The democracy disaster
Activists slam proposed relaxation of FCC media ownership rules during a daylong hearing, but why didn't the mainstream reporters cover it?

By Steven T. Jones

The scene outside City Hall at noon April 26 was a surreal one. The street was filled with stretchers set up next to the San Francisco Police Department Mobile Command and American Red Cross Disaster Services trucks, as hundreds of Neighborhood Emergency Response Team members milled about, ominously clad in their orange vests and yellow helmets.

The NERT volunteers were just finishing up an annual disaster-response exercise when the free speech activists began spilling out of a City Hall hearing for a rally on the steps, bearing signs including "Stop corporate media" and "Save independent radio" and munching on free vegetarian sandwiches provided by sponsor Media Alliance.

For the NERT members, the earthquake they responded to was simulated. For those wary of growing corporate domination of the public airwaves, the impending disaster is quite real. In about a month the Federal Communications Commission will vote on sweeping rule changes that relax restrictions on media ownership, and this unusual Saturday hearing was the last chance for hundreds of Bay Area residents to make their concerns known through attending FCC commissioner Jonathan Adelstein (see "Fighting Media Mergers," 4/23/03).

"The meta-issue here is actually corporate domination of the civic culture," writer and activist Peter Coyote said, sounding a theme prevalent in the day's one-sided testimony against the rule changes. Media consolidations were deemed by speakers to have reduced competition, promoted overcommercialization, created barriers to access by independents and minorities, and censored politically unpopular perspectives.

"This is a real danger to democracy in this country," said Willie Ratcliff, publisher of San Francisco Bayview and a board member of KPFA-FM, which broadcast the hearing live, along with KPOO-FM.

Speaker after speaker at the filled-beyond-capacity hearing offered horror stories spawned by the media mergers that followed the 1996 Telecommunications Act, the last major relaxation of media ownership rules. Clear Channel Communications, which owns 10 radio stations in the Bay Area and 1,225 nationwide, was particularly vilified for its homogenized programming, layoffs, removal of community-based content, and promoting post-9/11 jingoism. Former Clear Channel employees such as David "Davey D" Cook and Brad Johnson drew strong reactions with stories of being silenced by their corporate bosses.

Panelists at the hearing included media critic and former dean of UC Berkeley's school of journalism Ben Bagdikian, KRON-TV president Dino Dinovitz, economist Howard Shelanski, hip-hop innovator Brother Jay, and radio personalities Leslie Stoval and Denise Maunder. But the hearing's high points came during the public testimony that peppered the day's agenda.

Appeals from the crowd came in passionate pleas – as when UC Berkeley professor Iain Boal called for a "reappropriation of the commons ... a seizing back of the electronic spectrum" and declared "we are many, they are few" – or in quiet and understated tones, as when wheelchair-bound senior citizen Helen Callback drew a rousing ovation with her simple observation, "FCC chair Michael Powell has said that media mergers make business more efficient. That is not the business of the FCC."

Yet just as telling as the testimony was the lineup of media that showed up to cover the event, the FCC's first field hearing in the Bay Area. Many independent media outlets were there, but few from the corporate-owned mainstream. KRON (which opposes the rule changes) was the only major television station present, while the Bay Area's network-owned stations (which all support the proposed FCC changes) ignored the event.

The San Francisco Chronicle – owned by Hearst Corp., which owns 27 TV stations, including Sacramento's KCRA, and could benefit from removal of restrictions on owning newspapers and broadcast outlets in the same market – also failed to cover the hearing even though Chron reporter Michael Cabanatuan, who is president of the Northern California Media Workers Guild, was on the "News and Civic Discourse" panel. (Two days after the ignored local event, the Chron's Web site did carry an Associated Press story from a conference in Seattle headlined "FCC Chief: Newspaper Ownership of Broadcast Stations May Create Better Programming," an unskeptical account of Powell's arguments in favor of allowing newspapers to own radio and television stations in the same market.) The Chron did run an op-ed piece by Adelstein a few days before the hearing, which was more than most other newspapers and radio stations did.

"It's not just what you hear," Adelstein told the crowd as he discussed the lack of mainstream media coverage of this historic hearing. "Sometimes it's what you don't hear."

What can you do? For more information and links to letters and petitions, go to www.democraticmedia.org and www.mediareform.net. Activists encourage citizens to put pressure on their congressional representatives to overrule the FCC action, particularly Sen. Barbara Boxer, who sits on the Senate Commerce Committee, which must approve the rule changes. E-mail Steven T. Jones at steve@sfbg.com.