Media Ownership: How about a roll-back? Divestiture?
TODAY’S QUOTE (from Benton listserv)…
“The evidence is overwhelmingly clear that further relaxation or elimination of media ownership limits by the FCC is not in the public interest.”
– Dr. Mark Cooper, Consumer Federation of America
Is this good enough? Do we want something more? Shouldnt we ask for a re-instatement of prior media ownership limits? Divestiture of assets?
Yesterday, a friend, working at TeleMundo (under NBC-Universal) told me that in Southwest market they just announced a consolidation of news departments (maybe 5 or 6) into the Dallas station… not very good for Latino media and their prospects of covering local issues.
Consolidation of ownership (take-over of TeleMundo) initiially led to additional resources for news coverage - more assets… but the whole logic of economy of scale breaks down when capacity to cover the local is eliminated.