NYTimes is Dead on With "Flawed Media Plan" Editorial Posted by Bob at 12/17/07 10:37 AM

With the Republican majority at the Federal Communications Commission poised to gut the agency's 32-year-old rule preventing a single company from owning both the newspaper and a broadcaster in the same market tomorrow, the New York Times is out with a strong editorial this morning laying out the case against the change.

You can read the whole editorial by clicking here.

FCC Chairman Kevin Martin wants to loosen the agency's so-called "cross-ownership" rule to allow newspapers in the nation’s 20 largest cities to combine with a TV or radio station as long as it is not one of the top four and the merger leaves at least eight independent media voices in the market. Martin says his plan will be a lifesaver for local newspapers that have been losing readers and advertisers to the Internet, allowing them to share the costs of news-gathering across a newspaper and a TV station.

"But you don’t get one healthy media company by combining two sick ones," the Times editorial quite rightly points out.. "The strategic challenge for newspapers is not cutting costs, but how to attract a larger share of online advertising and make money off the millions of people who read them free online."

The editorial also quite rightly points out that despite the communications revolution of the Internet and other new technologies, most people still get their local news from their local newspaper and their local television stations.

We're hopeful that Martin will still change his mind and not ram through his ill-advised plan tomorrow. Absent that, we hope that one of his fellow Republican commissioners will see the light and not vote with Martin. Absent that, we hope Martin and his two fellow Republicans will at least agree to delay the vote until more information can be gathered about the impact of the rule change on media diversity and localism.

It is difficult to imagine how a reasonable case could be made that relaxation of the cross-ownership rule is in the best interest of the public, the protection of which is supposed to be the primary mission of the FCC. We hope the FCC commissioners will remember that mandate as they vote tomorrow.

comments (0)