The FCC Loses An Opportunity to Help Local News

The Federal Communications Commission just missed (or blew) a major opportunity to help journalism and community news. They decided to maintain the ban on local TV stations owning newspapers.

At a time when newspapers are shrinking, to foreclose one of the logical pathways to health – joining forces with a TV station – seems oddly oblivious to what’s been going on.

My suggestion when I was a senior advisor to a different FCC chairman was not a blanket elimination of the rule but a modification specifically geared toward improving local journalism. The idea would be to create a presumed waiver to the rule if the merger would result in more investment in local journalism and news.

But there was no constituency for such an approach. Most of the industry groups tended toward the free-market position, that allowing for the mergers would invariably help local news. The consumer groups tended toward an opposition to consolidation. And journalism groups, well, there really none of those – at least not ones that weighed in aggressively on this issue.

This approach wouldn’t have required any kind of subsidy, and it would have created incentives for media companies to invest in local journalism. But because the position didn’t fit the groove of the two main lobbying camps, it went no where.