two on MoJournal | Losing Signal... What's a River For... Mother ofAll Babble...

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

------ Forwarded Message
From: "Faulhaber, Gerald" <faulhabe () wharton upenn edu>
Date: Mon, 09 Jun 2003 16:27:19 -0400
To: Dave Farber <dave () farber net>
Subject: RE: MoJournal | Losing Signal... What's a River For... Mother ofAll
Babble...

Let me focus on the part of this message relating to the recent FCC
decision re: media rules.

1- By any standard, this change is rather small.  The cap on TV stations
owned by a single firm was raised from 35% to 45% of national audience
(note that in each market, others are competing for the same viewers).
TV stations can now own (and be owned) by newspapers in some markets.
And the radio rules relating to mergers have been strengthened (after
Congress inadvertently weakened them in 1996).  And of course antitrust
merger rules are still in effect.  What's the big whoop?

2- The media has been full of stories about giant mergers about to
happen, that the number of voices will be drastically reduced, etc.  OK,
where is the empirical evidence that this is going to happen?  No one,
and I mean no one, presented anything like serious empirical evidence
that any of this was true (Mark Cooper at CU came the closest; altho he
didn't convince me, he at least knew what was needed to prove the case;
no one else did).  Frankly, I think not very much will happen; but my
guess is that in one year, no one will be writing stories about how
nothing happened.

3- Let's not forget what started all this: the DC Circuit Court remanded
to the FCC a case involving the original rules, stating essentially that
the FCC had not proved the case for these rules on 1A grounds.  The FCC
was called upon to either justify the rules on a firm empirical and
theoretical basis, abandon them, or adopt new defensible rules.  They
chose new rules; how defensible we will find out on court challenge.

The idea here is simple: unless you can show a positive reason that a
rule will have a beneficial effect, then you shouldn't have that rule.
This sounds very sensible to me, and certainly a principle I want
applied to me.  So shouldn't we apply it to all, including corporations?
If not, then where is your logical consistency?

This article speaks as if the case for the now-defunct rules was
ironclad, and this ruling was the Bushies favoring the corporations.
Well, the now-defunct rules had virtually no empirical support, although
they did have strong and persuasive supporters.  The new rules made
headlines in every major newspaper in the US, even though the issue was
a big yawn to most Americans (I think this issue was media
navel-gazing).  What disturbs me most about this is that serious
analysts believe that empirical support is not really necessary when it
comes to keeping rules that apply to the media.

Professor Gerald R. Faulhaber
Business and Public Policy Dept.
Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania
Philadelphia, PA 19104


-----Original Message-----
From: Dave Farber [mailto:dave () farber net]
Sent: Monday, June 09, 2003 3:28 PM
To: Faulhaber, Gerald
Subject: FW: MoJournal | Losing Signal... What's a River For... Mother
ofAll Babble...



------ Forwarded Message
From: MoJournal <mojournal () motherjones com>
Reply-To: <mojournal () motherjones com>
Date: Mon, 09 Jun 2003 12:18:53 -0700
To: farber () cis upenn edu
Subject: MoJournal | Losing Signal... What's a River For... Mother of
All Babble...


     Usually, I use this space to call attention to
     something new. This week, however, I'm
     going to do the opposite. Nearly two years
     ago, in September of 2001, Mother Jones
     published an article by Brendan Koerner
     about the transformation taking place at
     the Federal Communications Commission.
     Koerner explained how the FCC, under the
     direction of Bush appointee Michael Powell,
     was increasingly ceding control of the
     planning process to media giants and their
     Washington lobbyists. Last week, we saw
     the result of that transformation, as the
     commission voted to lift regulatory
     controls on media ownership. While Brendan
     wrote the article more than 20 months ago,
     his description of the agency and its rapidly
     changing internal priorities provides a vital
     level of insight into the news of last week.

     http://mojournal2.c.tclk.net/maaa9tCaaYvlwbakd1cb/

------ End of Forwarded Message



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