Media Coverage of NYC Media Diversity Hearing

Media Coverage of NYC Media Diversity Hearing

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October 30, 2006

Estimado colega

The National Institute for Latino Policy joined with the National Latino Media Council-National Hispanic Media Coalition, and the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, with the cooperation of Free Press to hold a Town Hall Meeting/Public Hearing on Media Diversity on Thursday, October 19th at Hunter College. Over 400 people attended this event and more than 100 testified before the two Commissioners of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) who were present. Widespread concerns were raised about the negative impact that continued media concentration and consolidation would have the diversity of programming and staffing.

A transcript of these hearings is being prepared to be submitted to the FCC as official testimony on these issues. For further information, please contact Marta Garcia, Co-Chair of the New York Chapter of the National Hispanic Media Coalition at MediaCoalition @aol.com.

Below please find a sampling of articles that were written on this town hall meetings and the issues it raised. Reading these will bring you up-to-date on media diversity issues as they affect Latinos and other communities of color.

Myra Y. Estepa
Vice President for Communications & Development
National Institute for Latino Policy (NiLP)
October 29, 2006



FCC COMMISSIONERS
CALL DIVERSITY CRUCIAL
by DAVID HINCKLEY
New York Daily News (October 23, 2006)
SECTION: TELEVISION; Pg. 94

The two Democrats on the Federal Communications Commission called for more minority voices in the media during a public hearingat Hunter College Thursday, and both warned that further expansion for media giants is not the way to get there.

Jonathan Adelstein and Michael Copps both cited statistics showing blacks, Latinos and Asians own only a tiny percentage of radio and television stations and newspapers.

“We have an unforgivable lack of women and minority ownership and perspectives,” said Adelstein. “As fewer media companies gain more control,” they reflect less of the national experience.

Copps said the 1996 Telecom Act that allowed companies to own more stations has reduced the breadth of media voices, “and this lack of diversity is more shameful now than it was 30 years ago.”

He also warned that the Republican- controlled FCC may further relax ownership rules, noting that a loosening two years ago was reversed only after “three million e-mails” and a court ruling.

The commission now may reinstate those relaxed rules, he said, further reducing minority voices in mass media.

“Diversity is America’s strength,” said Copps. “It’s what gives us an edge in the 21st century. It’s worth fighting for.”

The Hunter hearing, sponsored by Latino media groups, drew about 350 people, many of whom addressed the commissioners in the public portion.

Malin Falu, morning cohost on WADO (1280 AM), said her years in media had been “bittersweet.” In her youth, she said, black Latina women “were never the doctor or the lawyer” in media, and today the growing diversity of the country is still not reflected in a media mostly controlled by white-owned companies.

“It’s been painful and depressing to me,” she said. “It’s important that media monopolies be stopped.”

Juan Gonzalez, a panelist and columnist at The News, noted projections that by 2050, half the U.S. population will be “minorities,” and that without media diversity, this could lead to “a de facto apartheid system, where a white minority” controls information flow to everyone else.

Betty Elleen Berlamino, vice president of CW11, suggested television station owners need greater ownership flexibility to compete with “pay-TV operators.”

She also argued that it is possible to get wide diversity under a single owner, noting the number of media outlets started and run by CW11’s parent Tribune Co.

Gonzalez disagreed. “If you have the same owner,” he said, “you won’t get diversity no matter how many platforms.”

Adelstein saluted the organizers of the Hunter session, which was informational, saying, “The airwaves are yours. They belong to the American people, not to huge media companies.”


Look to Overall Quality,
Not Just Penetration, Adelstein Tells CITI
COMMUNICATIONS DAILY (October 23, 2006)
SECTION: TODAY’S NEWS

Quality of service, not just penetration, is important in assessing a country’s broadband achievement, said FCC Comr. Adelstein, speaking at the Columbia U. Institute for Tele-Information CITI-IDATE Conference on the State of Telecom in N.Y.C. Fri. He weighed the positives and negatives of alternative regimes like that of France, whose own telecom regulator was there to defend to a mostly pro- deregulation audience the performance of broadband and IP telecom in what she called France’s sensibly regulated market.

In France consumers can buy a 30-per-month triple play with 8 Mbps speed, said Adelstein; in the U.S. you can’t get Internet service alone at that speed for that price (about $38) This is why pure penetration numbers don’t tell the whole story of a nation’s broadband success, he said, though the U.S. isn’t really among the leaders in either category. On the other hand, he said, “there are plenty of benefits to this competitive system” in the U.S., “but we need to make sure those get to the consumer.” He suggested an open-minded approach to solutions like unlicensed white spaces access, an advantage our generally less-powerful state mechanism has over France’s because it has power over those spectrum bands.

“Regulation is not the enemy of investment,” said Gabrielle Gauthey, French Electronics Communication Regulatory Authority board member, acknowledging she had a “slightly different angle” than most of the speakers at the conference. “We’re not hammering on our incumbents,” contrary to popular perception, she said. “We are in fact deregulating our markets on the retail side.” But the French market is doing fairly well for being a “southern” (non Scandinavian) country on broadband deployment and because it has a balanced regulatory framework that has certain interoperability and deployment requirements.

There’s no need to be obsessive regulators, but states need to get back some of the control taken by the FCC, said Jack Goldberg, vice chmn., Conn. Dept. of Public Utility Control. “States have become less laboratories [of democracy] and just another supplicant,” he said. It’s not a state regulator’s job to “police where the data bits come from,” he said. “We’ve leapfrogged that.” But policy has a much lower chance of succeeding if there’s no room for flexibility in the states.

Media Consolidation

Both Adelstein and Comr. Copps stressed the importance of keeping media consolidation in check for diverse coverage and cultural programming, Thurs. night at a public hearing on diversity in the broadcast industry hosted by the National Hispanic Media Council (NHMC) at Hunter College in N.Y. and repeatedly stressed diverse public ownership of the airwaves. The NHMC used the meeting to publicize its new report on Hispanic presence in broadcast media, which showed low numbers of Latino experts and commentators on TV news broadcasters, along with a high occurrence of black and Latino crime stories. NHMC Exec. Dir. Ivan Roman said Latinos are “basically invisible, unless we’re being portrayed as criminals.”

“Study after study” has shown that despite all their claims of competition, the big broadcasters still touch the largest audiences, Adelstein said. This shapes policy debates, music culture, and the news cycle, he said: “We hear a lot about spreading freedom and democracy around the world but what about improving democracy right here?” he asked to applause. But laws limiting consolidation and abuse of market share would only work “if we truly enforced the law,” he said.

Not only did former FCC Chmn. Michael Powell “eviscerate” rules preventing unwelcome consolidation, said Copps, his Commission did it “all behind closed doors.” That certainly isn’t helping increase ownership and employment for women and minorities in the media highlighted by the competition report Thurs., Copps said. Calling fighting media consolidation “my most important priority since I went to the Commission,” he urged the audience to make it “at least your number 2 issue” because the media controls the flow of information to the community that shapes public opinion and ultimately policy on whichever issues the minority community decides to make “number one.”

The meeting had sharp political undertones. Moderator Alex Morales, NHMC pres., praised the 2 Democratic commissioners for attending, saying they “always show up,” and adding “of course, 3 of them did not show up.” He thanked the Democrats for coming to allow our concerns to go on the public record.” Copps called for an open process as the FCC reconsiders media ownership rules this winter, saying the majority Republican commissioners “should venture out beyond that Beltway they bemoan so much but seem to love staying inside.” Adelstein said the majority commissioners “have forgotten that the airwaves serve the American people.” -- Ian Martinez


FCC Democrats Press
Attack on Media Concentration
TELEVISION A.M. (October 23, 2006)
SECTION: TODAY’S NEWS

Comrs. Jonathan Adelstein and Michael Copps stressed the importance of keeping media consolidation in check for diverse news coverage and cultural programming, speaking at a public forum on diversity in the broadcast industry organized by the National Hispanic Media Council at Hunter College in N.Y. “Study after study” has shown that despite all their claims of competition, the big broadcasters still touch the largest audiences, Adelstein said. This shapes policy debates, music culture, and the news cycle, he said: “We hear a lot about spreading freedom and democracy around the world but what about improving democracy right here?” he asked to applause. But laws limiting consolidation and abuse of market share would work only “if we truly enforced the law,” he said.

Not only did former FCC Chmn. Michael Powell “eviscerate” rules preventing unwelcome consolidation, said Copps, his Commission did it “all behind closed doors.” That certainly isn’t helping increase ownership and employment for women and minorities in the media, Copps said. Calling fighting media consolidation “my most important priority since I went to the Commission,” he urged the audience to make it “at least your number 2 issue” because the media control the flow of information to the community that shapes public opinion and ultimately policy on whichever issues the minority community decides to make “number one.”


Studies:
Media Consolidation Sidelines
Women and People of Color
by Catherine Komp
The New Standard (October 26, 2006)

As the Federal Communications Commission considers revising media ownership rules, public-interest groups are ramping up efforts to show the negative impact of media consolidation on local news and information programming.

Your privacy is strictly respected. Groups have submitted hundreds of pages of comments and numerous studies to the FCC in recent weeks urging the commission to prevent further consolidation of big media companies and to encourage a diversity of viewpoints and voices in the media.

The FCC sets regulations on how many media outlets in a single market companies can own. Groups fear a second wave of consolidation will exacerbate the impact of changes to the Telecommunications Act passed by Congress in 1996. Those reforms relaxed radio ownership rules, which critics say led to homogenization of content and voices.

Some of the recently released studies focus on how media consolidation has marginalized women and people of color, both as media makers and as news consumers.

According to Carolyn Byerly, professor of journalism at Howard University in Washington, DC, the under-representation of certain demographic groups in the media is connected to larger issues of inequality and racism.

“The patterns are structural,” Byerly told The New Standard. “They’re enforced by public laws and policies that give some people greater authority and greater prominence and greater access [to media] than other people.”

“The patterns are structural,” Byerly said. “They’re enforced by public laws and policies that give some people greater authority and greater prominence and greater access [to media] than other people.”Byerly co-authored two studies released this week by the Benton Foundation, which focuses on media issues, and the Social Science Research Council, a public-interest research organization. Based on random interviews with about 200 people of color in three Washington, DC-area neighborhoods, the study aimed to collect patterns of news consumption and examine whether news had an impact on community involvement.

Though nearly half of respondents said they preferred using the major TV networks as their source for local news and information, 40 percent said the news they consume does not help them understand the most serious problems in their communities. The needs they identified included “lack of income,” cost of living and the need for education and training.

For the 18 percent who relied on radio as their news source, the study found that respondents preferred three stations owned and operated by people of color.

Though the study did not directly analyze news content, it found there was a “general perception” that people of color were depicted more negatively than whites and that problems in communities of color, including poverty, healthcare and illiteracy, were neglected in favor of crime stories.

Byerly’s study, and a separate study by the media-reform group Free Press, also tried to analyze FCC data on the race, ethnicity and gender of broadcast station owners.

For the 18 percent who relied on radio as their news source, the study found that respondents preferred three stations owned and operated by people of color.In Byerly’s research, which analyzed 2004-2005 data for 12,844 commercial radio and TV stations, she found that women owned only 3.4 percent of stations and people of color owned only 3.6 percent. In Free Press’s similar analysis for the FCC’s 2005-2006 data for TV stations only, it found that about 5 percent of stations were female-owned and just over 3 percent were owned by people of color.

But researchers say that flaws in the FCC data-gathering process make it difficult to paint an accurate picture of media ownership and that the media may be more diverse than indicated. They point out that the FCC data did not count Radio One, the largest female and minority-owned commercial broadcasting company. And the FCC data does not include gender and demographic information for non-commercial stations, the researchers said.

Byerly, Free Press and other media and civil rights advocates see a direct correlation between media ownership and a diversity of perspectives and information in the media. Groups say that a lack of diversity inside media organizations, from news reporters to editors to camera people, often leads to misrepresentation and bias.

The National Association of Hispanic Journalists (NAHJ) has tracked coverage of Latinos in national network news over the last 11 years. According to the “2006 Network Brownout Report,” out of an estimated 12,600 stories on ABC, CBS and NBC, only 105 stories – less than one percent – were exclusively about Latinos or Latino-related issues. Of these stories, only five featured Latino reporters.

Researchers did find some improvements from previous years, including an increase in the length of segments about Latinos. At the same time, they also found a sharp increase on crime coverage involving Latinos, jumping from 7.8 percent of stories in 2004 to 18.1 percent in 2005. The report also concluded that in one third of stories about Latinos, not one single person was interviewed. Another 28 percent of stories only included one viewpoint on an issue.

Researchers found a sharp increase on crime coverage involving Latinos, jumping from 7.8 percent of stories in 2004 to 18.1 percent in 2005.NAHJ also reports that, for the second year in a row, Latinos appeared as sources less than 2 percent of the time in nightly news stories not involving the Latino community.

Marta Garcia, founder and co-chair of National Hispanic Media Coalition (NHMC), a group of Hispanic-American organizations focused on media coverage of Latino communities, said that although there have been incremental improvements in diversity, the media today still does not reflect the “booming Latino population throughout the United States.”

“There’s a difference when there is a culture in the newsrooms and in media that excludes Latinos as decision makers [and] as talent,” Garcia told TNS. “It does have to do with what the public is [hearing] and the images that the public is seeing on the airwaves and on the little screens vis à vis Latinos. [Historically] it has been a very negative image portrayed.”

NHMC co-sponsored a public meeting on media ownership last week at Hunter College in New York City. Garcia said more than 400 people showed up to express concerns to Michael Copps and Jonathan Adelstein, the two Democratic FCC commissioners who are staunchly opposed to relaxing media ownership rules. The FCC itself has held one out of six official public hearings so far, which took place earlier this month in Los Angeles.

Media-diversity advocates have criticized NBC Universal’s plans, announced earlier this month, for 700 layoffs and cutbacks in news programming including at Telemundo, the second largest Spanish- language TV network in the United States, which NBC swallowed up in 2001.

When NBC was applying to the FCC for approval of the merger with Telemundo, the network stated the move would “improve the quality of their programming and level of service to the Spanish-speaking Latino community.”

Opponents of further relaxation of media ownership rules say media diversity is key in shaping more equitable policies affecting people of color, women and other underrepresented groups.

“We absolutely can’t leave the media out as a major social institution that frames issues, that helps people speak publicly in what we think of as the civic discourse or the public discourse,” said Byerly, Howard University professor. “As long as we have a small, elite group of mostly male and almost exclusively white men owning these industries, I think that it’s going to be very hard for women and minorities to have their fair share of the public discourse and to shape any kind of civil society.”


What’s Wrong With this Picture?
By Kristal Brent Zook
The Nation (Web Version Only) (October 21, 2006)

Once again, all five FCC commissioners were invited. Once again, only two showed up.

It was the Democrats alone--commissioners Michael Copps and Jonathan Adelstein--who arrived at Hunter College in New York City Thursday to listen and to agree with a crowd of 350 citizens opposed to further consolidation of the media. Emotions ran high, as some waited for nearly four hours, until 10 PM, to have their chance at a microphone.

Earlier this month, a crowd of 500 showed up at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles to express similar sentiments about the lack of independently owned radio and television outlets and newspapers. It was the first public meeting on media consolidation in which all five commissioners appeared, and only then, under pressure.

In cities like San Antonio and Milwaukee, hundreds more have camped out in the chilly predawn hours for a chance to voice their concerns--speaking passionately about what consolidation has done to stifle the creativity of independent musicians and artists in their communities.

In 2003 the FCC attempted to relax ownership rules further, allowing big media to gobble up still more radio and television stations.

“[Former FCC Chair] Michael Powell sat there in Washington and said, ‘People don’t care about ownership,’“ recalled Copps, who opposed the rule changes then, and still does. “Well, let me tell you, they care. And they can get awfully proprietary about it, and awfully damn mad.”

Nearly 3 million complaints were sent in opposition to the FCC’s secret plans, which were crafted behind closed doors and did not allow for public comment.

“Citizens rose up, and it was a consumer victory in 2003,” said Copps. “But now we’re back at square one.”

Thursday’s meeting, organized by the National Hispanic Media Coalition, and other groups, was timed to coincide with the release of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists’ annual “Network Brownout Report,” which noted, among other findings that in 2005 less than 1 percent of the news stories that aired on the three major networks were exclusively about Latinos or Latino-related issues.

“Every year it shows the same depressing result,” said New York Daily News columnist Juan Gonzalez, speaking of the research that also showed “a sharp increase” in crime coverage.

“We’re basically invisible, except when we’re criminals,” said Ivan Roman, executive director of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists.

“You never see a black Latina as a professional woman,” noted Malin Falu, a popular New York radio personality and longtime critic of “the blond, blue- eyed face” of Spanish television. “We’re either slaves, illiterate or sexual objects.”

Members of the Tri-State Like It Is Support Coalition, a New Jersey-based group working to support Like It Is, the long-running news and information show hosted by Gil Noble, also made a strong showing. The group accused WABC-TV and its parent company, Disney, of undermining progressive African-American voices by pre-empting the show with sports programming and consistently slicing its one-hour time slot to thirty minutes.

Coalition chair Lisa Davis urged a boycott of Dunkin’ Donuts, one of the major advertisers on WABC-TV, to support the coalition in its decade-long battle against Disney.

Marianne Pryor of the Writer’s Guild East and a news writer at ABC News Radio said that “Nobody knows how to dazzle better than Disney. But what’s troubling is that instead of giving us information, news managers push story ideas to cross promote ABC entertainment shows.” She later added that ABC’s “Good Morning America” also promotes Disney movies.

Ownership matters, as speakers pointed out, and repeated studies have shown that minority owners report more local news, have more diverse hiring and management, and serve their communities better.

Free Press, a Washington, DC, media reform organization, recently released a study on minority and female ownership of broadcast television showing that minorities own a little more than 3 percent of all commercial broadcast television stations nationwide. (Women own about 5 percent, and African-Americans and Latinos own about 1 percent each.) Advocacy groups such as Free Press have had to do this research because the federal government has refused to collect such data since 2000.

“There’s something funky going on in America,” said Afrika Bambaataa, a founding father of hip-hop, who spoke from the stage wearing sunglasses. “Payola, mind-control.... Who is controlling the minds of the masters of the future?” he asked.

The rapper M-1, who described himself as one-half of the “all-too-political Dead Prez,” a politically conscious rap group, also made an appearance onstage. “I work for the people. The streets are my office,” he said. “And the word for the day is ‘self- determination.’ This is not just a war for oil,” he added. “It’s a war for the mind of our people.”

The FCC’s deadline for public comment is December 21.


FCC Town Hall Meeting Marked
by Concerns over Media Consolidation
By David Ferris
NYC Indymedia.com (October 20, 2006)

Juan Gonzalez, a Latino reporter with the New York Daily News, warned that further de-regulation would “make a bad situation far worse . . . We are in real danger of waking up one day with a de facto apartheid situation” with respect to inclusion of people of color in the media, where whites control a disproportionate share of media outlets.

When the Federal Communications Commission was discussing media reforms that would de-regulate the marketplace, some members of the commission said that the public would not care about which media companies could own what or how many local radio stations would be bought out by national ones, according to Commissioner Michael Copps. But if last night’s public hearing on diversity in the media is any indication, the people, as Copps stated, “get awfully damn mad” about regulations that promote consolidation and ethnic homogeneity in an already heavily consolidated, white-dominated industry.

The town hall-style meeting, sponsored by a coalition of Latino media groups, drew 350 community members and media professionals and featured a panel discussion by prominent media figures, including Copps and fellow FCC Commissioner Jonathan Adelstein. The two men are the only Democrats on a five-person FCC board dominated by Republican appointees whose efforts to change the regulations to allow for individual corporations to own larger shares of the markets has been fervently criticized by activists concerned with the lack of localism and the minimal presence of people of color on the TV and radio waves. For example, the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, a co- sponsor of the event, reports that stories about Latinos or Latino-related issues comprised only 1% of network news coverage.

Juan Gonzalez, a Latino reporter with the New York Daily News, warned that further de-regulation would “make a bad situation far worse . . . We are in real danger of waking up one day with a de facto apartheid situation” with respect to inclusion of people of color in the media, where whites control a disproportionate share of media outlets. New York University professor Arlene Davila echoed that concern. “It is a scandalous fact that Latinos have been relegated to mere consumers, not producers or owners” in the realm of the broadcast media. Members of the public also complained about the lack of diversity and vehemently opposed changing ownership rules during an open-mic session.

The commissioners, who are visiting several cities to tap into public opinion on the proposed changes, connected a free, diverse media with democracy and freedom, an idea seemingly lost on President Bush, who has supported media de-regulation. “These days,” said Adelstein, “we hear a lot about spreading freedom and democracy around the world, but what about improving freedom and democracy at home?” His comment prompted cheers and applause from the audience. Copps asserted that any discussion of policy changes should be conducted out in the open. “We need to make it an open, public process instead of hiding in our office in DC like we did last time,” and encouraged his fellow commissioners not in attendance to do the same. “[The media] belong to you...and now is the time to assert our ownership rights.”

Additional speakers included hip-hop artist M-1 of Dead Prez, Anthony Riddle of the Alliance for Community Media, Marianne Pryor, representing the Writers Guild of America, a New York City Council member, and a representative of the Hispanic AIDS Forum, who criticized the news media for favoring frivolous puff pieces over covering newsworthy matters of life and death and public health.

In 2003, federal courts overturned FCC rules that would have enabled companies to own larger shares of the market, after a wave of public opposition that included groups on both the right and the left. Now, the commission is again considering changes, though it has been dogged with continued protests as well as allegations that reports unfavorable to the new rules proposed several years ago were deliberately suppressed.


Stop the “Brown Out”
EDITORIAL
El Diario- La Prensa (October 22, 2006)

There are almost 42 million Latinos in the United States. With that large and growing presence, you would guess that television news stories would regularly feature Latino voices and issues.

That’s far from the case. In 2005, out of an estimated 12,500 stories aired by ABC, CBS and NBC, the three major English-language networks, only 105 were exclusively about Latinos or Latino-related issues. The National Association of Hispanic Journalists reported this among other trends that do not bode well for our community. Their study speaks to the lack of Latinos at the highest levels of broadcast news organizations.

Broadcast media owned by a few media corporations grab huge shares of audiences. They make decisions about what information will be covered, how it will be presented and what we will watch. As a result, we continue to miss opportunities for both Latinos and non Latinos to learn about the complexity of our nation’s fastest growing ethnic group.

The growing information hole also undermines our democracy. How does the public make informed decisions at the polls or hold our institutions accountable when a limited picture is presented? How do leaders develop policies and laws that will affect our community without the benefit of understanding our needs?

On Thursday, hundreds of people voiced their concerns about the lack of diversity in broadcast media at a public hearing in New York. Members of the Federal Communications Commission, which will consider loosening restrictions on media giants, were present to document the outcry.

We hope there will be more opportunities to express support for improving coverage of our community. Latinos need to contact the FCC and television networks. It’s time to reverse the “brown out.”



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