Supreme Court ignores industry on ownership limits

A smattering of good news for all of us concerned about concentration of media ownership in the United States. The U.S. Supreme Court today declined to hear appeals from media corporations (and their broadcast and newspaper groups) seeking to restore proposed FCC rules that would have eased restrictions on media ownership. The LA Times reports that "Without comment, justices let stand a lower court ruling that threw out the Federal Communications Commission regulations as unjustified."

The new rules could have allowed the same company to own up to three television stations, eight radio stations, a cable operator and a newspaper in a single market (depending on its size).

This means that the FCC "now must take a second shot at revising its older [pre-2003] set of ownership rules that the media groups say are inadequate to address the burgeoning cable television, satellite broadcasting and Internet markets."

Back in October last year, 3rd Circuit federal appeals judges in Philadelphia rejected industry attempts to lift restrictions on crossownership of TV and radio stations in the same market. The attempt to relax the limits was initially part of the Republican-controlled FCC's sweeping deregulation of broadcast ownership rules in 2003. But the proposed changes met a national public backlash, court challenges, and action in Congress. Then the Philadelphia court, hearing a court challenge, stopped the changes taking effect, and ordered that the rules be rewritten. The LA Times notes that the reason the 3rd Circuit blocked the changes was because the FCC "has not sufficiently justified its particular chosen numerical limits for local television ownership, local radio ownership, or cross-ownership of media within local markets."

In the meantime, the previous, tighter set of ownership rules remains in effect. Late last year the big media conglomerates went back to court to appeal the Philadelphia federal court decision. As for the FCC, it "chose not to pursue its own appeal after the 3rd Circuit of Appeals decision, urged justices in filings to turn away the media groups' request. The FCC said it first should be given a chance to come up with new rules that could pass judicial muster under the 3rd Circuit ruling."

The appeals had been filed by many of the Biggest Guns in Big Media, including the Newspaper Association of America, Tribune Co., National Association of Broadcasters and Media General. Also joining the appeals were Gannett Co., the nation's largest newspaper publisher; Belo Corp.; Morris Communications; as well as CBS, Fox and NBC.

Eric Boehlert in Salon.com notes that "major media companies, eager to gobble up newspapers, television stations and radio outlets in the same markets, had hoped the Supreme Court would step in now." Tough for them. He continues:

"The rejection is a victory for consumer groups, which say the ownership limits help ensure diversity of local news and programming," reports Bloomberg News. "For media companies, the high court appeal was 'the one way out of the box that they're in right now on ownership,' said Stanford Washington Research analyst Paul Gallant. 'The chances of the FCC significantly relaxing the ownership rules are fairly low.'"

While the decision is "good news" for consumers, "the battle over media ownership is far from over," warns Gene Kimmelman, senior director of Public Policy for Consumers Union. "We must remain vigilant to ensure efforts to allow a few companies to dominate the major sources of local news and information don’t succeed. We are extremely hopeful the new FCC chairman will revisit these issues with a better understanding of how important a diverse and independent local media is to a community.”

Btw, for an excellent overview of the "Uprising of 2003" (when more than 2 million citizens rose up to complain about the FCC's attempts to relax media ownership rules), see chapter 7 of Robert McChesney's The Problem of the Media: U.S. Communications Politics in the 21st Century.

The LA Times lists the relevant cases as Media General v. FCC, 04-1020; National Association of Broadcasters v. FCC, 04-1033; Tribune Co. v. FCC, 04-1036; Newspaper Association of America, 04-1045; FCC v. Prometheus Radio Project, 04-1168; and Sinclair Broadcast Group v. FCC 04-1177.