News reports say that one of the restrictions eased by today's FCC decision has to do with ownership of both a newspaper and a TV station. Regardless of whether TV broadcasting is entitled to full first amendment protection, it seems to me that it is a violation of the old-fashioned freedom of the press to penalize a person for owning/publishing a newspaper by denying that person any privilege available to others. Thus the rules that (it seems) conditioned TV station ownership on nonownership of a newspaper were unconstitutional in my (admittedly not very expert) view.
Comments? Does anyone think there is a compelling interest involved here that would justify penalizing a person for ownership/publication of a newspaper?
Mark Scarberry Pepperdine
The passage below is from the FCC Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, which led to yesterday's action. It recites the original rationale for the cross-ownership rules before turning to whether changed circumstances have undermined that rationale. Importantly, the law has historically conceived of broadcast spectrum as a limited resources, and the broadcast license as a "privilege" that is not generally available, and that is granted selectively in the public interest. From that perspective, the cross-ownership rule does not penalize newspaper owners, but rather recognizes "new entry" in the marketplace of ideas as a license qualification.
14. Diversity. As noted above, the Commission adopted the newspaper/broadcast crossownership rule largely to promote and protect a diversity of viewpoints.46 The Commission has sought to ensure that the public has access to a diversity of viewpoints to promote First Amendment values. In the words of the Supreme Court, "[t]hat Amendment rests of the assumption that the widest possible dissemination of information from diverse and antagonistic sources is essential to the welfare of the public. . . ."47 The Commission historically has sought to promote its goal of viewpoint diversity indirectly through structural regulation, such as ownership rules.48 We note that the Commission goal of diversity of viewpoint has been particularly important in the context of newspaper/broadcast cross-ownership, given the reliance the public has placed on these media as sources of local news and information.49
45 BIA MasterAccess Database, Mar. 2001.
46 See supra � 2.
47 Associated Press v. United States, 326 U.S. 1, 20 (1945).
48 In the past, the Commission also used direct techniques of programming regulation to achieve its goal. See Review of the Commission's Regulations Governing Television Broadcasting, MM Docket No. 91-221, Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, 10 FCC Rcd 3524, 3547-3549, �� 58-59 (1995) (TV Further Ownership Notice).
49 According to a 1998 survey, 41% of Americans cited television as their primary source of local news, 17% cited newspapers, and 11% cited radio stations. See RTNDA, Americans Rely on Local Television News, Rate It Highly, and Consider It Fair, available at <www.rtnda.org/issues /survey.htm#download>. We seek additional and updated information on the relative importance of various media to the public in terms of where it turns for local news and information.
