A Tale of Three Cities: "Diverse and Antagonistic" Information in Situations of Local Newspaper/broadcast Cross-Ownership

I. INTRODUCTION For more than half a century, a fundamental principle of communications policy in the United States has been that the "widest possible dissemination of information from diverse and antagonistic sources is essential to the welfare of the public...." (1) The Federal Communications Commission ("FCC") routinely relies on this principle as a basis for its actions, (2) and the Supreme Court of the United States has used it to support rulings in a variety of contexts related to media and communication. (3) Few scholars or policy makers would question the assertion that the marketplace of ideas, a notion at the very core of modern conceptions of democracy, benefits from the "widest possible dissemination of information from diverse and antagonistic sources." Many question, however, whether current FCC policies intended to foster diversity of news and views in the content of the mass media actually do so. Nowhere is this issue raised more starkly than with respect to the Commission's controversial 1975 rule that prohibited the common ownership of a daily newspaper and a broadcast station in the same market. (4) The rule was based on two related assumptions. The first assumption is what the FCC calls "source diversity," meaning that diversity of ownership of media outlets inevitably leads to content diversity which in turn leads to a wide dissemination of diverse and antagonistic information. The second assumption is that a single owner of a daily newspaper and one or more broadcast stations in a given market will not likely provide diversity of news and information. In late spring of 2000, the Commission renewed its support for the prohibition of local newspaper/broadcast cross-ownership. (5) The Commission reiterated its belief that diversity of ownership promotes diversity of viewpoints, quoting with approval its 1975 statement that "it is unrealistic to expect true diversity from a commonly owned station-newspaper combination." (6) The Commission offered no empirical evidence to support its view that it is unrealistic for newspapers and broadcast stations under common ownership to provide a meaningful diversity of viewpoints. This Article represents an attempt to help fill that empirical gap. It reports the results of a study concerning diversity of information and viewpoints regarding the 2000 presidential campaign within cross-owned newspaper/broadcast combinations in three large American cities: Chicago, Dallas, and Milwaukee. When it established the regulation prohibiting cross-ownership in 1975, the FCC permitted most existing newspaper/broadcast combinations to continue, including the three studied here. In sharp contradiction to the historical assumptions of the FCC, this study found substantial diversity in the news and commentary offered by each of the three newspaper/broadcast combinations. The following portion of this Article provides a brief background of policies relating to newspaper/broadcast cross-ownership in the United States. The Article then explains the context of the study and the methods used to gather data before offering the results for each market under study. The Article concludes with a summary and recommendations. II. BACKGROUND Concern about newspaper/broadcast cross-ownership has existed since the early days of broadcast regulation in the United States/The issue came up in the 1920s during congressional debate over the Radio Act of 1927, (8) though more because some members of Congress feared that the promotional power of radio might give newspapers that owned a station an unfair advantage over competing newspapers than because of any concern about viewpoint diversity. (9) The Great Depression of the 1930s caused major changes in the economics of the American media. Newspaper competition in many cities declined at a time when many surviving newspapers expanded into radio broadcasting, leading to a growing concern that concentration of ownership would dilute viewpoint diversity. …