN, Showtime, Nickelodeon, BET), GE/Vivendi (NBC, TELEMUNDO, MSNBC, USA) NEWSCORP (FOX, Discovery, Hallmark), AOL/TIME WARNER (WB, CNN, Cartoon).

In the upcoming election season, when controversial issues like gay marriage, war, and unemployment will win and lose votes, the role of a free press is more vital than ever. The airwaves are a national resource - over 90% of homes have televisions that serve as the primary source of news for 53% of us. When our news and information comes to us through a narrowed lens dominated by business interests, exactly how free is our press? Should news be part of the media business or should it be, like education, a not-for-profit service in the public interest?

• Since 1996, the 50 largest media corporations along with 4 trade associations have spent $111.3 million lobbying congress.
  
  
• Media corporations have contributed $75 million to political campaigns from 1993 to 2002.
  
  
• In 2000, broadcast income from political ads reached a record $600 million.
  
  
• From 1996 to 1998, the National Association of Broadcasters, along with 5 media corporations, spent $11 million defeating legislation that mandated free airtime.

Rising costs of news production coupled with multiple station ownership means that media organizations are getting their news from fewer places - often each other. Community standards of decency are thrown by the wayside when pre-packaged prime-time runs reduce a local station’s ability to choose what to air and when. Analysts contend that decisions made at the corporate level determine programming of local television and radio at the expense of ethnic and local communities.

• In a comparison of non-commercial radio stations in seven major cities, the ethnicity and gender of daytime hosts and news anchors was found to be 88% white and 69% male.
  
  
• People of color owned 23 full power commercial television stations in 1999 1% of total licensed stations.
  
  
• In California 84% of Asian Americans, Latinos and African Americans utilize ethnic media sources - half of these prefer ethnic broadcasts or publications.
  
  
• Univision -- which owns a television network with an 80 percent share of the Hispanic television market, the leading Latin music company, and the leading Spanish-language Internet portal -- merged with HBC, which owns or programs about sixty-five stations in seventeen of the top twenty-five Hispanic markets. The CEO’s of both companies are white, male Republicans.
  
  
• After a 2002 civic emergency in Minot, North Dakota, local residents had difficulty getting information about the accident - and critical safety measures to take - as distant corporations own all local radio stations. Pre-packaged automated programming couldn’t be changed quickly enough to warn residents.

American media is not like other industries: it has the power to determine what information is made available to the public and to influence our thinking about common concerns. When only half of 1,500 young people - who are exposed to an estimated 200,000 commercials a year - polled think voting is important and even less feel they can make a difference in community problems, some analysts ask if the profits weigh more heavily than public interest in the minds of the media powers that be.

Can we have true freedom of the press when a few corporations own all venues? Is news reporting jeopardized by media corporations in hot pursuit of the political advertising cash cow? When media messages serve economic interests at the expense of public interests, is news reporting in danger of only serving to program public opinion? Will we lose voices from ethnic and local communities as media mammoths feast on smaller stations? Does ownership matter to diversity?