Thank
you for the opportunity to present the views of the California Public
Interest Research Group, a non-profit, non-partisan public interest
advocacy organization. CALPIRG uses a variety of strategies to advance
consumer, democracy and public health and safety reforms. We lobby the
legislature as well as county and city governments, we publish research
reports and educational literature, we litigate when necessary and we
sometimes bring issues directly to the people through ballot initiative
and referendum campaigns.
No
matter what strategy CALPIRG or other groups – of any political or
idealogical stripe seeking to petition their governments on behalf of
the people – select to advance public policy, it is critical that we
have a diverse and antagonistic media competing to cover local,
regional and state news in depth and to cover it fairly.
It
has become harder and harder to win public interest campaigns,
especially in California, due to the high-cost of purchasing
advertising in the already-too-concentrated media. Of course, this has
not stopped industry from purchasing massive ad buys—but without a
variety of television stations and newspapers competing to cover the
public interest stories that led to those ad buys, it will get even
harder.
As
you know, in 1945, the Supreme Court declared that "the widest possible
dissemination of information from diverse and antagonistic sources is
essential to the welfare of the public, that a free press is a
condition of a free society." Your longstanding structural rules to
preserve that should not be weakened. The Court decision rejecting your
previous attempt to weaken them should be seen as an opportunity to go
back to the drawing board and do the right thing— instead, to
strengthen the media ownership rules that help ensure the welfare of
the public and a free society.
Indeed,
the revelations from California’s U.S. Senator Barbara Boxer that a
suppressed recent FCC report shows that locally-owned television
stations aired 3.5 more minutes’ worth of on-location local news
reports than non-locally owned stations and that network owned and
operated (O&O) stations (those owned by ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox)
aired significantly less local news should serve as further
documentation that you were going fast in the wrong direction and
ignoring the facts and longstanding good public policy in 2003.
By
allowing television stations to be owned by fewer companies and by
allowing television broadcasters and newspaper publishers to own each
other and not have to compete for news, the FCC’s 2003 plan jeopardized
our democracy. It's essential that Californians get the choice to see
and read and hear a variety of viewpoints before they make up their
mind on important issues facing the state.
CALPIRG
believes that placing power to speak in the hands of a few companies
will destroy the people's first amendment free speech rights to hear
from, as the Supreme Court put it, diverse and antagonistic sources. A
marketplace of ideas with only one or two ideas for sale isn't
competitive. And as we have heard time and time again today, it's
boring and repetitive and uninspiring. California and all of America
deserves better.
The
court has given you a second chance. It’s a chance to do better, and
this time, to do better for all of us, not merely for the media
monopolists, than you did in 2003. Not everyone gets a second chance,
you should use it wisely. Don’t merely reinstate the old media
ownership and newspaper cross-ownership rules, strengthen them
