On Local Media Ownership
By In an aside to an otherwise excellent post on the FCC, Amanda writes:
Local ownership means, on average, that the audience is getting troubling high amounts of actual news, which is good for democracy and bad for BushCo.
Is this really true? I have my doubts. The report shows that they’re getting more news, but that isn’t necessarily good for democracy, bad for Bush, etc. The conflict regarding ownership of local media isn’t between big national media conglomerates and local folks; it’s between massive corporations that are far away and very rich people who are nearby. Local capital is not, necessarily or even typically, more progressive or committed to democracy or committed to general news accuracy than corporate conglomerates. Local ownership provides diversity only to the extent that we hear news from different rich people.
Although I haven’t followed the Seattle news scene in a while, around 2000 the PI (owned by the Hearst corporation) was a good deal more progressive across the board than the Times (owned by local capital). Maybe this is an exception, but I wouldn’t bet on it; families rich enough to own newspapers (or TV stations) are not, by and large, a progressive lot.