Let me venture a comment on Mark Miller's intervention about ownership
and voice in media. An interesting analogy struck me between what Mark M
was setting out and my own investigations of the consequences of bank mergers
for communities and consumers. Actually Doug Henwood gave me a little air
time on his own WBAI show in NYC, which I assume is a holdout to the
patterns MM cites.
Part of my research into the "social consequences" of mergers involves running
some econometrics that test for racial discrimination, bias against applicants
with lower incomes, and redlining on the basis of minority residents and/or
lower-income residents. I have pooled together data for fairly large market
areas, allowing me to then split the tests up by "type of lender". This then
lets me run a horse race--in (say) the New Jersey urban areas, how are
small in-state banks doing (on the above criteria) compared to the large merging
banks, to mortgage companies, etc. These tests all use the widely available
and much maligned Home Mortgage Disclosure Act data. Enough detail.
My prior was that small banks would do the best (have the lowest estimated
levels of discrimination and redlining) and large merging banks the worst. What
I found -- 1995 and 1996 data, separately -- is that the "best" performing
lenders, those that on average have the lowest estimated discrimination and
redlining levels, are: (1) large merging banks that are operating
branches in the state in question, eg, Chase in New Jersey; (2) mortgage
companies. The "worst" performers are: (1) large merging banks NOT operating
branches in the state in question (eg, Wells Fargo and NJ); (2) small
in-state banks.
Interpretation: small-town bankers are often racist and elitist
good-old-boys, so
why should we weep tears for their demise? Doug Henwood put out this view
in a Nation piece recently, a little more strongly than I would have.
Further: it is
most interesting that large merging banks do relatively well on average when
they
are in-state and accountable, but poorly when they have no local presence. This
is a source of some comfort to the activists that have beat on local banks
for years
to set and meet reinvestment targets. When they operate near you you can make
them at least more accountable.
Analogy to media 1: small-town station owners are often good-old-boys, so
don't eulogize them. Some of that lamented "space" in local radio was a key for
me: as an old Phili
guy, I was molded by WMMR-FM and WRTI-FM--respectively an
underground rock station when that meant something, and Temple University's
then-nationalist jazz station. But the rest of the locals were exploiters or
without
imagination. George Michael of the Sunday night sports machine was once the
biggest AM disc jockey in Phili.
Analogy to media 2: large corporations and centralized ownership do squeeze
the space further. Defending the space might require something like a parallel
to the Community Reinvestment Act. The difficulties with this immediately come
to view: is there a parallel to the mobilized inner-city turf-based
movement, which
would push for and then use a communications CRA? hasn't the local
public-content
rule (or law, whichever it is (?)) already been done and bastardized?
Nonetheless,
apart from action at the Congressional level, such as a push by the Black
Caucus,
isn't it important to set up a progressive media campaign so that people can
fight
and win local battles, even if just partial ones? what about a rule akin to
the clause
in the CRA which states that a bank must pass close scrutiny on its CRA perform-
ance when it wants to open or close branches (ie, that a media station that
wants
to take over, close or transform a given outlet must "prove" that it is
being socially
accountable in a given community).
Gary Dymski
Department of Economics
University of California, Riverside
Riverside, CA 92521-0427
Phone: 909-787-5037 x1570
Fax: 909-787-5685
Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (office)
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (home)
