Challenging Big Media

How can democracy - which requires the informed consent of the governed - work unless citizens have the broadest possible variety in what they see, hear, watch, and read? How can an open society address complex social, economic, and political challenges without a robust discourse among diverse viewpoints? Can the principles of self-government apply if citizens lack information on local issues - school board meetings, city council races, municipal zoning hearings? These are some of the key issues grassroots organizers are confronting as they work to create a movement for media reform and justice.

We all have our own ideas, experiences, and assumptions about how social change occurs, and as funders we invest accordingly. But I would suggest that in the media sector we're all still learning what's most effective in a policy environment that changes daily.

Becky Lentz, The Ford Foundation

The content of this page was extracted from a funder briefing entitled, "The Role of Grassroots Organizers in Challenging Media Consolidation in the U.S." hosted by the Ford Foundation and organized by Grantmakers in Film and Electronic Media's Working Group on Media Policy and co-sponsored by the Funders Committee on Civic Participation, Grantmakers in the Arts, the MediaWorks Initiative, the National Network of Grantmakers, the Neightborhood Funders Group, and the New York Regional Association of Grantmakers. The content was adapted from a report written by Neil F. Carlson.

DOWNLOAD the complete summary report or the complete transcripts of the convening.

CONTENTS
1. Introduction
2. Making Policy Resonate at the Grassroots
3. Speaking Out
4. From Breaking the Law to Making the Law
5. The Double Bind
6. Listening to Consumers
7. Building Networks of Trust
8. Sustaining Grassroots Action
9. Strengthening Local Strategies
10. Conclusion
11. Time Line: Media Ownership & the FCC
12. Time Line: The Movement Against Media Monopoly
13. The FCC: Some Background
14. Bios of Participants

Introduction
Media Ownership - a Catalyst for Change

People know what it means when a media mogul owns a newspaper, a radio, and a television station all in one town. It means the silencing of the majority. And it means pushing through one corporate view, that everyone had a visceral response to, that it wasn't democratic, that it actually subverts a democratic society.

Amy Goodman, "Democracy Now!"

The growing movement for media reform and justice is proving that grassroots organizing can make a difference, and that citizens have a voice when it comes to government regulation of corporate media. Over the last several years, grassroots media activism has gained tremendous momentum - and won key battles - as the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), the agency that regulates broadcast media and telecommunications, attempted to loosen media ownership rules in 2003 (see Movement Time Line).

The consolidation of media ownership has increased dramatically over the last 25 years, as the FCC has gradually lifted caps on media ownership, allowing a handful of corporations to own the vast majority of media outlets in the United States (see Ownership Time Line) For a pluralistic society, the implications are alarming. Many believe that democracy is weakened when local concerns, diverse voices, and independently produced programs are diminished or eliminated from the mass media in favor of programming that reflects commercial corporate interests. For media activists this has been an opportunity to galvanize labor organizations, the working poor, consumer groups, and a wide range of social justice allies. Interestingly, this is a movement that has attracted people across party lines. But even as the movement grows, grassroots activists have to contend with shoestring budgets, little or no paid staff, and the challenge of convincing grantmakers that media policy is a vital issue.

With tactics ranging from letter-writing campaigns to public events and demonstrations, from building community radio stations to creative street theater, activists have enlivened the public's awareness and understanding of media issues. The fact that over 2 million people responded in opposition to the FCC's plan to further deregulate media ownership indicates that this movement is a force to be reckoned with, and one that is continuing to broaden its base. Battles over media are likely to intensify. Winning one round with the FCC is a major accomplishment, but there are more fights to come over media ownership and other complex policy issues. Local battles are also of great importance to media activists. Grassroots organizers are working with communities to monitor coverage of local issues and ethnic stereotypes, preserve public access cable stations, and create forums for people to express how media can better serve their interests.

Combining local, national, and even global perspectives, grassroots media activists are working to implement long-term strategies while poised to respond quickly to shifting policies. Working on shoestring budgets, grassroots organizations must grapple with sustainability and the need to bring larger constituencies into the fold.

It took a lot of people to bring this issue to the forefront of the nation's consciousness. It took people raising their voices in books, in articles, in song, in all kinds of forms, pamphlets -- whatever kind of media you can think of -- to drag this issue front and center to force the issue of media concentration out of the esoteric pages of the federal register and into the mainstream of America's consciousness. And what an impressive display of public concern and public wrath that was. Imagine 2.3 million Americans contacting the federal agency. I didn't know there were 2.3 million Americans who even knew there was such an entity as the Federal Communications Commission. But citizens across this land stood up in never before seen numbers to express their concern about what was happening to the airwaves and to reclaim their rights to the airwaves that they own.

You know, we're called a 50/50 nation now or maybe a 51/49 nation -- but on this issue we saw groups from the left and the right. We saw Republicans as well as Democrats, North and South, young and old, concerned parents, creative artists, consumer groups, labor organizations, civil rights groups, all fighting together for more diversity in their media. They fought in the red states, they fought in the blue states, and it became an all-American grassroots issue.

Michael Copps, FCC Commissioner

---

Speaking Out
Public Meetings Transform Media Policy

Grassroots media activism was given a boost when Reclaim the Media hosted their founding conference during the 2002 National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) meeting in Seattle, Washington. Knowing the FCC ownership ruleswere coming up for review, Executive Director Jonathan Lawson saw the NAB meeting as an opportunity to energize Seattle activists and bring together other grassroots organizers working on media reform in other parts of the country. The massive five-day event became the strategic launch site of the campaign against the FCC ruling that included Media Tank and other activist organizations.

In the spring of 2003, Seattle became the venue for one of the unofficial hearings on media reform that FCC Commissioners Michael Copps and Jonathan Adelstein had planned. Copps and Adelstein were the only two commissioners to oppose the FCC's move to loosen ownership rules, and they believed it was important to hold public hearings, despite not having official support from the FCC, and find out how citizens across the country felt about media consolidation. The original idea was to hold the hearing in Seattle in a classroom at the University of Washington. Reclaim the Media decided it was time to think big.

Organizing with labor groups, community groups, local government officials, and some well-known musicians, Reclaim the Media transformed the event into combination FCC hearing and rock-and-roll show that brought out 800 people. Using terminals with Media Tank's software for filing comments to the FCC, people could immediately participate on several levels, speaking out and writing directly to the FCC. Lawson says the impact was especially important with Commissioner Adelstein. "He began to feel free to speak and feel empowered, like we had his back. So he became more of a public advocate for the positions that he and Commissioner Copps have so ably advocated for."

Reclaim the Media has continued to seek public engagement around media justice and is participating in the grassroots cable campaign, which, along with other urgent actions, is a long-term effort that Lawson says requires nationwide networking among grassroots organizations and Washington, D.C., advocates.

"These are struggles that take a very long time, and the measurable markers of success, like winning a policy battle at a local level, are very hard won. And really we're looking at a five- to ten-year time line instead of a one- or two-year thing. So just generating these networks and establishing them is an important goal unto itself that we've begun to attain."

---

From Breaking the Law to Making the Law
Low Power FM Radio

Prometheus Radio Project, based in Philadelphia, is known for its community radio barnraisings that bring hundreds of people together to build low power FM radio stations and hold workshops on media production and media activism. Prometheus Radio's founder and director, Pete Tridish, believes that communities are empowered by owning and operating their own media:

"Our principle is that technology is not something that should be administered by an elite of technocrats. It's something that has to be in the service of everybody. And it's something that everybody can understand."

Tridish's first foray into radio was in 1996 as a "pirate radio" operator, broadcasting low power FM without a license. Tridish, formerly an environmental and social justice activist, and fellow activists began to recognize that having a political position and having a public voice were two different things.

"We could go out there with our sign, and we could chain ourselves to something, and we could get people talking about the issue. But our opponents would always end up on The News Hour with Jim Lehrer for fifteen minutes getting to explain why we're wrong and they're right."

Realizing that there were no legal mechanisms for setting up low-cost community radio stations, as an act of civil disobedience Tridish and some colleagues began traveling around the country helping communities build pirate stations. They gained sympathetic press, and in 2000 the FCC ruled in favor of low power FM. Before the ruling went into effect, however, commercial broadcasters convinced Congress to add a rider that greatly limited where stations could be built. "Under the original FCC plan there would have been about 25 new stations in the top 10 urban markets in the United States," Tridish notes. Under Congress's rules, there was only one station given out in the top 50 urban markets.

This hasn't stopped Prometheus Radio Project. In Maryland, Prometheus Radio helped build WRYR the first radio station owned and operated by an environmental organization. In Opelousas, Louisiana, the Southern Development Foundation's radio station serves not only as a crucible for public conversations about school reform and local development but also as the only broadcast outlet for local zydeco music. But the greatest radio success comes from the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW), a group that represents migrant farmworkers in southern Florida. Earlier this year, CIW used its radio station to organize over 300 temporary workers to demand wages from a contractor who had been withholding pay for several weeks.

Prometheus Radio was the lead plaintiff in the case that led to the Third Circuit Court of Appeals' June 2004 decision overturning the FCC's new rules. "The lesson here is that solidarity works," Tridish says. "It's that working on your particular interest is very, very important. But it's also important to see the larger issues around you. Working together, we can move these seemingly small, technocratic issues to the point where we can really win on them."

---

The Double Bind
Media Policy as a Racial Justice Issue

Malkia Cyril, the director of the Youth Media Council in Oakland, California, calls media a "double bind." As a young woman of color, Cyril grew up in Brooklyn with disparaging media coverage of black urban youth that she felt was negative and unfair. "I saw images of the communities that I was from being completely distorted," she says, pointing to the relentless coverage of drugs and violence. But the double bind is that media, from Cyril's perspective, represents "both a threat and an opportunity." At the Youth Media Council, Cyril has worked hard to take advantage of the opportunity to expose injustice and engage urban youth in media activism. It's a big challenge.

"How, then, do you access your citizenship right to engage around policy if you can neither face your decisionmakers, nor engage in the media? So it's a problem. So this double bind, this unique relationship that marginalized communities have to the media is why essentially media policy is a racial and economic justice issue."

At the Youth Media Council the strategy has been to monitor and document media content and call on big media to be accountable to the communities in which they operate. A large focus of their work has been on the Bay Area radio station KMEL. After the 1996 Telecommunications Act lifted some ownership restrictions on radio stations, Clear Channel Communications, one of the nation's largest radio corporations, bought KMEL, a Bay Area hip-hop station and a touchstone for the local African-American community. "If you need to reach young people and young adults, you needed to get with KMEL. It was a good thing," Cyril says. After the sale, Clear Channel began gutting the station of community content in an effort to boost profit. In the economic downturn following the attacks of September 11^th, 2001, KMEL fired Davy D, host of the popular show "Street Knowledge." But as Cyril points out, "It wasn't a personal beef - it was a corporate agenda." After Davy D was fired, KMEL ended the show and eliminated the position of community affairs director, replacing it with promotions director.

For the local community, the changes at KMEL were a devastating loss. "He was the entry point," Cyril says of Davy D's show. "He was a doorway. He opened a door for hundreds of people to get on the radio that normally wouldn't be able to get on." Cyril's Youth Media Council responded with a vigorous grassroots campaign against Clear Channel. The organization charted playlists, documenting the paucity of local artists. It tracked political bias in public service announcements, noting that the Youth Media Council's institutional members couldn't get their PSAs on the air but the Boys and Girls Club could. The campaign culminated in a report, "Is KMEL The People's Station?" which garnered significant attention among the Bay Area's sympathetic independent print media. The station also agreed to a live on-air accountability session, something they had never done before.

Cyril is eager to point out that Youth Media Council's activists are teenagers, local community college students, welfare recipients, and young people who have been in trouble with the law, which makes their victories especially remarkable. Empowering marginalized communities to confront corporate media is part of a bigger picture for Cyril:

"When we talk about media reform as a racial justice issue, we call it media justice. Because it's media policy reform in the service of a broader vision, in the service of a broader set of policy changes that we're looking for to make a difference in this world."

---

Listening to Consumers
Connecting Issues to Action

Gene Kimmelman directs public policy research at Consumers Union, the publisher of Consumer Reportsmagazine. Based in Washington, D.C., Kimmelman has frequent interaction with the Senate Commerce Committee, which opposed the FCC's vote to loosen media ownership rules. Still, the committee's leader told Kimmelman he didn't think they could win this in Congress. Kimmelman believes it was the grassroots organizers who changed the political tide when they got people to respond in writing, show up to protests, and voice their opinions at public hearings. Kimmelman sees this victory as indicative of how grassroots activists and Washington advocates are working together:

"This has just been phenomenal. I've never seen anything like it in this area. And because there are not these other coalitions that are easy to put together, that can win a political fight, it's even that much more important in the area of media democracy."

At Consumers Union, Kimmelman is working to continue this kind of interdependence between grassroots activists and Washington advocates. With the Web site www.HearUsNow.org, Consumers Union is providing a clearinghouse where consumers can find information about media ownership, telecommunications services, and ways in which they can take action and get involved in media issues. HearUsNow is promoting the work of more than 100 organizations and helping to connect people with local organizers and events. They're also asking more than 6 million subscribers how they feel about media and communications issues to better understand what people care about. "It's never been done before," says Kimmelman. The goal is to share resources, gather information, and forge connections between consumers and media policy. "It is just a Web site. It is the groups that will use it, the groups that will inform it, the groups who will share stories about it who matter."

---

Building Networks of Trust
New Models for Taking Action

Harold Feld, associate director for the Media Access Project, a public interest law firm in Washington, D.C., says that a new wave of organizing is underway, "something that has its roots in how the Internet evolved and is using those technologies." Instead of national groups dictating most of the media policy fights, local issues are leading the battles. Feld says this mode of organizing, along with numerous ways in which people are using the Internet to communicate and organize, is fueling the battles in Washington:

"How does what's going on with a Clear Channel station in your neighborhood fit into the broader picture, both so that those in Washington can come in and make the case to the national policy makers and show that this is not a fluke but a pattern? But also so that all of the individuals on the ground can share from these experiences and understand that they are not just dealing with a local situation, they are part of a broader national and, in many ways, international movement."

The Internet is creating what Feld calls "networks of trust," since it has made visible so many constituencies that it is impossible for everyone to know one another. But Feld also believes this proves that people want to be involved on the ground. He tells this story about defeating a state bill in Indiana that would have prevented any locality from offering its own broadband Internet service:

"Now what happened in Indiana, which is, I remind you, a red state, it's the reddest state in the Rust Belt, is that wein Washington read this bill and said, that's awful. We started generating whatever tools we could, and calling whoever we knew in Indiana, saying this is a real awful bill. Here's what we learned from fighting about this in Pennsylvania in November. We'll do what we can to help you, but you guys've got to do the organizing. You're the ones who know the terrain. You're the ones who know the legislators. People got themselves organized. There was no mastermind. There was no single person coordinating the plan, but the cities that had networks decided they were going to stand up and fight for them. Newspapers across Indiana editorialized against the bill."

Various citizens organizations on the left and the right got together, whether it was because they thought municipalities should be serving poor people, or whether it was because they thought, "God damn it, state government should leave us local folks alone." They showed up for the hearing for the bill last week (Feb. 2005) in Indiana, and it didn't get out of subcommittee, despite the fact that it had the backing from those invincible interests, the big local telephone monopoly and the big local cable company. They were sent away with their tails between their legs, when citizens stood up and told their representatives, "You work for us!"

Without local organizers these stories aren't always as successful, Feld stresses. But he's convinced that people care about this issue and are willing to stand up to government and big media.

"This isn't about one campaign. This isn't about one fight. This is about building an ecology of local groups who care about this, who are engaged on this, and who remember at the end of the day that we are all citizens, not serfs."

---

Sustaining Grassroots Action
National Support for Local Capacity

Saskia Fischer works with the Media Empowerment Project, which is part of the United Church of Christ Office of Communications (OC, Inc.). Working with underprivileged and marginalized communities around the country, Fischer sees organizing around media as part of a larger agenda. As she explains, "We also recognize that organizing has a distinct value in and of itself." She says, "We need to organize to build community capacity to define needs and fight our own battles."

Fischer has been working in San Antonio, Texas, with a coalition of Latino community organizations, in Dearborn, Michigan, with Arab-American organizations, and in two primarily African-American communities in North Carolina. Issues of representation in the media, particularly for the Arab Americans in Michigan, as well as access to media technology and the Internet, are key concerns. "The first questions I am asked is, 'How long are you going to be here?' and 'How much are you going to give us?'" says Fischer.

Funders and national partners need to demonstrate their commitment over time. This means dedicating staff and resources for sustainability as well as building leadership. As Fischer emphasizes, when national organizations try to work with local communities they need to build relationships and understand local needs:

"The people I work with understand very well the importance of media. They don't need long conversations about why it matters. They understand that for social justice, for the particular issues that they're fighting for in their communities, they need to address media. So the question is really one of providing them with the resources and skills, and connecting them with others who are also doing this work. That is the crux of the issue for us doing this."

---

Strengthening Local Strategies
Building National Impact

Jeff Perlstein is executive director of Media Alliance, a Bay Area media action group that was founded in1976. Media Alliance was started by media workers, many of whom were journalists influenced by the social movements of the sixties and seventies who were focusing their work on community media. Racial and economic justice is at the core of Media Alliance's work on local, regional, and national media issues.

Perlstein describes the battle over Bay Area radio station KPFA as a case in point. KPFA was the first community-supported radio station in the United States and is the flagship station of Pacifica Radio, the country's first public radio network. A few years ago, the station was under threat by corporate raiders. For grassroots activists working across social justice issues, KPFA was an essential outlet. "Media Alliance got very involved in defending the station and reclaiming it, not because we had a certain policy analysis around consolidation, etc. It came from a very real organizing need," says Perlstein. "Organizers came to us and said this is a very rare, powerful, and important space for us to do our organizing, to have conversations around what our communities are facing and what our strategies are for change."

Perlstein says that the success in eventually saving KPFA as a community radio station helped Media Alliance work to develop strategies for local media issues that could be replicated in other regions and build toward national impact. Perlstein believes that local grassroots activism is the critical link in making issues come alive.

"The folks at the grassroots are innovating strategies; they're helping frame these issues in ways that make sense to people beyond the Beltway. They're really working in principled ways with folks in D.C. to figure out strategies that resonate with people in a very deep way. And that's crucial."

Perlstein would like to see Media Alliance work more closely with other grassroots media policy activists around the country to develop long-term strategies that start with local needs but have strong national policy impact. "We need to move beyond these episodic fights," he says. Perlstein urges that resources are needed to develop networks among activists who are already engaged in media issues and those who see the critical connection between media policy and other issues, but are not yet plugged into a framework for working on media. "It's really an early part of this conversation," says Perlstein, "in making the deep change that we want to make."

---

Conclusion
The Ongoing Struggle to Transform Media

"If we roll up our sleeves, all of us -- whether we're in foundations, the academic world, creative world, labor unions, consumer groups, regulators, whatever -- I believe that we can settle this issue of who is going to control our media and for what purposes. And I believe that we can resolve it in favor of airwaves that are of, by, and for the American people."

Michael Copps, FCC Commissioner

The emerging media reform movement is at a critical juncture. On June 24, 2004, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia overturned the FCC's ownership rules. The ruling was a major victory for media democracy. The good news is that the courts sent the rules back to the FCC for revision; the bad news is that the FCC now has the opportunity to draft new rules - which may be even worse. And since the previous rules generated such outrage, industry lobbyists will likely try to limit public scrutiny in the next round.

It will be up to citizens to hold the FCC, legislators, and the media accountable. Policy advocacy in Washington is important, but it is not enough on its own. The real energy will come from a broad-based grassroots constituency, which consists largely of a network of local groups that operate according to ad-hoc consensus and shared values. Many local groups work under the radar on shoestring budgets. They have distinct needs that emerge from local conditions. For many communities, media justice is part of a broader struggle for social justice.

The success of defeating the FCC's attempt to loosen media ownership rules has empowered media reform activism. However, larger struggles remain. Transforming media policy, and more importantly media itself, is about preserving and creating space for diverse points of view, creativity, and the expressions of a flourishing democracy. Gene Kimmelman of Consumers Union puts it bluntly:

"I think what we're learning in this stage of the fight is that we can't just go back and beg the broadcasters and challenge big cable companies to create a little bit of space for us here, a little bit of space there. We have to fight the fights on monitoring and holding them accountable, but we have to have a new space. And where funders I think can be most, most helpful, is don't just look at the content, the content is critical to what people see. The content never gets there if you don't have the platform to get it there. And before the public gets the content, we need funders to help us build the platform or help us find the platform. Otherwise we'll never be able to reach real people."

---

Time Line: Media Ownership & the FCC
Source: HearUsNow.org (www.hearusnow.org./index.php?id=97)

1941	Local Radio Ownership and National TV Ownership Rules limit media concentration. A 35% national cap prevents broadcasters from owning stations that would reach more than that number of the nation's homes.
1946	Network mergers prohibited. Dual Television Network Rules bar one major network from buying another.
1964	Broadcasters can only own one station per market. TV broadcasters prohibited from owning more then one station unless there are more then eight stations.
1970	Cross-ownership of radio and TV banned. Broadcaster cannot own a radio station and a television station in the same market.
1975	Newspaper and TV cross-ownership restricted. One company is prohibited from owning both a newspaper and TV broadcast station in the same market.
1981	Deregulation by FCC and Congress. This first round of deregulation allows a company to own up to 12 TV stations (up from seven), as long as those stations do not reach more than 25% of the population.
1987	DC Circuit Court eliminates Fairness Doctrine. Since the FCC's inception, the Fairness Doctrine had held that radio and TV license holders were public trustees charged with (1) taking reasonable steps to present multiple and opposing viewpoints; and (2) performing public service reporting on key community issues. In 1987, the DC Circuit Court rules in Meredith Corp. v. FCC that the FCC cannot enforce the doctrine.
1992	The Cable Act of 1992 gives broadcasters the power to demand "bundled programming." Large broadcasters, claiming that cable companies are getting rich from "re-transmitting" their programming, prompt the Act's "must carry"/"retransmission consent" option. Smaller stations elect "must-carry" in order to be sure that all broadcast programming is aired. Larger broadcasters, however, are able to negotiate favorable contracts in exchange for "retransmission consent," contracts that often require cable companies to show - and pay for - additional stations owned by the broadcasters (bundling).
Feb. 1996	Telecommunications Act of 1996 engenders further deregulation of media policy. The Act envisions robust cross-market competition among different types of telecommunications services, eliminating Congressional bans of broadcast and cable provider cross-ownership and replacing them with a directive for the FCC to review and eliminate ownership limits as markets become more competitive. The FCC begins relaxing these limits almost immediately, resulting in unprecedented levels of consolidation in virtually every communications and media sector.
July 2001	Senate Commerce Committee holds hearing on media ownerships in which participants express grave concerns over the effects of further concentrating media ownership.
Sept. 2002	FCC announces upcoming review on media ownership rules.
Jan. 2003	Due date for comments to FCC on media ownership. Viacom (which owns CBS/UPN), General Electric (NBC), and News Corporation (FOX) all request that media ownership rules be eliminated.
Jan. 2003	Senate Commerce Committee hearing on media ownership. FCC Chairman Powell declares that there will not be a radical change in the media ownership rules, after senators of both parties express concerns about the increasing levels of consolidation.
June 2003	FCC votes to overhaul limits on media ownership. Despite having held only one official hearing on the complex issue of media consolidation over a 20-month review period, the FCC, in a party-line vote, votes 3-2 to overhaul limits on media concentration. The rule would (1) increase the aggregate television ownership cap to enable one company to own stations reaching 45% of our nation's homes (from 35%); (2) lift the ban on newspaper-television cross-ownership; and (3) allow a single company to own three television stations in large media markets and two in medium ones. In the largest markets, the rule would allow a single company to own up to three television stations, eight radio stations, the cable television system, cable television stations, and a daily newspaper. A wide range of public-interest groups file an appeal with the Third Circuit, which stays the effective date of the new rules.
June 2003	The Senate Commerce Committee approves, by voice vote, a piece of legislation entitled Preservation of Localism, Program Diversity, and Competition in Television Broadcast Service Act of 2003 (S. 1046), which would make the 35% cap permanent, unless Congress expressly decided otherwise. The Committee also approved an amendment that would restore the "cross-ownership" media rules that the FCC overturned.
July 2003	A House panel votes to withhold funds from the FCC to enforce the 45% ownership cap as part of an appropriations bill (H.R. 2799). The committee amendment passes 40-25. The full House approves the bill, signaling support for the lower 35% cap.
Sept. 2003	The Senate passes a joint resolution (S.J. Res. 17) 55-40 disapproving the FCC rule changes.
Dec. 2003 - Jan. 2004	Congress changes the aggregate cap to 39%. After voting to keep the ownership cap at 35%, both the House (242-176) and Senate (65-28) raise the aggregate cap to 39% through a rider to an omnibus spending bill. The 39% cap allows Viacom/CBS and News Corp/FOX to keep all of their stations.
June 2004	Third Circuit votes 2-1 to overturn the lax FCC rule. The court overturns the FCC's controversial media ownership rule passed a year earlier, emphasizing that the Commission's method for determining ownership limits is based on "irrational" assumptions. The Court sends the rules back to the FCC for revision. In the ruling, the Court underscores that the burden of proof was on the FCC to provide evidence to justify loosening the ownership rules. We now await the FCC's new rules.

---

Time Line: The Movement Against Media Monopoly>Time Line: The Movement Against Media Monopoly
Activism & Organizing in the Fight Against Media Ownership Deregulation (a select list)
Source: Center for International Media Action (www.mediaactioncenter.org)

October 1997, New York, NY: "The Media Mogul Tour" -- Hundreds of protesters march to corporate media headquarters, issuing "subpoenas" against media monopoly policies; "Media & Democracy Congress II" -- Nearly 1,000 attendees at this three-day conference.

October 1998, Washington, D.C.: "Showdown with the FCC" -- Protest and march of more than 50 activists and community broadcasters against the FCC and NAB in support of microradio, also called low power FM (LPFM).

September 2000, San Francisco, CA: "Slam the NAB: Media Democracy Now!"-- Protests, panels, and a march of more than 1,000 people against corporate, concentrated media.

November 2001, New York, NY: "Challenging Corporate Media: Strategy and Action Meeting"-- Gathering of more that 35 organizers from across the country. Activist e-list at Media Tank founded.

January 2002, Philadelphia, PA: "Organizing Summit to Free the Media"-- Day-long strategy meeting with media activist organizers from NYC, Philadelphia, Maine, and Washington, D.C.

March 2002, Washington, D.C.: "Angels of the Public Interest"-- Protest at the FCC. More than 60 activists and independent journalists present a "public interest crystal ball" at the FCC's door.

September 2002, Seattle, WA: "Reclaim the Media: a Community Media Convergence" -- Founding conference of the Reclaim the Media coalition, featuring a protest against the NAB and strategy sessions to plan for the fight to stop media ownership deregulation at the FCC.

May 2003, Philadelphia, PA: "Protest Corporate Media: March to NBC, ABC, and Clear Channel" -- A coalition of anti-war, environmental, and media groups team up for a public demonstration.

Public hearings before the FCC's June 2003 vote on media ownership: All hearings except Richmond were unofficial, organized by advocates and academics. Attendance is approximate and taken from newspaper reports and organizer estimates.

Jan. 16, New York, NY: Columbia University: More than 200 people. Chairman Powell in attendance

Feb. 27, Richmond, VA: (official) Convention Center: Several hundred attendees, 30+ protesters

March 7, Seattle, WA: University of Washington: 250 at the hearing, 400+ at nighttime event

March 31, Durham, NC: Duke University Law School: 150-200 people

April 2, Chicago, IL: Northwestern University Law School: More than 150 people

April 7, Phoenix, AZ: KAET Channel 8 television studio: 100-150 people

April 26, San Francisco, CA: City Hall: 500-700 people

April 28, Los Angeles, CA: University of Southern California: Attendance unknown

May 7, Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania: More than 300 people

May 12, San Rafael, CA: Dominican University of California: More than 350 people

May 21, Atlanta, GA: Emory University: More than 600 people

June 2003, Philadelphia, PA: Public interest activists and advocates file an appeal of the FCC ruling in the Third Circuit Court.

June 2004, Philadelphia, PA: The Third Circuit Court of Appeals overturns the FCC rules.

---

The FCC
Some Background

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regulates communications policies of telephones, television, radio, newspapers, wire, cable, satellite, and the Internet. One of the most powerful federal agencies, the FCC has jurisdiction over all 50 states and territories. Created during the New Deal, as part of the Communications Act of 1934, the FCC's purpose is to "make available to all the people of the United States, without discrimination, a rapid, efficient, nation-wide, and world-wide wire and radio communication service with adequate facilities at reasonable charges." The agency reports directly to Congress.

The FCC is directed by five commissioners. All five are appointed by the President and must be confirmed by the Senate. Only three commissioners can be of the same political party and none can have a financial interest in any commission-related business. From the five commissioners, the President selects one person to serve as chair. All the commissioners, including the chair, have a five-year term, except when filling an unexpired term. By tradition, the chair resigns when a new President is elected.

The FCC delegates responsibilities to six bureaus and eleven staff offices, which are organized by function. The chair of the FCC generally sets the FCC's agenda and directs the work of the bureaus. The bureaus do most of the legwork of the agency and are responsible for processing applications for licenses and other filings, analyzing complaints, conducting investigations, developing and implementing rules, and holding hearings, among other things. The major bureaus are: Consumer and Government Affairs, Media, Wireline Competition, Wireless Telecommunications, and Enforcement. The offices provide support services for the whole agency. The two most important offices are the Office of the General Counsel and the Office of the Secretary.

Source: Media Access Project (www.mediaaccess.org/fcc/)

---

Bios of Participants

Helen Brunner (Washington, D.C.) is a consultant for the Media and Democracy Fund, a new foundation/donor collaborative supporting media reform. She also serves as director of Foundation Services for Art Resources International. Brunner previously served as program consultant to Albert A. List Foundation's Freedom of Expression, Arts, and Telecommunications Policy and Advocacy Programs. She has also advised Ford, Pew, Andy Warhol, Leeway, and other foundations in the areas of communications policy, First Amendment rights, and the arts. She was executive director of the National Association of Artists' Organizations from 1993 to 1995, director of programs at the Washington Project for the Arts from 1982 to 1985, and coordinator of the Research Center of the Visual Studies Workshop in Rochester, NY, from 1975 to 1982. In her role as a visual artist, Brunner received a fellowship from the National Endowment of the Arts in 1985. She has served on numerous boards of directors, including the Progressive Technology Project, the Campaign for Free Expression, and the National Association of Artists' Organizations.


Inja Coates (Philadelphia, PA) is co-founder and director of Media Tank (http://www.mediatank.org/), a nonprofit media education organization based in Philadelphia. Since 1997, Coates has helped build and serves on the planning board of the Philadelphia Community Access Coalition (PCAC), a diverse media coalition of 80+ groups working on cable access issues. She was a co-founder of the Independent Media Center of Philadelphia, a 24-hour newsroom that served over 600 journalists and activists during the 2000 Republican National Convention. She also worked with Prometheus Radio Project doing outreach about low power FM and has over 15 years experience working with community groups and nonprofits, including the Asian Arts Initiative, Spiral Q Puppet Theater, the Village of Arts and Humanities, and the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society.


Michael J. Copps (Washington, D.C.) was sworn in as a member of the Federal Communications Commission on (http://www.fcc.gov) May 31, 2001, for a term that ran until June 30, 2005. Copps, a Democrat, was nominated by President George W. Bush on May 1, 2001, and confirmed by the Senate on May 25, 2001. He served until January 2001 as assistant secretary of commerce for trade development at the U.S. Department of Commerce. In that role, Copps worked to improve market access and market share for nearly every sector of American industry, including information technologies, telecommunications, aerospace, automotive, environmental technologies, pharmaceuticals, chemicals, textiles, service industries, and tourism. Copps devoted much of his time to building private sector-public sector partnerships to enhance our nation's success in the global economy. From 1993 to 1998, He served as deputy assistant secretary for Basic Industries, a component of the Trade Development Unit. Copps moved to Washington in 1970, joined the staff of Senator Fritz Hollings (D-SC), and served for over a dozen years, first as administrative assistant and later as chief of staff. From 1985 to 1989, he served as director of government affairs for Collins and Aikman Corporation, a Fortune 500 Company. From 1989 to 1993, he was senior vice president for legislative affairs at a major national trade association, the American Meat Institute. Copps, a native of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, received a B.A. from Wofford College and earned a Ph.D. in United States History from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He taught U.S. history at Loyola University of the South from 1967 to 1970.


Malkia Cyril (Oakland, CA) is a 30-year-old queer black writer, organizer, and media strategist. A working-class Brooklyn native, Cyril has worked with racial and economic justice youth, community, and activist groups in the S.F. Bay Area for the past nine years. As director of the Youth Media Council (http://www.youthmediacouncil.org/) and co-founder of the Media Justice Network, Cyril's goals are to build the strategic communications capacity of the progressive movement to move a racial/economic justice agenda and to build the power of youth and other marginalized communities to hold corporate media accountable for biased content and policy. She believes that communication is a human right and should not be for sale. Cyril was recently featured in the documentary Outfoxed and is the primary author of numerous articles and studies including "Speaking for Ourselves" and "KMEL: The People's Station?" (YMC, 2001 and 2002).


Aliza Dichter (Brooklyn, NY) is the co-founder and director of programs for the Center for International Media Action (CIMA) (http://www.mediaactioncenter.org/), a new not-for-profit organization providing strategic services to media advocacy, reform, and education groups. Previously she helped found MediaChannel.org, where she became senior editor and education coordinator for an information network serving more than 1,000 media-issues groups. Dichter helped plan and launch the Action Coalition for Media Education, a national media-literacy membership organization, and works with the Angels of the Public Interest, an activist group challenging FCC deregulation.


Harold Feld (Washington, D.C.) is the associate director of the Media Access Project (http://www.mediaaccess.org/), a nonprofit public interest law firm working to ensure a public voice in telecommunications policy. He is the primary author of many of the current public interest filings on spectrum proceedings at the FCC. Feld joined MAP in August 1999 after practicing communications, Internet, and energy law at Covington & Burling. From 2002 to 2003, he served on the ICANN Names Council as representative of the Noncommercial Constituency, and he currently serves as the Noncommercial Constituency representative to the Advisory Committee of the Public Interest Registry.


Saskia Fischer (Washington, D.C.) is the project manager for the United Church of Christ's Office of Communications (OC, Inc.) Media Empowerment Project (http://www.ucc.org/ocinc/mep/), which is working with people of color, women, and youth in low-income communities around the country to help them think about how media could best serve their needs and advance their struggles for social justice. Of Indian and Dutch descent, Fischer was raised in Europe and came to the United States to attend graduate school. Her main focus of study was the relationship between media and immigrants' identities in the United States. After graduating with a master's degree from the Annenberg School for Communication, she worked as a union organizer for the American Federation of Teachers in Philadelphia. Fischer has been involved in community arts projects and grassroots media as well as independent video production.


Amy Goodman (New York, NY) is the host and executive producer of "Democracy Now!" (http://www.democracynow.org/), which airs on the Pacifica radio network and more than 200 radio and TV stations across the United States and around the world. She is co-author of the national bestseller The Exception to the Rulers, written with her brother David Goodman. The book was chosen by independent bookstores as the #1 political title of the 2004 election season. Goodman is the co-producer of Drilling and Killing: Chevron and Nigeria's Oil Dictatorship, which exposed the oil company's role in the killing of two Nigerian villagers on May 28, 1998, and MASSACRE: The Story of East Timor. Goodman has received dozens of awards for her work, including the Journalism Award and the George Polk Award.


Joan Grossman (Brooklyn, NY) is an award-winning media artist and producer. Her company, Pinball Films, is based in New York and Vienna. She has worked in radio, video, film, and installation. Grossman's work has been screened and broadcast internationally. She has also taught film and video production and theory in the public schools, to inner-city teens, and to undergraduate and graduate college students.


David Haas(Philadelphia, PA) is chair of the steering committee of Grantmakers in Film and Electronic Media (http://gfem.org/content/), an association of grantmakers committed to advancing the field of media arts and public interest funding, which serves as home of the Working Group on Electronic Media Policy. In addition, Haas serves on the board of the William Penn Foundation (http://www.williampennfoundation.org/), a regional grantmaker focusing on the greater Philadelphia area, and as a trustee of the Phoebe Haas Charitable Trust "B," which supports a range of 501(c)3 charitable organizations, including media projects. From 1989 to 1997, Haas worked as coordinator of the Philadelphia Independent Film/Video Association (PIFVA), a service organization for independent film-, video, and audio makers based in the greater Philadelphia area.


Gene Kimmelman (Washington, D.C.) is senior director of public policy and advocacy at the Consumers Union (http://www.consumersunion.org/). Kimmelman is a recognized expert on deregulation and consumer protection issues, particularly in the area of telecommunications (http://www.hearusnow.org/). He is a frequent witness before congressional committees that set telecommunications policy. He was the lead consumer advocate on the omnibus Telecommunications Act of 1996 and was successful in seeing significant consumer protections added to the telecommunications deregulation legislation. Kimmelman is widely quoted on telecom issues in a variety of publications including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post. He has done numerous interviews for network and cable television news programs.


Jonathan Lawson (Seattle, WA) is co-founder and co-director of Reclaim the Media (http://www.reclaimthemedia.org/), a Seattle-based organization that advocates for media democracy in the Northwest. He also directs organizing communications for the Washington Federation of State Employees/AFSCME (http://www.wfse.org/). Lawson's articles have appeared in numerous publications including Adbusters, Yes!, and Z Magazine.


Becky Lentz (New York, NY) is program officer for Electronic Media Policy at the Ford Foundation (http://www.fordfound.org/program/media.cfm). In that capacity, Lentz directs a three-year initiative called "Reclaiming the Public Interest in Electronic Media Policy in the U.S.," which focuses on seeding the development of a "field" of sustainable institutions, organizations, coalitions, and networks that can advance the public interest over the long term. As a practitioner, advocate, and academic, Lentz brings to Ford more than 20 years of combined experience in the information services industry, state and local government, the nonprofit sector, and most recently in academia. As a grantmaker, she is a member of the steering committee of Grantmakers in Film and Electronic Media and chairs its newly formed Working Group on Media Policy.


Jeff Perlstein (San Francisco, CA) is the executive director of Media Alliance (http://www.media-alliance.org/), a 28-year-old media resource, training, and advocacy center in San Francisco. As director he has initiated campaigns for greater press freedom during wartime, expanded public input into the FCC's rulemaking processes, and increased accountability to local communities from Clear Channel-owned radio stations in the Bay Area. He is a co-founder of the Media Justice Network as well as the initial Independent Media Center (IMC) in Seattle and the Web site Indymedia.org, which now links 130 IMCs in more than 23 countries.

Pete Tridish (Philadelphia, PA) is founder and director of the Prometheus Radio Project (http://www.prometheusradio.org/). Tridish actively participated in the rulemaking that led up to the adoption of low power FM and served on the committee that sponsored the crucial Broadcast Signal Labs study, which proved to the FCC that LPFM would not cause interference. Tridish has helped build a number of low power radio stations across the U.S. as well as conducted radio trainings in Guatemala, Colombia, Nepal, and other countries.