Powell has said that the "public interest is about promoting diversity, localism, and competition," but one of the main worries the Democrats on the commission have about the new plan is that it could reduce the number of voices speaking out about local issues. The proposal would allow a newspaper in a certain town to buy up a TV station in that town (or vice versa), possibly resulting in the two operations merging their newsrooms into one entity and reducing the competitive spirit that usually leads to better journalism.

"If you take a newspaper industry that has become significantly concentrated and you put that with a broadcast market that has become significantly concentrated, how does that promote localism and diversity?" Copps asks. "How does marrying the monopoly to the oligopoly enhance localism and diversity?"

The Internet is an unlikely prospect for rescue here. Media scholars have long debated about whether the Web is a local or national medium, but it's clear that when it comes to local news, people don't think of the Web as the place to go to first. For one thing, there really is no business model for building an independent news site focusing on local issues.

"There have been many attempts to create Web-based local publications," says Martin Nisenholtz, the CEO of New York Times Digital. "The problem is that in most cases the economics of supporting a single Web-based publication without a broadcast or newspaper adjunct is just impossible. You would like to see business models for entrepreneurial publishers, but -- I don't want to touch on a nerve here, but you work for Salon.com and the economics of what you do as a national publication have been very difficult. Imagine what it's like to do that for a local community."

Another problem that has dogged independent sites on the Web is a dearth of advertising dollars. It's not that advertisers don't like marketing on the Web; instead, advertisers tend to want to spend all their money only on the sites that get the most traffic. (This is not how it works in the print world, where even small magazines may get big-name advertisers interested in attracting a select group of customers.) The top 10 or 20 Web sites -- those owned by major corporations -- get most of the ad dollars while the rest of the Web struggles. This creates tremendous pressures on small and independent sites to become affiliated with large portals, a situation that Powell doesn't seem to have considered.

Jonathan Adelstein, the other Democrat on the FCC, says that studies commissioned by the agency prove that when it comes to local news, people look to TV and newspapers, not the Web, for their information. In September, Nielsen Media Research asked people what sources they most rely on for local news. Almost 85 percent said they watched TV, 63 percent said they read the newspaper, and a third of them listened to the radio. Fewer than 20 percent of those surveyed said they used the Internet for local news. And that makes sense, Adelstein says. "Take Slate. It's a nice voice, but I'm not going to find out what's going on in the Arlington City Council by going there. Where do people get that information? That hasn't changed. Even though there's 200 channels from cable, which one are you getting your local news from? Your broadcast station. If we allow more national ownership of these stations, we worry we'll be cutting off local voices."

Nisenholtz says that a merged news entity in a community can make for stronger local journalism, a sentiment echoed by many who support the FCC's proposed rules. (The New York Times Co., which owns newspapers and TV and radio stations all over the country, supports a repeal of the rule that prevents a company from owning a newspaper and TV station in the same market.) Nisenholtz pointed to the Sarasota Herald-Tribune, a New York Times-owned newspaper in Florida, which operates a community 24-hour news cable station that it started with the local Comcast cable service. The newspaper and the TV channel operate a shared newsroom, and articles from the newspaper and video from the TV station appear on the combined Web site. Nisenholtz said that the merged operation allows for a more robust news Web site, one that the newspaper, by itself, would not have had the resources to put together.

Citing another example where his firm might attempt to strengthen ties between its various properties in a local region, Nisenholtz pointed to Boston, where the Times Co. owns the Boston Globe and the Boston.com Web site and also has a stake in the Red Sox franchise and the New England Sports Network, a popular local cable channel. The Times is a powerful presence in the city; Russell Lewis, the Times Co.'s CEO, told a conference last year that the "impressive combination of print, Internet and television platforms has enabled us to become the leading news and advertising media group in Boston, and we mean to keep things that way."

But when asked if that could be too much New York Times in one city, Nisenholtz shrugs off the question. "Part of the struggle I have with this issue is that it feels like so much speculation." What does it mean, Nisenholtz wonders, for one company to have "too much" of a footprint in a city? "There's a lot of emotion around this issue," he says. "If you ask if it's too much, you wonder, compared to what?"

But critics of the FCC's plan say there's something unnatural about local media coming under the ownership of national chains, and they worry especially that the new rules being considered by the FCC would make it even harder for alternatives on the Internet to spring up. "I'm really worried that we are on the verge of taking the potential and dynamism of the Internet and really choking it off," Copps says. "I'm worried about the intersection of distribution and content -- he who controls those things has a hammerlock on the information that's coming to the American people."

When he talks about the intersection of distribution and content, Copps is referring to the FCC's recent ruling on "open access," in which the agency did not require Baby Bell telecom firms to give their rivals access to local phone lines in order to provide broadband connections. The ruling was a Byzantine bit of telecom regulation, but the upshot, according to Powell's critics, is that a few firms can now effectively control the broadband content that comes into your home -- a situation that undermines all of Powell's rhetoric about the Web providing us with new media diversity.

"What will happen is that the economics of show business will shape the Internet economy," Jeffrey Chester, of the Center for Digital Democracy, says. "Those services owned by cable companies will be able to afford the kind of lightning-fast distribution that will be standard for broadband applications. My fear is that in the absence of policy safeguards, progressives and alternative media and civic sites will wake up too late to recognize that although people can reach us on the Web, by God we are slower and it costs us more to transport our messages. There will be a dimming and a gradual banishment of our views on the Internet. And it's a terrible error on the part of progressives and others to hold out for an imaginary redoubt such as wireless. Cable is the dominant medium, and there are just really three or four companies doing it, and we better ensure we have a voice there on the broadband Internet."

Chester's fear sounds alarmist -- by what mechanism could the corporate media stifle bloggers and alternative publications? But surprisingly, Glenn Reynolds, the proprietor of InstaPundit, a very popular, mostly right-leaning blog, says something similar. "Powell's theory is good as far as it goes," he says, "but as people try to tame the Internet, how long before the concentrated big media try to shut down guys like me? I'm not trembling over it -- but honestly, if you asked me 10 years ago if the DMCA was even possible, I'd say no way."

The media companies and telecom firms have tremendous political power, Reynolds notes; many of the technologies that Powell now lauds -- cable TV and the Internet specifically -- have thrived in spite of their efforts, not because of them. Whenever we see technologies that give people real power, technologies that significantly undercut the mass media's role in the marketplace and that cannot be tamed, the firms -- often joined by lawmakers and regulators -- inevitably attempt to shut those down. One needs no more proof of this, says Reynolds, than the story of Napster.

"I guess as a good free marketeer I'm supposed to be against these regulations on media," Reynolds adds, "but to be a good free marketeer you have to have a free market. And we don't. I guess if the Justice Department were enforcing antitrust laws against these big companies, then I'd be OK with them being big. But since that's not happening, I don't trust these guys."

Howard Bashman, a lawyer who runs How Appealing, a fascinating blog that details virtually everything that occurs in the occult world of the federal appeals courts, is just the kind of person Michael Powell might hold up as testament to his idea that the Web gives the big media a run for their money. Several times a day, Bashman posts his dispatches on the appellate courts -- decisions he's found, decisions his sources (such as federal judges and their clerks) have told him about, his observations on the courts' processes, and links to basically everything else that might have to do with the law. Because he's thorough, prolific and accessible, Bashman quickly became required reading for people who follow the courts and even for those who just have a passing interest in law.

The site is a year old, and about 7,000 people visit it each day -- which doesn't sound like all that many until you consider who these readers are. "I know the folks at the AP read my blog for ideas," Bashman says. So do other journalists, for whom Bashman's site has become a one-stop shop for legal information. And due to the site's success, Bashman -- who works full-time as an attorney but who considers himself a kind of journalist -- has broken in. He's often quoted as an expert on appellate court processes, and he's been able to translate his success into other ventures; a piece he wrote for Slate is prominently posted on his site with the hopeful title, "My First Slate Essay."

So, considering his success, does Bashman think that he may prove Powell's point -- the Web has made it easy for people to break into media? No. He doesn't think so at all. Bashman notes that not everyone has access to the Internet or has the resources to do something like what he does. "People who have a weblog don't often have the resources to do independent reporting. I'm fortunate enough to cover a subject where material is freely released by federal courts," he says. But if you're trying to do some real reporting -- something that takes time and money -- you'd need more than a blog behind you.

And Bashman, too, worries that an increasingly consolidated media world may somehow hurt blogs like his. "The masses haven't discovered this aspect of the Web, and whether they do or don't following further consolidation will remain to be seen," he says. "Certainly the forces of the big media may not want that."

Powell frequently notes that it was not his idea to rewrite media rules -- it was Congress' idea. Under the Telecommunications Act of 1996, the FCC is required to perform a biennial review of its rules on media, and Powell says that Congress required the FCC to rigorously defend its actions. "Congress shifted the burden to the FCC, rather than the industry, to demonstrate the need for a rule," he said in a speech in March. "If we cannot conclude a rule is necessary, we are commanded to modify or eliminate it. And, we will have to do this exercise every two years. The congressional bias is for deregulation and the standard for maintaining a rule is an enormous hill to climb."

But perhaps the congressional bias is shifting. On May 9, several members of the House, both Republicans and Democrats, introduced a bill to cap the national TV ownership rate at 35 percent, which, if it passes, would reverse a rule the FCC might make in June. A few days later, Sen. Ted Stevens, R-Alaska, and Sen. Ernest Hollings, D-S.C., brought similar legislation to the Senate.

"While many of us in Congress had hoped that the FCC would recognize the serious consequences that could result from a laissez-faire approach to media ownership, it appears the message is not getting through," Hollings said in a statement.

It's a particular irony of this debate that the forces aligned against Powell's proposals are using the Internet, the technology Powell says reduces the need for media regulations, to make sure that those rules stay in place. The issue is big in blogland; Lawrence Lessig, the Stanford Law professor known for his articulate criticism of draconian copyright measures, recently took up the issue on his site, as have several other influential writers on the Web. MoveOn.org, the progressive group that spearheaded many antiwar activities, has been strongly campaigning against the rule changes, and there are many e-mail petition drives floating around.

In a strange way, then, don't such actions show that Powell is maybe a little right? The Big Media want the rules changed. But the small media, the spirited masses of the Web, are fighting against those changes, and they're showing that they can take on the big guys. The FCC has already received 18,000 comments on the proposal, almost all of them against it. Doesn't that prove that the big firms have lost their clout?

When asked, Don Hazen, the editor of AlterNet, chuckles. "The Web is a great tool," he says. "You can use it for a lot of things. You use it to fight the power. But it doesn't mean the big media aren't powerful anymore."

Recent Stories