All Kobe, all the time

From the birth of the broadcasting industry, the airwaves -- from which most Americans obtain their news -- were regarded and regulated as a public trust, a communal resource like the air and water. The Federal Radio Act of 1927 required that broadcasters, as a condition of their licenses, operate in the "public interest" by covering important policy issues and providing equal time to both sides of public questions. Those requirements evolved into the powerful Fairness Doctrine, which mandated that the broadcast media has a duty to maintain an informed public. Among other things, broadcasters had to air children's and community-based programming, and the rules were weighted to encourage diversity of ownership and local control. The Fairness Doctrine governed television and radio for most of the 20th century.

In the 1960s the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and the courts applied the Fairness Doctrine to require cigarette manufacturers to include the surgeon general's warnings in their TV and radio advertisements, and polluters to notify the public when advertising a polluting product. Advertisers of gas-guzzling automobiles, for example, had to provide rebuttal time for public interest advocates to debate the impact of wasteful fuel consumption on our environment and public health. According to media commentator Bill Moyers, "The clear intent was to prevent a monopoly of commercial values from overwhelming democratic values -- to assure that the official view of reality -- corporate or government -- was not the only view of reality that reached the people." The U.S. Supreme Court unanimously upheld the Fairness Doctrine in the Red Lion case in 1969, confirming that it is "the right of the viewers and listeners, not the right of the broadcasters, which is paramount."

Then, in 1988, Ronald Reagan abolished the Fairness Doctrine as a favor to the big studio heads that had supported his election. The occasion was a case involving a Syracuse, N.Y., television station that had broadcast nine paid editorials advocating the construction of a nuclear power plant. When the station refused to air opposing viewpoints, an anti-nuke group complained. The three Reagan appointees who ran the FCC sided with the TV station, applying the same laissez-faire philosophy to the airwaves as the Reagan team did to the other parts of the common. They reasoned that the recent proliferation of cable TV allays the "Supreme Court's apparent concern that listeners and viewers have access to diverse sources of information." Broadcasters would henceforth be under no obligation to air views that opposed their own.

Reagan's FCC chairman, Mark Fowler, scoffed at critics' concerns that the loss of the nation's most popular open forum diminished our democracy. "Television," he said, "is just another appliance -- it's a toaster with pictures." A horrified Congress reacted with legislation codifying the Fairness Doctrine, but President Reagan vetoed the bills. The FCC's pro-industry, anti-regulatory philosophy effectively ended the right of access to broadcast television by any but the moneyed interests.

As an unregulated part of the commons, TV and radio are today subject to the same dynamic that is polluting our other public trust assets, with behemoths consolidating control of and contaminating the airwaves.

One-sided and often dishonest broadcasting has replaced the evenhanded reporting mandated by the Fairness Doctrine. The right-wing radio conglomerate Clear Channel, which in 1995 operated 40 radio stations, today owns over 1,200 stations and controls 11 percent of the market. Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation is the largest media conglomerate on the planet, one of seven media giants that own or control virtually all of the United States' 2,000 TV stations, 11,000 radio stations, and 11,000 newspapers and magazines. And, predictably, these media corporations have the White House's support. Despite congressional mandates for diversity of ownership and local control, the number of corporations that control our media is shrinking dramatically.

This consolidation reduces diversity, gives consumers limited and homogenized choices, and erodes local control. Radio stations play the same music, giving little opportunity for new or alternative artists. North Dakota farmers can't get local emergency broadcasts or crop reports, and New York City residents no longer have a country radio station. Corporate consolidation has reduced news broadcast quality and has dramatically diminished the inquisitiveness of our national press.

To meet the challenges of the future, the United States needs an open marketplace of ideas. As fewer companies own more and more properties, that marketplace is withering. TV stations are no longer controlled by people primarily engaged in their communities, and news bureaus are no longer run by newspeople. Driven solely by the profit motive, many of these companies have liquidated their investigative journalism units, documentary teams and foreign bureaus to shave expenses. Americans must now tune in to the BBC to get quality foreign news. Local news coverage is also shrinking, as owners cut corners by consolidating newsrooms. Coverage at the Louisiana Statehouse in Baton Rouge is typical: In 1970 there were five investigative reporters assigned to the Capitol beat. Today there are none. Not a single reporter from a national news outlet is currently assigned to cover the U.S. Department of Interior.

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