The new Federal Communications Commission (FCC) ruling will make it easier for a handful of media moguls to control most of the news and entertainment we experience. African-American and other minority-owned and independent media are likely to be especially hard hit.
The black press and black-owned radio stations around the country historically have been an important independent source of news and entertainment. When mainstream media refused to cover lynchings and other forms of racist violence in the 1930s and '40s, black media did. When black performers and writers were ignored by arts and culture editors, black media celebrated and showcased their talents.
Newspapers like the Amsterdam News and the Baltimore Afro American, and radio stations like WVON in Chicago and WJLB in Detroit, have been vital centers of cultural and intellectual life in the African-American community for decades. Lively debates about issues of concern to the black community occur on black talk radio in a way that rarely happens anyplace else. Still these businesses have always been small and struggling.
In the post-segregation era, they have had to compete for the talent and technical skills of black reporters, editors and on-air personalities with fewer resources than their white-owned counterparts. Some have been forced to sell their stations to bigger companies because they simply couldn't compete with huge rivals.
These changes undermine localism and diversity. Government regulations that put some limits on the imperial ambitions of media giants gave minority and independent media owners a little breathing space. As rules and restrictions are thrown out the window, many small media outlets could be stifled out of existence.
African Americans, Latinos, Native Americans and Asian Americans together comprise nearly a third of the population but have never owned more than 3 percent of the media.
Since the 1996 Telecommunications Act that eliminated restraints on media monopoly, black media ownership in broadcast has dropped 16 percent. This is a dangerous and disturbing trend. According to the Minority Media and Telecommunications Council's press release issued on June 2: "The FCC's decision to remove most of the structural protections for democracy in media was a profound betrayal of the public trust. ... It will make it far more difficult for new entrants, especially women and minority-owned companies, to survive in the broadcasting business."
With the very real possibility that major media will be more homogeneous in the future, the continued existence of independent, alternative and minority enterprises are all the more essential if a representative array of voices and perspectives are going to be heard. Although the FCC has already issued the ruling, the debate continues. It behooves those concerned with issues of racial diversity and media democracy to agitate and protest this erosion of access to information and ideas.
With media empires like Clear Channel owning 1,200 radio stations nationwide and, along with Viacom, controlling 42 percent of the nation's listeners and 45 percent of the revenues, we have to question how much of a free press we really have. The airwaves are not private property. They are national resources that should serve the needs and priorities of the entire country.
Barbara Ransby is an associate professor of African-American studies and history at the University of Illinois at Chicago and the executive director of The Public Square (www.thepublicsquare.org). Her biography of civil-rights activist Ella Baker, "Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement," was recently published by the University of North Carolina Press. This column was produced for the Progressive Media Project, which is run by The Progressive magazine, and distributed by the Tribune News Service.