| My name is Ben Bagdikian. I have been a reporter and editor of newspapers, written books on the media, and am former Dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at Berkeley. |  |
Commissioner Adelstein, thank you for the opportunity
to speak at this hearing.Since the broadcast frequencies are the property
of the American public, it is fitting that a member of the Federal Communications
Commission, a steward of this public property, gives us, the owner-citizens
of the Bay Area, an opportunity to be heard.
I would like to make three points that I believe are
significant in the stewardship of our air waves.
$300 billion earned from public property
1. This is a fabulously valuable public property. According
to the Statistical Abstract of the United States, the revenues of
broadcasters and the associate telecommunications firms represent more than
$300 billion a year. The channels
through which this $300 billion industry makes its money are the property
of the American public. It is the
opinion of many citizens, myself included, that this fabulous public resource
that we own entitles us to have an effective voice on how our property is
used. At the very least, the commercial users of our property ought to be
required to give the people access to their programming in the communities
being served. But, year by year, this local access has diminished
until in too many markets it is now close to zero.
Giving public property worth more than $300 billion dollars
to private corporations for their own profitable use is, in my opinion,
an expropriation of a magnitude that reminds one of the Tea Pot Dome scandal.
I think it is notable that large media conglomerates
like AOL-Time Warner, the largest media firm in the world, and ClearChannel,
the largest radio group in the country, are said to “own” a certain number
of stations. Legally, of course, they do not own the licenses for these
stations. In a real sense, their licenses are rented
to them for a specific period by
us, the public. According to the law, they are rented to them on condition
that operate, to quote the law, “in the public interest.”
“local” stations with no local employees
I suspect that few people who follow such things need
to be reminded that the largest radio group in the country, ClearChannel, has more than 1200 stations and has only 200
employees. They have 10 stations in the general San Francisco Bay Area.
How can any company operate in the public interest when it operates 1200
local radio stations with only 200 employees?
Even in this period of genetic engineering, there is no way a radio
station can be actively and locally run by one sixth of a human being. But, of course, the reason ClearChannel needs
so few employees is that most of its stations have no human beings in them,
most of the time. The stations are operated remotely with canned programming.
As you know, recently in Minot, North Dakota, a train
wreck released anhydrous ammonia gas that killed one person, sent 300 people
to the hospital and blinded others. The
local police could not use the most effective local warning system to tell
the public to get indoors at once and close windows and doors against a
deadly gas. The best local system
to issue this emergency warning were the six stations that ClearChannel
operates in the city of Minot. But the ClearChannel studios, though broadcasting
during all this time, were empty and locked. They were operating with canned
programming by remote control. Is there nothing the FCC can do to end this
mockery of the law? Do these stations
operate in the public interest of their communities?
Furthermore, this company had six stations in a city
with a population of 37,000. Why should a city of 37,000 people have the
same owner for six stations? Six
stations with no human beings in them and using programming that had absolutely
nothing to do with Minot, North Dakota?
This seems to be greed raised to the 6th power.
This kind of concentrated control by broadcasters is
permitted by the 1996 Telecommunications Act which, in my opinion, was the
most disastrous broadcasting legislation in our history. It effectively
robbed people of their own air waves. According to the Wall Street Journal,
the 1994 Gingrich Republican caucus called in top broadcast executives,
asked them what they wanted, and gave them the 1996 Act. It did so in the
name of keeping up with new technology, a technology that permitted ClearChannel
to dehumanize six radio stations in Minot, North Dakota.
I cite Minot, North Dakota as a dramatic case because, as in medical epidemics, a dramatic case demonstrates more clearly the systemic failures, in this case the systematic negligence of the public interest throughout the country. But ClearChannel is not alone.
news from nowhere
Some
time ago, I was interviewed on a major network with studios in San Francisco.
Before we went on the air for the interview, the host asked me not
to mention where we were, not to mention the date, not to mention the day
of the week, and not to mention the weather.
He explained that this program is used in the network’s other cities
all over the country and, as he put it, “We like people in all those cities
to think they’re listening to a local program.” ClearChannel is not the
only network that misuses the word “local.”
I believe that even under the disastrous 1996 Act, the
FCC still has the responsibility to intervene when license holders so egregiously
ignore the public interest. That phrase, to operate “in the public interest”
is still in the 1996 Act. Yet,
it has turned most of our radio talk shows into a right-wing propaganda
machine.
local perspective is vital because power is local
My second point is that we are speaking here about something
close to the heart of sustaining our democracy. It is too often overlooked
that it is uniquely necessary for the United States public to have routine
access to the broadcast stations in their own community. We are unique because
the United States is the only developed democracy in the world that leaves
so many central functions of government to each locality. Each of our cities
operates its own schools, its own police, its own land use, most of its
taxes, functions that in other countries are the responsibility of a centralized
national agency. No purely national programming can possibly report on these
for us. Why else would almost all our broadcast licenses require the licensee
to maintain a station in its city of operation?
Yet we are close to imitating other countries who have all their significant broadcasts originate in their capital or central city and then sent out to the whole country by mechanical translator towers. In those countries, every community gets the same programming. The United States is almost alone in requiring a broadcast license holder to operate a studio in each city and for a valid, fundamental reason. But by now that requirement has become close to meaningless for most chain broadcasters.
That is why it seems contrary to the national welfare that most of our major local broadcast outlets, not just ClearChannel, send out programming that could just as well originate in Enid, Oklahoma.
local civic discussion necessary
We need more civic discussion in our local stations,
and I don’t mean bad jokes about local matters by shock jocks and disc
jockeys. And not at midnight. The
public interest requires more broadcast sessions that permit rational
discussion and audience participation.
We in the Bay Area have KQED’s Michael Krasney, who hosts an excellent
issue discussion program. We have the Pacifica station, KPFA, which has
progressive news and programming, a political orientation that is constantly
criticized by many of the same organizations that are happy that almost all the
national talk shows are from the political far right, as with Rush Limbaugh (who,
as you know, is syndicated by Clear Channel).
But ClearChannel alone has ten stations in our market.
Today, all
over the country our cities and states are facing financial crises in budgets
for schools, for other city services, and for all the duties that come from our
system of local governance. We are the richest country in the world, but we are
now shrinking our school curricula, reducing our civic services, and at the
same time demanding that our schoolchildren improve their performance.
Our form of democracy needs routine information throughout
the year on issues we all face every Election Day. The country has a unique need for local civic
discussion on the air. It is a unique requirement needed to maintain our unique form of democracy.
a diverse nation requires diverse media
My third point is that FCC policy in the last 30 years
has permitted five large media conglomerates to own the media on which the
majority of Americans say they depend for their news, information, and entertainment.
Each of these giant conglomerates has major holdings in all our major
media — newspapers, magazines, books, cable, radio, television, and motion
pictures.
We are a nation of 280 million people in 19,000 cities
and towns stretched across a great continent.
Our population is a world model of diversity of ethnicity, race, and
countries of national origin. We have clear differences in our geographic
regions and their differing regional cultures and needs.
We now suffer an unnecessary disconnect between the needs
of our unique local governments and the diverse nature of our population on
one hand, and on the other hand, the lack of this diversity in our broadcasting
system. In recent years, that gap
has widened even more rapidly and has been propagandized so consistently by
the broadcasting industry, that there are now men and women in powerful government
and industrial positions who question the need to regulate broadcasting at
all.
cookie-cutter programming designed to maximize profit
The problem is
intensified by the high degree to which both radio and television stations
duplicate each other, even though they are held by supposedly competing corporations.
If one network and its affiliates find a more profitable program formula,
the others rush to imitate it. Furthermore,
they have so many joint ventures with each other that they have all the characteristics
of a cartel.
In their imitative programming, a very large amount of
what the public hears on political social matters is politically right-wing
of the most crudely aggressive kind. This is not what the public needs or
wants. It is in stark contrast to
what the most serious polls show is the self-identified politics of the American
population. And since cancellation
of the Fairness Doctrine in the 1980s, individuals and organizations attacked
by the talk shows have no right of reply.
more channels does not equal greater variety
Let me state what I think is a fallacy repeated endlessly
to justify deregulation of broadcasting. It is constantly repeated that there
are so many new channels we no longer need to regulate them. There are
many new channels. What are these new channels? They are mainly cable and
satellite broadcasting channels. But
these new channels do not operate as separate corporate entities. Even a working
paper commissioned by the FCC noted that there are many new channels but the
number of owners remains stagnant. The arithmetic is inescapable. More channels and the same number of owners
means that the new channels simply increase the power and control of the existing
oligopoly that controls most United States broadcasting. The owners of our new cable channels, for example,
are AT&T, AOL Time Warner, Viacom, General Electric NBC subsidiaries,
Disney Company, and Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation. The repeated assertion
of new channels includes satellite broadcasting which is now dominated by
Murdoch’s recent purchase of DirecTV,
and EchoStar that owns six satellites with 500 channels of video, audio, and
data.
We speak here of a handful of global corporations that
control everything that a majority of Americans say they use to get their
news, information and entertainment. And this handful of giant corporations
so imitate each other chasing after ratings, and share ownership in so many
joint ventures that our thousands of broadcast outlets is meaningless if we
have a goal of meeting the needs of our diverse American population.
too much power in too few hands
The new channels, by increasing the media power of
existing companies, introduce a threat to the kind of democracy we deserve. We
know all too well that media power means political power in Washington. So not only does the American media audience
suffer, but so do all American voters: they are deprived of diverse politics on
the air, added to the further dilution of their votes by corporate power
lobbies and financial contributions in Washington.
What James Madison said more than 200 years ago is
still true, that a popular government without popular information is a prologue
to a farce or a tragedy, or perhaps both.
That is why I think the FCC is one of the most crucial agencies in
maintaining the health of our democracy.
In closing, we are grateful that you recognize this responsibility
by your presence here today. Thank you.
