Reports Bolster Argument that Media Consolidation Hurts the Public

TWO REPORTS BOLSTER ARGUMENT THAT MEDIA CONSOLIDATION HURTS THE PUBLIC
[SOURCE: Common Cause]
Common Cause released two reports refuting claims that consolidated media serves the public. The first, A Tale of Five Cities, describes the real-world harm that can result when one company owns the local newspaper and its dominant television and/or radio stations. The examples cited in the report show that cross-ownership can harm a community either by shutting out diverse voices or limiting access to unbiased news. The second, Citizens Speak: The Real World Impacts of Media Consolidation, is a distillation of the comments of individuals who spoke at town hall hearings on media consolidation in 2003. The hearings were held to discuss the importance of localism in media and gave people a forum for expressing, often in vivid terms, how media concentration had destroyed local radio, replacing it with bland and homogenized radio formats, robbed of any local color or talent, and had left them bereft of news about their own communities and responsive to their need for information in a democracy. Both reports were filed Monday with the Federal Communications Commission, as the Commission once again considers changing its ownership rules to increase media concentration.
http://www.commoncause.org/site/pp.asp?c=dkLNK1MQIwG&b=192086#studies