I do some consulting with the NAB on media ownership issues. Nobody wants to hand control of the media to a few corporate giants, but the FCC must address the concerns of local broadcasters in their review of the ownership rules. Individual local broadcasters cannot compete against the large online and cable outlets for the advertising revenue they need to survive and provide free programming. The change in the media marketplace since the last time the rules were updated let alone reviewed is tremendous.

Thom, every time I read one of your posts on antitrust, or those of Josh, I think, “well, that makes good sense. That explains very well how the law can strike the right balance against a sane standard of maximizing consumer welfare.”

Then I read what politicians like Kohl actually say. And I watch what politicians like Kohl actually do. They don’t care about balance. They want to show the people who’s boss. And people like the commenters above applaud, worried about, of all things, conservative, corporate interests controlling the media. And the obvious remedy to them is to give the government more power over the economy, as if people like Kohl really give a damn about the “public interest.”

Kolh is saying that there is a non-market positive externality in product heterogeniety for the media. Now whether antitrust is the proper vehicle to maintain hetereogeniety is an open question, but I think his point is relatively indisputable.

Where you diverge from Kolh is the question of barriers to entry. But pointing to blogs read by a few thousand people is not real antitrust analysis. These blogs, even if they’re in the same relevant market as traditional media, have only the barest fraction of market share. Do you think CBS stays up at night, worrying about losing market share to Daily Kos? I doubt it.

The fact is, the vast majority of America still obtains its news from the major networks. Consolidation in this arena would not be remedied in the short to medium term by a few blogs, any more than the existence of a few student newspapers circulated on college campuses.

Even more worrisome is the specific form of media consoldiation that’s occurring here. Rupert Murdoch and Clear Channel have a clear conservative agenda that they’re attempting to ram down the public’s throat, through the use of misleading headers (remember Fox News’s use of Mark Foley (D-Fl.)?), filtered stories, and downright falsities (the Barak Obama “madrassa” “story”?).

It’s no coincidence that Fox News viewers are out of touch with even very basic fact of US foriegn policy. (see http://thinkprogress.org/2007/04/16/daily-show-fox-knowledge/)

BILL MOYERS: We interviewed a former reporter at CNN who had been there through that period. And this reporter said this quote, “Everybody on staff just sort of knew not to push too hard to do stories critical of the Bush Administration.”

[Former CNN CEO] WALTER ISAACSON: Especially right after 9/11. Especially when the war in Afghanistan is going on. There was a real sense that you don’t get that critical of a government that’s leading us in war time.

SOLDIER: Move out!

BILL MOYERS: When American forces went after the terrorist bases in Afghanistan, network and cable news reported the civilian casualties…the patriot police came knocking.

WALTER ISAACSON: We’d put it on the air and by nature of a 24 hour TV network, it was replaying over and over again. So, you would get phone calls. You would get advertisers. You would get the Administration.

BILL MOYERS: You said pressure from advertisers?

WALTER ISAACSON: Not direct pressure from advertisers, but big people in corporations were calling up and saying, ‘You’re being anti-American here.’

BILL MOYERS: So Isaacson sent his staff a memo, leaked to THE WASHINGTON POST: ‘It seems perverse’ he said, ‘to focus too much on the casualties or hardship in Afghanistan,”

Q: Who owns CNN?

A: TIME-WARNER TBS – AOL (donated 1.6 million to GW’s 2000 campaign)

NBC is owned by General Electric, a major supplier of military hardware to the United States military.

Then there’s Fox News & Rupert Murdoch …

The problem with media consolidation isn’t anti-competitive practices. The problem with media consolidation is that the same companies who benefit from policy decisions of war and peace, or of public health (Rupert Murdoch: Member of BOard of Directors of Philip Morris), or of energy policy, own the media most Americans believe to be legitimate purveyors of “news.”

Kohl isn’t off the mark. Increasingly consolidated media contributed to our country’s plunge into a disastrous war. Where were the multiplicity of voices, or thorough journalism as to the utter flimsiness of the Bush Admin’s case for war against Iraq? Sure, some of these voices were on the internet – but it’s as true during the run-up to the war as it is today that the vast majority of people in America rely upon television as their primary source for information about policy decisions.*

If we are to believe that a corporation is comprised of rational actors seeking to maximize utility, then would not a corporation which owns both a weapon-making factory and a news channel use its new channel to sell (or at least not problematize) a war? Sounds like a good profit-maximizing strategy to me.

* (Maybe the network and cable news are established brands, and eventually “new media” will brand itself as the networks’ equal, but that time is not now, nor is it IMO near.)