Posted on 06/11/2003 7:12:08 AM PDT by paltz
"I want my FNC!", is the rebel yell from this generation's Young Republicans, and liberals refuse to hear it. In fact, they want more Americans to see and hear less of Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation. The Federal Communications Commissions recent loosening of regulations regarding how many media outlets a giant American media corporation could own suddenly angered liberals in both politics and media alike.
FCC Chairman Michael Powell has said changes are needed to reflect a market changed by cable TV, satellite broadcasting and the Internet. If the FCC doesn't update regulations that affect the modern industry, he maintained, outdated rules will be swept away by court challenges.
The Internet and cable television has changed the playing field greatly since ABC, CBS, NBC were our only messengers of information on the tube. Politically speaking, since the big three had nothing else to compare them to, it's no wonder the country considered these networks mainstream and not left wing media giants. When Ted Turner's CNN started up in 1980, no one was complaining. Until Republicans figured out otherwise, CNN was initially thought to be the most bipartisan news channel in the world.
Rupert Murdoch launched his 24-hour Fox News Channel in 1996. While CNN laughed at the new kid on the block, Microsoft and NBC created MSNBC to get in on the action. This television-Internet convergence happened without a peep from Democrats who scream about merging media giants and scary monopolies. They were never worried by NBC, and its parent company, General Electric, being in the same bed with Microsoft; not even when the latter was accused of monopolistic tactics in its computing enterprises.
The AOL Time Warner merger in 2000 also seemed like a wonderful idea to media elite. The Times of London reported that Turner had signed the deal enthusiastically, and the media mogul compared the merger experience to "when I first made love 42 years ago." However, after The Fox News Channel began to catch up with CNN in ratings and eventually overtook CNN in key primetime slots, Turner was no longer part of the fun at AOL Time Warner. After being pushed out by top management, he sold half his AOL shares. AOL Time Warner didn't turn out to be the monopolistic threat some feared it would be.
The Fox News Channel's success, along with Clear Channel's radio triumphs, continue to haunt liberals, particularly after devastating mid-term election losses. This is why it is not surprising to hear the uproar from the left when Rupert Murdoch bought Direct TV recently. Direct TV is America's third largest provider of subscription television. Such a prize means Murdoch does not have to pay other local cable providers to air any of Fox's programming. Getting Fox on the air in New York City was hard enough thanks to Murdoch's competitor, Time Warner (Turner and Co. again). With the help of former Mayor Giuliani and Governor Pataki, Murdoch begged Time Warner to air Fox programming, while coughing up $100 million to the cable provider. Yet after countless years of liberal media domination, the moment Murdoch wanted to protect his interests at News Corporation and bought DirecTV to transmit Fox programming, he found himself answering to Democratic law makers demanding to know why Fox news is such a cheerleader for the current Bush Administration.
"You scare the hell out of me," California Democrat Maxine Waters told Murdoch. "When they use the term fair and balanced reporting, it really means conservative and biased."
Senator Barbara Boxer complained about Fox's use of the phrase "Axis of Weasels" on the network's lower third crawl. Ted Turner never faced this kind of scrutiny when the love fest between AOL and Time Warner happened, yet he had plenty of criticism about the FCC's deregulation decision.
"I am a major shareholder in the largest of those five corporations, yet -- speaking only for myself, and not for AOL Time Warner -- I oppose these rules. They will stifle debate, inhibit new ideas and shut out smaller businesses trying to compete," wrote Turner in a recent Washington Post editorial.
"It's hard to compete when your suppliers are owned by your competitors. We bought MGM, and we later sold Turner Broadcasting to Time Warner, because we had little choice. The big were getting bigger. The small were disappearing. We had to gain access to programming to survive."
Apparently, according to Turner, the deregulation by the FCC will keep out new ideas and smaller businesses, but he also says Turner Broadcasting bought some interests while selling others in order to better compete with corporations with larger media market shares than himself. Turner must know how powerful a move his decisions were, because Murdoch's purchase of DirecTV is to prevent News Corporation from being eaten up by the bigger guys.
Murdoch owns only 2.8 percent of the media's market share, yet anti-Rupert Murdoch television ads produced by liberal think tanks would make one think he was the former dictator of Iraq looking to unilaterally takeover every media company in the world, and liberal Democrats like Turner do not want to see Murdoch's News Corporation succeed in the worse way. Censorship, stifling of competition, stifling of debate, shutting out other voices in media is the typical cry of the left and last desperate attempts to politicize this issue. The real fear is that the conservative side of issues is being taken seriously by too many Americans.
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