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Keynote Speaker:
Congressman Xavier Becerra, (D-CA)
Featured Panelists:
Robert Entman, J.B. and Maurice Shapiro Professor of Media and Public Affairs, The George Washington University
Philip M. Napoli, Director of the Donald McGannon Communication Research Center, Fordham University
Federico Subervi, Professor, School of Journalism and Mass Communication, Texas State University-San Marcos
Moderated by:
Mark Lloyd, Senior Fellow, Center for American Progress
As the Federal Communications Commission revisits its media ownership rules, it must consider the impact of media consolidation on the opportunities for democratic deliberation of all Americans. Congressman Becerra will discuss the important role Congress will play in ensuring the FCC meets its responsibilities. The Center for American Progress will present a new progressive proposal on how the FCC should measure local media diversity and why it is important.
Tuesday, January 30, 2007
Program: 12:30pm to 2:00pm
Admission is free.
Lunch will be served at noon.
Rayburn House Office Building
Room B-340 (in the basement)
Washington, DC 20515
Map & Directions
Nearest Metro: Blue/Orange Line to Capitol South
RSVP for this Event
For more information, please call 202.741.6246.
Biographies
Representative Xavier Becerra, first elected to the House of Representatives in 1992, is Assistant to the Speaker of the House and is the only member from Southern California currently serving on the powerful House Committee on Ways and Means. His committee is responsible for formulating our nation's tax, Social Security, Medicare, trade, and welfare laws. Rep. Becerra is also a member of the House Committee on Budget, which oversees the federal budget process. Congressman Becerra has dedicated himself to promoting issues affecting industries critical to the Southern California region such as entertainment, high technology, health care, and stimulating free, yet fair, trade.
The first Latino to serve on the Ways and Means Committee, he has used his position to increase opportunities for working families, to improve the Social Security program for women and minorities, to combat poverty among the working poor through our welfare laws, and to strengthen Medicare and ensure its long-term viability. Rep. Becerra currently serves on the Health, Social Security, and Oversight subcommittees.
Rep. Becerra is a member of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus (CHC) where he served as Chairman during the 105th Congress (1997-98). He currently serves as Vice Chair of the 289-member Congressional Diabetes Caucus. The Congressman is also a member of the Executive Committee of the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus. At the international level, he serves as Vice Chairman of the U.S.-Korea Interparliamentary Exchange.
Robert M. Entman is J.B. and Maurice C. Shapiro Professor of Media and Public Affairs at The George Washington University. Dr. Entman has written extensively on media and its impact on democracy and race.
Dr. Entman earned a Ph.D. in political science as a National Science Foundation Fellow at Yale and taught previously at Duke, Northwestern, and NC State Universities. His most recent books include Projections of Power: Framing News, Public Opinion, and U.S. Foreign Policy (University of Chicago, 2004); Mediated Politics: Communication in the Future of Democracy (Cambridge, edited with L. Bennett), which will be published in Chinese translation by Tsinghua University Press in 2006; and The Black Image in the White Mind: Media and Race in America (University of Chicago, 2000, with A. Rojecki), which won several awards, including Harvard's Goldsmith Book Prize and the Lane Award from the American Political Science Association. For his work on media framing, he was named the 2005 winner of the Woolbert Research Prize from the National Communication Association. Entman also has won the American Political Science Association's 2006 Murray Edelman Career Achievement Award in Political Communication. He is currently writing a book called Media Bias Scandals and, with Clay Steinman, is editing the anthology Key Works in Communication. Entman serves as co-editor (with Lance Bennett) of Communication, Society and Politics, a book series for the Cambridge University Press.
Philip M. Napoli holds a Ph.D. from Northwestern University and is currently an Associate Professor in the School of Business at Fordham University and Director of the Donald McGannon Communication Research Center. Dr. Napoli is the co-principle investigator of the media diversity study.
Dr. Napoli is the author of the books Foundations of Communications Policy: Principles and Process in the Regulation of Electronic Media (Hampton Press, 2001); Audience Economics: Media Institutions and the Audience Marketplace (Columbia University Press, 2003) and the editor of Media Diversity and Localism: Meaning and Metrics (Erlbaum, 2007). Professor Napoli has testified before Congress and the Federal Communications Commission on media policy issues. His work has been supported by organizations such as the Benton Foundation, the Ford Foundation, the National Association of Television Programming Executives, the Social Science Research Council, and the Emma L. Bowen Foundation.
Federico Subervi (Ph.D. University of Wisconsin) is a professor at the School of Journalism and Mass Communication, Texas State University-San Marcos. Dr. Subervi is conducting research on media and the Latino community.
Since the early 1980s, he has been conducting research, publishing, and teaching on a broad range of issues related to the mass media and ethnic minorities, especially Latinos in the United States. His research also includes assessments of the images of Black in Brazilian television advertisements, and the media system of Puerto Rico, his country of origin. One of his most recent research projects was the "NAHJ Network Brownout 2005: The portrayal of Latinos in network television news, 2004, with a retrospect to 1995." In December he also completed a study for the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication entitled "Assessing policies related to the recruitment and retention of minority faculty & graduate students at accredited and non-accredited schools of journalism and mass communication." His book, The Mass Media and Latino Politics, is scheduled for publication in 2007. Among his other activities from his home base in Austin, Dr. Subervi directs the Latinos and Media Project (www.latinosandmedia.org), a site dedicated to the dissemination of research and resources pertaining to Latinos and the media, and serves as Chair of the Board of Directors of Latinitas, Inc., an organization and web-based magazine for Latina adolescents and teens (http://www.latinitasmagazine.org/).
Mark Lloyd is a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress focusing on communications policy issues, including universal service, advanced telecommunications deployment, media concentration, and diversity. He is also an adjunct professor of public policy at Georgetown University. His book Prologue to a Farce: Communications and Democracy in America was published by the University of Illinois Press in January 2007.
From the fall of 2002 until the summer of 2004, Mr. Lloyd was a Martin Luther King, Jr. visiting scholar at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He served as the executive director of the Civil Rights Forum on Communications Policy, a non-profit, non-partisan project he co-founded in 1997 to bring civil rights principles and advocacy to the communications policy debate. Previously, Mr. Lloyd worked as general counsel to the Benton Foundation, and as a communications attorney at Dow, Lohnes & Albertson in Washington, D.C. representing both commercial and non-commercial companies. He also has nearly 20 years of experience as a print and broadcast journalist, including work as a reporter and producer at NBC and CNN, and is the recipient of several awards including an Emmy and a Cine Golden Eagle. He has served on the boards of directors of dozens of national and local organizations, and is currently the chair of the Telecommunications and Media Taskforce of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights Education Fund. He received his undergraduate degree from the University of Michigan and his law degree from the Georgetown University Law Center.
The Center for American Progress is a nonpartisan research and educational institute dedicated to promoting a strong, just and free America that ensures opportunity for all. We believe that Americans are bound together by a common commitment to these values and we aspire to ensure that our national policies reflect these values. We work to find progressive and pragmatic solutions to significant domestic and international problems and develop policy proposals that foster a government that is "of the people, by the people, and for the people."
Scholars Attack Public School TV Program
[SOURCE: New York Times 1/22/1997, AUTHOR: William Honan]
In separate research, professors from Vassar and Johns Hopkins sharply attack Channel One, the 12-minute television program seen daily by an estimated eight million public school students in the United States, as an advertising vehicle loaded with superficial, biased and sometimes hurtful programming. "It's real function is not journalistic but commercial," Mark Crispin Miller, a professor of media studies at Johns Hopkins University, said in a paper entitled "How to Be Stupid: The Teachings of Channel One." "It is meant primarily to get us ready for the ads," he writes. "It must keep itself from saying anything too powerful or even interesting, must never cut too deep or raise any really troubling questions, because it cannot ever be permitted to detract in any way from the commercials."
http://select.nytimes.com/search/restricted/article?res=F70810FE355F0C71...
(requires TimesSelect subscription)
* Today, Channel One bills itself as "the leading source of news and information for young people." The 12-minute news broadcasts are delivered daily to more than 7 million teens in middle schools and high schools across the country, approximately 30 percent of teenagers in the U.S.
http://www.channelone.com/static/about/
http://select.nytimes.com/search/restricted/article?res=F70810FE355F0C718EDDA808…
THE MOVEMENT IN MEMPHIS
[SOURCE: Broadcasting&Cable, AUTHOR: Harold Feld, Media Access Project]
[Commentary] More than 3,000 media reformers flocked to the Third National Conference on Media Reform (NCMR) in Memphis, the weekend before the Martin Luther King Day holiday. They left filled with momentum. But the growing movement is also wrestling with the internal contradictions that bedevil coalitions that try to remain simultaneously non-partisan while still appealing to a passionate base. The media-reform movement prides itself on being non-partisan. With Democrats in power and influential progressive organizations such as MoveOn.org in the mix, will Republicans such as Senators Trent Lott (R-Miss.) and Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas) continue to support media reform? In his remarks at the conference, Bill Moyers warned that progressive movements have an unfortunate history of focusing on their internal divisions and ripping apart just when they seem strongest. Can a movement that thrived on fighting defense against powerful forces successfully go on the offensive? As someone who attended the NCMR in Memphis, I strongly believe it can.
http://www.broadcastingcable.com/article/CA6408864.html?display=Opinion
BASHED, THRASHED AND ENCOURAGED
[SOURCE: Seattle Times, AUTHOR: Ryan Blethen rblethen@seattletimes.com]
[Commentary] I did not go to Memphis to get mugged. But that is what it felt like sitting through the National Conference for Media Reform. The conference might have felt like an assault against a journalist like me who works at a metropolitan newspaper. I heard about the evils, and incompetence, of the likes of me at almost every turn. Apparently, mainstream journalists are to blame for the war, for not connecting the Bush administration to 9/11, for the plight of the middle class, and whatever other grievances could be identified. I am glad I sat through the thrashing. Folks are unhappy with the press. I do not blame them. We are living in a divisive time, and the press is partly responsible for our nation's ills and the war. I left the conference encouraged about the future of newspapers even though most panels and speakers at the conference freely bashed journalism's mainstreamers. Why the optimism? The theme I kept hearing was a thirst for a substantive narrative.
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/opinion/2003531090_ryan19.html
SUIT TO GET BROADBAND DATA DRAWS INDUSTRY INTEREST
[SOURCE: Center for Public Integrity, AUTHOR: Drew Clark]
The Center for Public Integrity is leading an effort to find out more about which companies are providing high-speed Internet access throughout the United States so that citizens have a better understanding of their service options. A Center lawsuit filed under the Freedom of Information Act is attracting industry-wide interest. AT&T, Verizon Communications and three leading telecommunications trade groups filed court papers seeking to intervene or comment on the Center's lawsuit last week. The top cable association is also seeking to weigh in. In court papers filed Jan. 8, AT&T and Verizon, together with the United States Telecom Association (to which both companies belong), objected to the release of the broadband data. Wireless Communications Association International, a trade group representing a range of wireless broadband service providers, said that it had also objected. Separately, CTIA -- the wireless association formerly known as the Cellular Telecommunications and Internet Association -- supported the FCC in a "friend of the court" brief filed Jan. 8. A fourth association, the National Cable and Telecommunications Association, seeks to file a similar brief. The Department of Justice and the FCC filed their response to the Center's complaint on Jan. 8, the court-imposed deadline. The Center's reply to the government and to the intervening companies is due on Feb.12.
http://www.publicintegrity.org/telecom/report.aspx?aid=837
http://www.publicintegrity.org/telecom/report.aspx?aid=837
YOUR GUIDE TO THE DIGITAL DIVIDE
[SOURCE: Media Shift, AUTHOR: Mark Glaser]
The digital divide is the chasm separating the haves and have-nots in digital technology. On one side are people who can afford or who have access to computers, a high-speed broadband connection and the plethora of services from online banking to social networking to blogging. On the other side of the equation are people who cannot afford the technology, cannot get broadband access because of their location, or who have learning or cultural limitations to using the technology. There are many digital divides: Rural and urban; poor and rich, African-American and white; old and young; disabled and able; developing nation and developed nation. All these factors have been studied and solutions have been debated for years. In fact, Martin Luther King Jr. talked about such a divide in one of his last speeches four days before he died in 1968: "There can be no gainsaying about the fact that a great revolution is taking place in the world today…That is, a technological revolution with the impact of automation and cybernation…Modern man through scientific genius has been able to dwarf distance. Through our genius we have made this world a neighborhood. And yet we — we have not yet had the ethical commitment to make of it a brotherhood. But somehow, and in some way, we have got to do this." Very few people remember a speech by President George W. Bush on March 26, 2004, in which he called for affordable broadband access for everyone. “This country needs a national goal for the spread of broadband technology,†President Bush said. “We ought to have universal affordable access for broadband technology by the year 2007 and then we ought to make sure, as soon as possible thereafter, consumers have choices when it comes to their carrier.†As 2007 dawns, we obviously do not have universal affordable access to broadband, and consumers have little choice for providers outside of the duopoly of cable and telephone carriers.
http://www.pbs.org/mediashift/2007/01/digging_deeperyour_guide_to_th.html
Your Guide to the Digital Divide
TELECOS TARGET GOOGLE IN 'NEUTRALITY' FIGHT
[SOURCE: GigaOM, AUTHOR: Paula Kapustka]
[Commentary] The latest round in the battle over Network Neutrality has started, and as usual the telcos have their game plan sussed out and in widespread, synchronized action. The message? Google is bad, and wants to control the Internet to keep its cash pile growing. Telcos, meanwhile, just want to innovate, so please don't write laws keeping them from doing so.
http://gigaom.com/2007/01/20/google-netneutrality/
Telcos Target Google in Network Neutrality Fight
ON THE ELECTRONIC CAMPAIGN TRAIL
[SOURCE: Washington Post, AUTHOR: Chris Cillizza and Dan Balz]
If last year was the year of the rogue videographers, the already-underway 2008 presidential campaign is likely to be remembered as the point where Web video became central to the communications strategy of every serious presidential candidate. Playing defense is only one use of Web video. Equally important, the candidates and their staffs see Web-based video as an inexpensive and potentially significant tool for telling their campaign story without the filters of the traditional media. Call it the YouTube effect, and it is only growing. The video-sharing site, which less than a year after its founding was bought by Google for $1.65 billion, has revolutionized the transfer of information via video, spawned a number of imitators and forced candidates to recalibrate choices, from their announcement strategies to their staffing decisions.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/21/AR200701...
(requires registration)
On the Electronic Campaign Trail
CONSOLIDATION, REORGANIZATION REFLECTED IN CABLE SYSTEM RANKINGS
[SOURCE: Multichannel News, AUTHOR: George Winslow]
Consolidation has once again transformed Multichannel News' list of the top 100 cable systems. Thanks to Comcast and Time Warner Cable's acquisition of Adelphia Communications, system swaps between the two companies and organizational changes at other operators, a slew of systems either expanded their footprint or were swallowed up by larger clusters. Fewer than three quarters of the systems on last year's list survived into 2007 with the same division name. And, many of the survivors have a much expanded footprint. Thanks to those changes, the 100 largest systems now serve 54,276,131 basic subscribers, significantly up from 51,013,116 in 2006 and 47,644,436 in 2003. Consolidation and reorganization's effect was most obvious in such areas as southern California, Ohio, Texas and New England, where Time Warner divisions swallowed up a number of Adelphia and Comcast operations, or in Washington, D.C., Boston, St. Paul., Pittsburgh, Houston and Florida where Comcast expanded its clusters or gained new systems. Big markets were the most affected. Last year, a system with 600,000 basic subscribers would have easily made it into the top 25. This year, that system would rank 32nd. The impact of the deal making went beyond the Adelphia deal. Cox Communications and Charter Communications systems also changed hands and for the first time Suddenlink Communications has a system in the top 100.
http://www.multichannel.com/article/CA6408713.html
Consolidation, Reorganization Reflected in Cable System Rankings
FATE OF TRIBUNE MAY REST WITH TELEVISION BUSINESS
[SOURCE: Wall Street Journal, AUTHOR: Sarah Ellison sarah.ellison@wsj.com and Brooks Barnes]
Tribune may be best known as a newspaper publisher, but its television business could hold the key to its future. All of the offers submitted for Tribune last week hinge on the value of the company's 23 TV stations, which account for about one-third of the company's profits. Industry executives note that while Tribune's newspapers, which include the Los Angeles Times and Chicago Tribune, have relatively high profit margins, the TV stations lag behind some competitors. After reviewing the offers in a meeting with its advisers Saturday, the special committee of Tribune's board that is overseeing the auction appeared to lean towards taking action on its own. Tribune could borrow money to pay a big dividend to shareholders and then explore a spinoff or sale of its TV stations. A person familiar with the process said that the company also was exploring how to use the McCormick Tribune Foundation, a charitable foundation controlled by Tribune's management, in any possible transaction. Tribune is looking at how a "self-help" option stacks up to proposals from bidders such as Los Angeles businesspeople Ron Burkle and Eli Broad, who propose a recapitalization that would give them effective control. The pair, who traveled to Chicago to personally pitch their proposal to the special committee Saturday, suggest taking on a heavy debt load to fund a $27-a-share dividend payout to shareholders. The pair see the TV stations as offering the most obvious opportunity for increasing profits.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB116943529015883356.html?mod=todays_us_ma...
(requires subscription)
* Tribune Co. May Reject Outside Bids
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/22/business/media/22tribune.html
(requires registration)
SO WHO ARE THESE CHANDLERS WHO WANT TO RECLAIM 'LA TIMES'?
[SOURCE: Associated Press]
Seven years after selling Times Mirror Co., owner of the Los Angeles Times, the Chandler family might get it back as part of a shrewd bid that could give it control of the entire Tribune Co. for less than the selling price of one of the nation's most acclaimed newspaper companies. Already Tribune's largest shareholder, the family has offered to buy the media titan and spin-off its broadcast division in a deal valued at $7.6 billion. In 2000, the Chandlers sold Times Mirror to Tribune for $8 billion, including debt. The current bid reflects the changing strategy of the family that built Times Mirror and helped shape Southern California while weathering its share of internal disputes.
http://www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/article_display.jsp?vnu_con...
Fate of Tribune May Rest With Television Business
JUDGE ALLOWS MUSIC INDUSTRY TO SUE XM SATELLITE
[SOURCE: C-Net|News.com, AUTHOR: Greg Sandoval]
A judge has ruled that the music industry is free to go ahead with a lawsuit against XM Satellite Radio, the company accused of allowing customers to store songs without paying for them. The finding, made Friday by U.S. District Court Judge Diane Batts in New York, opens the door for music labels such as Atlantic Recording and Capitol Records to press their case against the satellite radio operator.
http://news.com.com/Judge+allows+music+industry+to+sue+XM+Satellite/2100...
Judge allows music industry to sue XM Satellite