July-August 1996

Media Mergers:

Do They Endanger A Continuing Diversity of
Voices and Viewpoints?

The 1996 Telecommunications Reform Act accelerated a trend toward consolidation of the mass media, further narrowing the range of voices and viewpoints published in newspapers or heard on TV. By lifting restrictions on ownership within specific media and markets and across all forms of media, the TRA gave more power to the global media oligarchy.

Time-Warner's $6.3 billion buyout of Turner Broadcasting was the latest and largest in a torrent of mergers. Until then, radio was significantly more decentralized than other media, but in May 1996, Westinghouse (which had bought CBS in 1995) announced plans to buy Infinity Broadcasting, yielding a communications giant with 83 stations nationwide, including 10 in major markets like Chicago and Dallas. The FCC and Justice Department expressed concern about the antitrust implications of this $3.9 billion merger, which seemed destined to replace diverse local and public affairs programming with syndicated voices.

For this brief mini-campaign mounted just as the Telecom Act was being considered in Congress, the Mainstream Media Project enlisted a wide range of media analysts. We scheduled and completed 49 interviews, 14 of which were nationally syndicated. The success of our initial effort led us to mount a more sustained campaign on this issue in the summer of 1999.

Guest Speakers

Pat Aufderheide, Professor, American University

Ben Bagdikian, Former Dean, School of Journalism, University of California Berkeley

Benjamin Barber, Director, Whitman Center for the Culture and Politics of Democracy, Rutgers University

Jeffrey Chester, Director, Center for Media Education

Jeff Cohen, Founder, Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR)

Susan Douglas, Professor, University of Michigan

George Gerbner, Former Dean, Annenberg School of Communications; Founder, Cultural Environment Movement

Mark Crispin Miller, Johns Hopkins University

Andrew Jay Schwartzman, President, Media Access Project

Richard Sclove, Founder and Executive Director, Loka Institute

Sen. Paul Simon (D-IL), Senator

Gigi Sohn, Executive Director, Media Access Project