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 FEDERAL  COMMUNICATIONS  COMMISSION 
 Media  Ownership  Working  Group 


 Viewpoint  Diversity  in  Cross-  Owned 
 Newspapers  and  Television  Stations: 
 A  Study  of  News  Coverage  of  the 
 2000  Presidential  Campaign 
 ByDavidPritchard  September  2002 


 2002  -  2 
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 EXECUTIVE  SUMMARY 
 Regulations  adopted  by  the  Federal  Communications  Commission  in  1975  prohibit  the  grant  of  a  license  for  a  broadcast  station  to  a  company  that  owns  a  newspaper  in  the  same 
 community.  One  purpose  of  the  rule  was  to  preserve  a  diversity  of  viewpoints  in  local  media.  Some  of  the  cross-  owned  broadcast  stations  and  newspapers  were  grandfathered,  while  others 
 were  required  to  divest  one  of  the  two  cross-  owned  outlets.  Since  1975,  the  Commission  also  has  granted  a  handful  of  waivers  of  the  rule. 


 As  part  of  its  review  of  its  ownership  rules,  the  FCC  commissioned  the  present  study  of  news  coverage  of  the  2000  presidential  campaign  by  cross-  owned  newspapers  and  television 
 stations  in  several  American  communities.  The  study  addresses  the  following  research  question:  To  what  extent  do  commonly  owned  newspapers  and  television  stations  in  a  community  speak 
 with  a  single  voice  about  important  political  matters? 
 Data  about  the  news  coverage  of  10  cross-  owned  newspaper-  television  combinations  were  analyzed.  The  results  show  that,  in  five  of  the  10  newspaper-  television  combinations 
 studied,  the  overall  slant  of  the  coverage  broadcast  by  a  company's  television  station  was  noticeably  different  from  the  overall  slant  of  the  coverage  provided  by  the  same  company's 
 newspaper. 
 In  the  other  five  combinations  under  study,  the  overall  slant  of  newspaper  coverage  of  the  2000  campaign  was  not  significantly  different  from  the  overall  slant  of  the  local  television 
 coverage.  The  data  do  not  enable  us  to  ascertain  why  the  overall  slants  in  those  cases  were  similar. 


 The  limited  number  of  observations  in  this  study  prevents  us  from  drawing  firm  or  sweeping  conclusions  about  the  implications  of  our  findings.  However,  for  the  markets  studied, 
 the  data  suggest  that  common  ownership  of  a  newspaper  and  a  television  station  in  a  community  does  not  result  in  a  predictable  pattern  of  news  coverage  and  commentary  about  important 
 political  events  in  the  commonly  owned  outlets. 
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 Viewpoint  Diversity  in  Cross-  Owned  Newspapers  and  Television  Stations:  A  Study  of  News  Coverage  of  the 
 2000  Presidential  Campaign 


 INTRODUCTION 
 In  1975  the  Federal  Communications  Commission  adopted  a  rule  prohibiting  a  company 
 that  owned  a  newspaper  in  a  community  from  obtaining  a  license  for  a  broadcast  station  in  the 
 same  community.  1  When  it  adopted  the  rule,  the  Commission  said  that  it  is  unrealistic  to  expect 
 true  diversity  from  a  commonly-  owned  station-  newspaper  combination.  The  concern  was  not 
 only  that  local  cross-  ownership  might  result  in  a  reduction  of  viewpoint  diversity  in  the 
 community's  media,  but  also  that  a  single  owner  might  actively  manipulate  the  news 
 disseminated  by  its  newspaper  and  broadcast  properties  in  an  attempt  to  influence  local  public 
 opinion.  The  Commission  offered  no  systematic  evidence  to  support  its  view  that  cross-ownership 
 has  a  negative  impact  on  the  range  of  viewpoints  circulating  within  a  community.  2 
 In  light  of  its  concern  about  viewpoint  diversity,  the  Commission  required  some  of  the 
 then-  existing  broadcast-  newspaper  combinations  to  divest  one  of  the  two  properties  while 
 grandfathering  certain  other  broadcast-  newspaper  combinations.  The  Commission  also  has 
 granted  waivers  to  the  rule  for  a  small  number  of  combinations  created  since  1975.  3  By  our 
 count,  there  were  17  cross-  owned  newspaper-  television  combinations  and  10  other  newspaper-radio- 
 televison  combinations  in  communities  throughout  the  United  States  in  mid-  2002. 
 The  existing  combinations  provide  a  rare  opportunity  to  assess  the  validity  of  an 
 assumption  that  provided  an  important  part  of  the  foundation  for  the  1975  rule:  That  commonly 
 owned  news  media  in  a  community  tend  to  present  similar  views  of  important  political  issues. 
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 CONTEXT  OF  THE  RESEARCH 
 In  late  2001,  I  published  the  results  of  an  empirical  study  about  diversity  of  information 
 and  viewpoints  in  news  and  opinion  regarding  the  2000  presidential  campaign  within  cross-owned 
 newspaper-  broadcast  combinations  in  Chicago,  Dallas,  and  Milwaukee.  4  Earlier  this  year, 
 the  Federal  Communications  Commission  asked  me  to  conduct  a  similar  study  in  additional 
 communities.  This  document  reports  the  results  of  the  research  in  the  additional  communities  as 
 well  as  incorporating  results  from  the  study  published  in  2001. 
 The  central  research  issue  for  the  present  study,  as  for  the  study  published  in  2001,  was 
 whether  information  and  opinion  about  the  2000  presidential  campaign  in  cross-  owned  media 
 had  a  coordinated  or  consistent  slant  in  favor  of  one  major-  party  candidate  or  the  other,  and  if  so, 
 did  the  slant  reflect  the  interest  of  the  media  corporation  that  owned  the  newspaper-  television 
 combination?  In  other  words,  the  research  looked  for  evidence  of  whether  the  news  and  opinion 
 disseminated  by  commonly  owned  news  organizations  in  a  community  appears  to  be  slanted, 
 consciously  or  unconsciously,  toward  the  interests  of  the  corporations  that  own  the  news 
 organizations.  5 
 If  ever  media  corporations  wished  to  slant  news  about  a  national  political  campaign,  the 
 2000  presidential  campaign    and  especially  the  increasingly  suspenseful  final  few  weeks  before 
 November  7,  Election  Day    offered  an  excellent  set  of  conditions  for  such  influence.  The 
 presidential  race  was  neck-  and-  neck  in  at  least  a  dozen  important  states  as  the  campaign  neared 
 its  end.  A  coordinated  slant  in  the  campaign  coverage  of  a  powerful  news  organization  in  any  of 
 these  states  might  have  influenced  a  relatively  small  number  of  swing  voters  whose  choices  can 
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 make  a  significant  difference  in  whether  a  state's  electoral  votes  go  to  the  Republican  or  the 
 Democratic  candidate. 
 There  were  few  meaningful  legal  restrictions  on  how  the  news  media  covered  the  2000 
 presidential  campaign.  In  fact,  broadcasters  had  more  legal  freedom  to  cover  the  2000  campaign 
 than  any  other  campaign  in  recent  memory.  Early  in  the  fall  of  2000,  the  FCC  announced  that  it 
 would  suspend,  on  a  trial  basis,  two  long-  standing  rules  that  broadcasters  claimed  inhibited 
 robust  journalism.  6  The  first  rule,  the  Personal  Attack  Rule,  required  broadcasters  to  notify  and 
 provide  free  reply  time  to  anyone  whose  honesty,  character,  or  integrity  had  been  attacked  during 
 non-  news  programming.  7  The  second  rule,  the  Political  Editorial  Rule,  required  broadcasters  to 
 notify  and  provide  free  reply  time  to  opponents  of  any  political  candidate  the  station  endorsed  as 
 well  as  to  any  candidate  the  station  opposed  in  an  editorial.  8  Soon  after  the  FCC  action,  and  less 
 than  four  weeks  before  Election  Day,  the  Court  of  Appeals  for  the  District  of  Columbia  ruled 
 that  both  the  Personal  Attack  Rule  and  the  Political  Editorial  Rule,  which  had  been  in  effect 
 since  1967,  violated  the  First  Amendment.  9 
 Finally,  two  key  assumptions  underlie  the  way  we  have  interpreted  the  data.  The  first  is 
 that  the  two  major  party  candidates  for  president  had  different  views  on  the  desirability  of 
 retaining  the  FCCs  newspaper-  broadcast  cross-  ownership  rule.  Then-  Governor  George  Bush 
 was  thought  to  support  relaxation  or  elimination  of  the  rule,  and  then-  Vice  President  Albert  Gore 
 was  thought  to  favor  retention  of  the  rule.  The  second  assumption  is  that  the  companies  owning 
 broadcast-  newspaper  combinations  themselves  favored  repeal  of  the  rule.  There  is  evidence  that 
 the  future  of  the  ban  on  cross-  ownership  of  newspapers  and  television  stations  was  an  issue  of 
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 central  importance  to  major  American  media  corporations  during  the  2000  presidential 
 campaign.  10 
 Taken  together,  these  factors    the  apparent  corporate  interest  in  the  election  of  George 
 W.  Bush,  the  intense  uncertainty  about  the  outcome  of  the  election,  and  removal  of  legal 
 restrictions  on  broadcast  comment  about  political  candidates    created  favorable  conditions  for 
 the  owners  of  cross-  owned  media  to  attempt  to  influence  news  content,  if  they  wished  to  do  so. 


 METHOD 
 The  study  published  in  2001  focused  on  cross-  owned  media  in  three  major  cities: 
 Chicago,  Milwaukee,  and  Dallas.  11  The  current  investigation  added  seven  cross-  owned 
 newspaper-  television  combinations  in  six  communities  to  the  data  set.  News  and  comment  about 
 the  presidential  campaign  disseminated  by  the  newspapers  and  television  stations  during  the  last 
 fifteen  days  of  the  campaign  (i.  e.,  from  Monday,  October  23,  2000,  through  Monday,  November 
 6,  2000)  were  coded  and  analyzed.  Table  1  lists  the  news  organizations  included  in  this  study. 
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 Table  1.  Newspaper-  television  combinations  in  the  study. 
 Community  TV  station  Newspaper  Owner 
 Chicago  IL  WGN  Tribune  Tribune  Company 
 Dallas  TX  WFAA  Morning  News  A.  H.  Belo  Corporation 
 Fargo  ND  WDAY  Forum  Forum  Communications 
 Hartford  CT  WTIC  Courant  Tribune  Company 
 Los  Angeles  CA  KTLA  Times  Tribune  Company 
 Milwaukee  WI  WTMJ  Journal  Sentinel  Journal  Communications 
 New  York  NY  WNYW  Post  News  Corp.  Ltd. 
 New  York  NY  WPIX  Newsday  Tribune  Company 
 Phoenix  AZ  KPNX  Arizona  Republic  Gannett 
 Tampa  FL  WFLA  Tribune  Media  General  Inc. 


 The  study's  research  question  had  to  do  with  whether  information  and  opinion  about  the 
 2000  presidential  campaign  in  cross-  owned  media  had  a  coordinated  or  consistent  slant  in  favor 
 of  one  major-  party  candidate  or  the  other.  An  initial  challenge,  accordingly,  was  to  devise  a 
 measurable  definition  of  slant. 
 We  defined  the  slant  of  a  published  or  broadcast  item  about  the  presidential  campaign 
 from  the  point  of  view  of  a  hypothetical  interested  but  undecided  voter.  If  the  coders  judged  an 
 item  to  be  likely  to  make  such  a  voter  more  inclined  to  vote  for  Gore  than  for  Bush  (or  more 
 likely  to  vote  for  Gore  than  for  a  third-  party  candidate),  then  the  item  was  coded  as  favorable  to 
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 Gore.  The  favorable  to  Gore  category  included  items  that  were  pro-  Gore  as  well  as  items  that 
 were  anti-  Bush.  Similarly,  if  an  item  was  likely  to  make  a  voter  more  inclined  to  vote  for  Bush, 
 then  it  was  coded  as  favorable  to  Bush,  a  category  that  included  anti-  Gore  as  well  as  pro-  Bush 
 items.  Items  that  favored  third-  party  candidates,  items  that  were  equally  flattering  or  unflattering 
 to  Bush  and  Gore,  and  items  about  polls  and  campaign  strategy  were  coded  as  neutral. 
 Slant  was  not  a  judgment  about  whether  a  candidate  or  his  staff  would  have  been  happy 
 with  publication  or  broadcast  of  the  item,  about  whether  an  item  was  somehow  biased,  or  about  a 
 journalist's  intent.  Many  items  that  would  meet  ordinary  standards  of  journalistic  objectivity 
 were  uncritical  reports  of  what  a  candidate  had  done  the  previous  day.  If,  as  often  was  the  case, 
 the  items  depicted  the  candidate  in  a  positive  light,  they  were  coded  as  favoring  the  candidate 
 (whichever  one  he  was)  without  any  implication  that  the  journalist  who  produced  the  story  was 
 biased.  Slant  was  simply  an  assessment  of  whether  an  item  would  have  made  a  typical  undecided 
 voter  more  likely  to  vote  for  Bush,  more  likely  to  vote  for  Gore,  or  whether  it  would  have  had 
 minimal  effect  on  a  typical  undecided  voter. 
 The  study  coded  all  available  non-  advertising  content  about  the  presidential  campaign  in 
 the  newspapers  and  late-  evening  local  newscasts  of  the  media  organizations  under  study.  12  In 
 other  words,  in  addition  to  evaluating  the  slant  of  traditional  news  stories  and  editorials,  the 
 study  also  evaluated  the  slant  of  items  such  as  editorial  cartoons,  staff-  written  opinion  columns 
 other  than  editorials,  syndicated  opinion  columns,  guest  opinion  essays,  letters  submitted  by 
 readers,  and  free-  standing  photographs.  Each  item  was  coded  by  two  members  of  a  team  of 
 research  assistants  who  had  been  selected  and  trained  by  the  author  of  this  report.  If  the  research 
 assistants  initially  disagreed  or  were  uncertain  about  the  slant  of  any  given  item,  they  brought  the 
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 item  to  the  author  for  review  and  discussion.  13  After  discussion,  all  parties  agreed  in  all  cases 
 about  the  appropriate  slant  of  an  item. 
 For  each  news  organization's  coverage,  a  coefficient  of  slant  was  computed.  14  The  slant 
 coefficient  could  vary  from  100  (which  would  indicate  that  all  items  in  a  given  category 
 favored  Gore,  none  were  neutral,  and  none  favored  Bush)  to  +100  (which  would  indicate  that  all 
 items  in  a  given  category  favored  Bush,  none  were  neutral,  and  none  favored  Gore).  Perfectly 
 balanced  coverage  would  have  a  slant  coefficient  of  0.  It  is  important  to  note,  however,  that  slant 
 coefficients  different  from  0  should  not  be  construed  as  evidence  of  bias  on  the  part  of  a  news 
 organization.  Objective  news  organizations  respond  to  the  tenor  of  events,  and  the  last  two  weeks 
 of  the  campaign  featured  a  certain  amount  of  news  that  was  almost  inevitably  anti-  Bush  (e.  g.,  the 
 revelations  of  the  decades-  old  drunk-  driving  arrests  of  both  Bush  and  his  vice-  presidential 
 candidate,  Dick  Cheney)  or  pro-  Gore  (e.  g.,  outgoing  President  Clinton's  late-  campaign  efforts  to 
 mobilize  African  American  voters  to  vote  for  Gore). 
 The  results  reveal  the  direction  and  magnitude  of  slant  for  each  news  organization 
 under  study  during  the  crucial  final  two  weeks  of  the  campaign.  The  greater  the  distance  between 
 the  two  slants  of  a  commonly  owned  newspaper  and  television  station  in  a  community,  the 
 stronger  the  evidence  that  cross-  owned  newspapers  and  television  stations  provided  different 
 views  of  the  2000  presidential  campaign.  Whether  a  slant  coefficient  was  positive  (i.  e.,  pro-Bush) 
 or  negative  (i.  e.,  pro-  Gore)  is  not  important  to  the  analysis.  Rather,  it  was  the  magnitude 
 of  the  difference  between  the  slant  coefficients  of  a  commonly  owned  newspaper  and  television 
 station  in  a  given  community  that  provided  evidence  for  distinct  views  of  the  campaign.  15 
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 We  also  ascertained  which  presidential  candidate,  if  any,  received  the  endorsement  of  the 
 newspaper  in  a  cross-  owned  combination  so  that  we  could  compare  the  endorsement  with  the 
 slant  of  the  news  coverage  provided  by  the  company's  newspaper  and  television  station. 


 RESULTS 
 The  analysis  showed  that,  in  five  of  the  10  newspaper-  television  combinations  studied, 
 the  overall  slant  of  the  coverage  broadcast  by  a  company's  television  station  was  noticeably 
 different  from  the  overall  slant  of  the  coverage  provided  by  the  same  company's  newspaper,  and 
 often  contradicted  the  newspaper's  endorsement  of  a  candidate.  In  the  other  five  combinations 
 under  study,  the  overall  slant  of  newspaper  coverage  of  the  2000  campaign  was  not  significantly 
 different  from  the  overall  slant  of  the  local  television  coverage.  Table  2  shows  the  results,  with 
 the  newspaper-  broadcast  combinations  ordered  from  greatest  to  smallest  difference  in  slant. 


 Table  2.  Editorial  endorsements  and  slant  of  coverage. 
 TV  station  Newspaper  Newspaper  Community  Slant  Slant  Endorsement 
 Phoenix  AZ    30.43    4.69  Bush 
 NY  (News  Corp.)    3.70  +  20.49  Bush 
 Fargo  ND  +  2.33    11.94  Bush 
 Milwaukee  WI  +  5.05    8.15  None 
 Tampa  FL  +  3.45  +  13.73  Bush 
 Los  Angeles  CA    7.84    15.70  None 
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 Dallas  TX    0.03  +  6.55  Bush 
 NY  (Tribune  Co.)    8.33    14.66  Gore 
 Hartford  CT    13.16    8.67  Bush 
 Chicago  IL  +  0.01    3.57  Bush 


 One  fact  not  related  to  individual  communities  is  apparent  from  Table  2:  The  Tribune 
 Company  did  not  require  its  newspapers  to  coordinate  their  endorsements  for  president.  Of  the 
 four  Tribune  Company  newspapers  in  the  study,  two  endorsed  Bush  (Chicago,  Hartford),  one 
 endorsed  Gore  (Newsday),  and  one  made  no  endorsement  (Los  Angeles  Times). 
 Of  the  seven  television  stations  in  cross-  owned  combinations  where  the  newspaper 
 endorsed  Bush,  two  (WTIC  in  Hartford  and  KPNX  in  Phoenix)  provided  coverage  of  the 
 presidential  campaign  that  had  a  clear  pro-  Gore  slant.  In  five  of  the  newspaper-  television 
 combinations  (Fargo,  Milwaukee,  the  News  Corporation's  New  York  combination,  Phoenix,  and 
 Tampa),  the  overall  slant  of  the  newspaper  coverage  was  noticeably  different  from  the  overall 
 slant  of  the  coverage  of  the  television  owned  by  the  same  company. 
 Nowhere  was  this  tendency  more  apparent  than  in  Gannett's  Phoenix  properties.  The  slant 
 of  192  items  from  the  Arizona  Republic  (which  endorsed  Bush)  was  4.69,  fairly  close  to 
 neutrality.  The  slant  of  the  23  items  from  KPNX-  TV,  however,  was  30.43,  the  strongest  pro-Gore 
 slant  coefficient  in  the  study. 
 Diversity  of  views  about  the  presidential  campaign  also  was  evident  in  the  News 
 Corporation's  New  York  media.  The  slant  of  122  coded  items  from  the  New  York  Post,  which 
 had  endorsed  Bush,  was  a  robustly  pro-  Bush  +20.49.  16  WNYW-  TV's  coverage,  however,  was 
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 rigorously  neutral;  the  television  slant  coefficient  of  3.70  was  the  result  of  1  pro-  Gore  item  out 
 of  27  coded.  The  other  26  televised  items  were  neutral. 
 In  Milwaukee,  the  Journal  Sentinel's  coverage  was  a  mildly  pro-  Gore  8.15,  while 
 WTMJ-  TV,  also  owned  by  Journal  Communications,  provided  coverage  that  was  somewhat  pro-Bush 
 (+  5.05).  It  is  worth  noting  that  a  separate  analysis  of  Journal  Communications'  Milwaukee 
 radio  station  showed  its  coverage  of  the  presidential  campaign  to  be  powerfully  pro-  Bush.  17  In 
 Fargo,  Forum  Communications  newspaper,  which  endorsed  Bush,  provided  pro-  Gore  coverage 
 of  the  presidential  campaign  (  11.94).  The  associated  television  station,  WDAY-  TV,  provided 
 very  balanced  coverage  (+  2.33). 
 A  similar  trend  was  apparent  in  the  Tampa/  St.  Petersburg  market.  The  overall  slant 
 coefficient  of  Media  General's  Tampa  Tribune,  which  endorsed  Bush,  was  a  clear  pro-  Bush 
 +13.73.  Almost  all  of  WFLA-  TV's  coverage,  on  the  other  hand,  was  neutral  (56  of  the  58 
 televised  items  were  coded  neutral). 
 In  the  other  newspaper-  television  combinations  under  study,  there  was  no  meaningful 
 difference  between  the  overall  slants  of  the  newspaper  and  television  coverage  of  the  campaign. 
 There  was,  to  be  sure,  coverage  whose  slant  contrasted  with  the  newspaper's  editorial 
 endorsement  (e.  g.,  the  newspaper-  television  combinations  in  Hartford  and  Phoenix)  as  well  as  a 
 wide  diversity  of  viewpoints  in  the  pages  of  monopoly  newspapers.  18 


 DISCUSSION 
 Given  the  limited  number  of  observations  in  this  study,  we  cannot  draw  firm  or  sweeping 
 conclusions  about  the  implications  of  our  findings.  However,  for  the  ten  markets  studied,  our 
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 analysis  of  the  coverage  of  last  two  weeks  of  the  2000  presidential  campaign  suggests  that 
 common  ownership  of  a  newspaper  and  a  television  station  in  a  community  does  not  result  in  a 
 predictable  pattern  of  news  coverage  and  commentary  on  important  political  events  between  the 
 commonly-  owned  outlets.  This  is  not  to  say  that  the  news  organizations  under  study  presented  a 
 vast  range  of  viewpoints  or  that  their  news  coverage  was  helpful  in  enabling  citizens  to  make 
 informed  choices  on  Election  Day.  It  is  to  say,  however,  that  we  found  no  generalized  evidence 
 of  ownership  manipulation  of  the  news  in  the  situations  of  local  cross-  ownership  we  studied. 
 Different  news  organizations  owned  by  the  same  company  tended  to  do  things 
 differently,  sometimes  favoring  Bush,  sometimes  favoring  Gore,  and  often  favoring  neither.  As 
 our  previous  study  showed,  editorial  pages  carried  not  only  management's  opinion  but  also  many 
 other  opinions,  including  a  substantial  number  of  letters,  guest  columns,  and  syndicated  columns 
 that  offered  readers  a  range  of  viewpoints.  The  slant  of  campaign  coverage  broadcast  by  a 
 company's  radio  and  television  stations  sometimes  differed  from  the  slant  of  news  published  by 
 the  company's  newspaper. 
 It  is  important  to  note  that  we  did  not  assess  the  quality  of  campaign  coverage  in  cross-owned 
 media;  we  simply  examined  the  extent  to  which  commonly  owned  media  took  a  common 
 slant  on  the  campaign.  In  five  of  the  combinations,  the  results  enable  us  to  say  with  some 
 confidence  that  the  slant  of  the  newspaper's  coverage  of  the  last  two  weeks  of  the  2000  campaign 
 was  meaningfully  different  from  the  slant  of  the  television  station's  coverage.  For  the  other  five 
 combinations,  the  newspaper  and  television  slants  were  not  meaningfully  different. 
 The  data  to  not  enable  us  to  ascertain  why  both  commonly  owned  news  organizations  in 
 these  five  combinations  might  have  taken  a  similar  slant  on  the  campaign.  One  possibility  is  that 
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 an  unseen  hand  of  ownership  control  operated  to  harmonize  the  coverage.  Another  possibility  is 
 that  the  news  judgments  of  professional  journalists  in  a  community  sometimes  tend  to  converge 
 without  any  influence  from  ownership. 
 Overall,  the  range  of  viewpoints  in  the  campaign  coverage  of  the  cross-  owned  media 
 under  study  tended  to  reflect  the  range  of  viewpoints  discussed  by  the  leading  candidates  for  the 
 presidency.  In  other  words,  cross-  owned  newspapers  and  broadcast  stations  covered  the 
 campaign  in  the  way  that  mainstream  American  news  organizations  typically  cover  political 
 campaigns. 
14
 NOTES 
 1  .  Amendment  of  Sections  73.34,  73.240,  and  73.636  Comm'n  Rules  Relating  to 
 Multiple  Ownership  of  Std.,  FM,  and  TV  Brdcst.  Stations,  Second  Report  and  Order,  50  F.  C.  C.  2d  1046,  32  Rad.  Reg.  2d  (P  &  F)  954  (1975)  [hereinafter  Second  Report  &  Order]. 


 2  .  Second  Report  &  Order,  supra  note  1,  para.  97. 
 3  .  Kortes  Commun.,  Inc.,  Memorandum  Opinion  &  Order,  15  F.  C.  C.  R.  11846 
 (2000)  (allowing  co-  ownership  of  newspaper  and  AM  station,  based  on  the  fact  that  the  station  was  financially  troubled  and  might  go  off  the  air,  and  was  a  small  participant  in 


 the  market);  Columbia  Montour  Brdcst.  Co.,  Memorandum  Opinion  &  Order,  13  F.  C.  C.  R.  13007  (1998)  (allowing  co-  ownership  of  newspaper  and  small  AM  station, 
 based  on  the  fact  that  the  station  was  financially  troubled  and  could  not  be  sold,  and  was  a  small  participant  in  a  competitive,  diverse  market);  Fox  TV  Stations,  Inc.,  Declaratory 
 Ruling,  9  F.  C.  C.  R.  5341  (1993)  (allowing  co-  ownership  of  newspaper  and  TV  station  in  large  market,  based  on  the  fact  that  the  station  was  reacquiring  the  newspaper  such  that 
 the  combination  did  not  constitute  a  new  ownership  pattern,  and  the  newspaper  might  not  be  financially  viable  on  its  own),  aff'd  sub  nom.  Metropolitan  Council  of  NAACP 
 Branches  v.  FCC,  46  F.  3d  1154  (D.  C.  Cir.  1995);  Field  Commun.  Corp.,  65  F.  C.  C.  2d  959  (1977)  (allowing  co-  ownership  of  two  newspapers  and  a  TV  station,  based  on  the  fact 
 that  the  newspapers  were  reacquiring  the  TV  station  such  that  the  combination  did  not  constitute  a  new  ownership  pattern,  and  the  TV  station  had  only  recently  become 
 financially  viable). 


 4  .  David  Pritchard,  A  Tale  of  Three  Cities:  Diverse  and  Antagonistic  Information 
 in  Situations  of  Local  Newspaper/  Broadcast  Cross-  Ownership,  54  Fed.  Comm.  L.  J.  31  (2001).  [Hereinafter,  Pritchard,  A  Tale  of  Three  Cities]. 


 5  .  See,  e.  g.,  Chris  Powell,  The  Courant's  Curious  Endorsement,  Providence  Journal-Bulletin, 
 Nov.  2,  2000,  at  B6. 


 6  .  Stephen  Labaton,  In  Test,  FCC  Lifts  Requirement  on  Broadcasting  Political 
 Replies,  N.  Y.  Times,  Oct.  5,  2000,  at  A1. 
15
 7  .  47  C.  F.  R.    73.123  (1967). 
 8  .  47  C.  F.  R.    73.123(  c)  (1967). 
 9  .  Radio-  TV  News  Dirs.  Assoc.  v.  FCC,  229  F.  3d  269  (D.  C.  Cir.  2000). 
 10  .  Stephen  Labaton,  Presidential  Election  Could  Alter  Shape  of  Tribune-  Times 
 Mirror  Deal,  N.  Y.  Times,  Mar.  19,  2000,  at  C1. 


 11  .  Although  the  initial  study  analyzed  the  content  of  news  and  public  affairs 
 programming  from  cross-  owned  radio  stations  in  Chicago  and  Milwaukee  as  well  as  from  newspapers  and  television,  only  the  newspaper  and  television  data  will  be  presented  in 


 this  report. 
 12  .  Media  coverage  from  Chicago,  Dallas,  and  Milwaukee,  which  provided  the  data 
 analyzed  in  the  study  published  in  2001,  was  collected  as  it  was  published  or  broadcast  in  fall  2000.  The  seven  combinations  that  are  analyzed  for  the  first  time  in  this  study 


 represent  all  newspaper-  television  combinations  for  which  useable  tapes  or  transcripts  of  local  newscasts  for  the  period  under  study  (October  23  through  November  6,  2000)  could 
 be  obtained  during  the  summer  of  2002.  The  stations  provided  tapes  of  late-  evening  newscasts,  except  in  the  cases  of  WTIC  in  Hartford  (which  could  supply  only  a  full 
 script)  and  KPNX  in  Phoenix  (which  supplied  a  log  sheet  and  tape  of  reporter  packages).  Data  for  the  other  seven  newspapers  analyzed  for  the  first  time  here  was  not  sought  until 
 summer  2002,  long  after  the  newspaper  organizations  had  discarded  old  copies.  Content  of  five  of  the  seven  newspapers  is  available  on  Lexis-  Nexis  (Hartford  Courant,  Los 
 Angeles  Times,  New  York  Post,  Newsday,  and  Tampa  Tribune).  The  other  two  newspapers  (Fargo  Forum,  Arizona  Republic)  supplied  photocopies  of  their  political 
 coverage  for  the  dates  under  study. 
 13  .  In  the  initial  examination  of  the  data,  coders  agreed  on  the  slant  of  an  item  in 
 more  than  92%  of  the  cases,  indicating  a  high  degree  of  reliability. 
16
 14  .  The  slant  coefficients  were  transformations  of  the  mean  value  of  the  variable 
 slant  for  each  news  organization  to  create  a  more  intuitively  understandable  metric. 


 15.  We  determined  what  constituted  a  meaningful  difference  between  commonly  owned  newspapers  and  television  stations  via  two-  tailed,  independent-  samples  T-  tests  which 
 compared  the  slant  of  coverage  by  a  cross-  owned  TV  station  with  the  slant  of  the  coverage  of  the  newspaper  in  the  same  combination.  T-  tests  are  typically  used  to  compare 
 the  means  of  two  groups  randomly  chosen  from  two  populations,  enabling  inferences  about  the  differences  between  the  population  means.  Such  tests  also  can  be  used  to  help 
 assess  the  likelihood  that  the  difference  between  two  population  means  (e.  g.,  the  slants  of  all  newspaper  and  television  coverage  of  a  political  campaign  in  a  defined  period)  is  a 
 meaningful  difference  rather  than  a  difference  caused  by  chance  fluctuation  in  the  data.  In  the  present  study,  the  tests  suggested  that  there  was  an  83%  chance  that  a  difference  of 
 the  type  we  found  with  the  Fargo  combination  was  a  meaningful  difference.  For  Milwaukee  and  Tampa,  the  statistic  was  89%.  For  Phoenix,  the  statistic  was  96%.  For  the 
 News  Corporations  New  York  combination,  the  statistic  was  99%.  None  of  the  other  combinations  under  study  had  percentages  higher  than  65%,  which  we  judged  not 
 adequate  to  support  a  finding  of  a  meaningful  difference. 
 16  .  Although  more  than  three-  quarters  of  the  items  in  the  Post  were  coded  as  neutral, 
 of  the  non-  neutral  items  pro-  Bush  pieces  outnumbered  pro-  Gore  pieces  by  27  to  2. 


 17  .  See  Pritchard,  A  Tale  of  Three  Cities,  supra  note  4  at  48-  49. 


 18  .  Pritchard  discusses  this  issue  in  depth  with  respect  to  cross-  owned  newspapers  in 
 Chicago,  Dallas,  and  Milwaukee.  See  A  Tale  of  Three  Cities,  supra  note  4,  at  42-  49. 
17