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This chapter shows ways the press and media corporationsFrancis have acted both inde- pendently and interdependently to create a kind& of storytelling that requires simulta- neous attention to multimedia production values and the constraints of advertising:
• It explains the reasons why contemporary mass media tends to focus on soft news, or “infotainment,” more than hard news; • and it describes the growthTaylor of what media analysts describe as a media monopoly, a phenomenon that has created difficulties in both maintaining journalistic standards and regulation of institutional practices.
Using materials from this chapter, students should be able to explain how media have evolved with trends in technology into transnational organizations:
• They should have an understanding of the challenges in reporting stories usingCopyright traditional techniques in this new climate; • and they should be able to explain how corporate ownership of news outlets affects the content produced by journalists.
Key words, names, and phrases associated with Chapter 14 include:
• “The Media Monopoly” (Ben Bagdikian) and transnational conglomerates; • Henry Luce, Clare Boothe Luce, and the rise of Time Warner; • hard news versus soft news in the contemporary media landscape; • and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and net neutrality. The Press and the Making of Modern Media 225 As we have seen throughout this book, journalistic practices commonly rely on the successes of their predecessors. Likewise, a number of the practices in contemporary media have emerged from eras that preceded the contemporary climate in which the Internet now dominates as a source of information. At the same time, changing eco- nomic, technological, and societal demands have required journalists to follow new configurations in a rapidly evolving media landscape. Moreover, the structure of mod- ern media corporations has greatly affected the creation of stories, with the difference on the content production side coming primarily from demands to meet advertising and the features of multimedia packages. We can identify the emergence of contemporary media with the dissemination of Internet use via increased access to the World Wide Web in the final years of the twen- tieth century; however, the roots of changes we see in the structure of media production preceded the Web by several decades. Our exposure to constant, breaking news, for example, emerged with the moment-by-moment news cycle introduced by cable news programs in the 1990s. Likewise, the media’s emphasis on soft newsGroup preceded both the Internet and cable media by decades, as newsmakers have often used it to attract audiences, sales, and ratings. We can also see that contemporary media for a number of reasons have included visual components to illustrate news stories to a much larger degree than did their print predecessors. Video, pictures, and interactive media have demonstrated their effective- ness in engaging readers and thereby building audiences.Francis In turn, the kind of content that draws audiences to particular outlets generally focuses on entertainment, a formula that has fueled the growth of many of the largest& and most successful media companies of our age. Finally, while we can marvel at the sheer scope of any one of the major media companies that now dominate the production of news and entertainment, the problems entailed by their size now go well beyond the jurisdiction of any domestic governing body. Ida Tarbell (see Chapter Taylor9) might ask, after all, how would the government regu- late a company that operates both inside the jurisdiction of U.S. anti-trust laws and on an international scale outside of them?
THE NEW MEDIA LANDSCAPE A recognition of the size of modern media can start, at least indirectly, with a story rooted veryCopyright much in hard news. Returning for a moment to the Pentagon Papers case (see Chapter 13), an assistant editor at the Washington Post at the time, Ben Bag- dikian, emerged from the event as a critic of not only the government’s control over information but also, in time, the media’s dominance over information that belonged to the public. Bagdikian, who persuaded the Post to publish the once-classified papers, left his position and in 1983 wrote The Media Monopoly, a now famous exposé of big media. At the time of Bagdikian’s initial observations, about fifty companies owned the majority of the media. He claimed that the number of owners, which had decreased dramatically over the course of U.S. press history, would lead to a problem of monopo- lization, which harmed the interests of the American public and ran contrary to the core principles of the First Amendment. 226 The Press and the Making of Modern Media
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Image 14.1: “Media Position,” Maria La Vigna, photographer, published August 13, 1983, included in the photograph is Carl Fleischhauer at a 1983 Omaha powwow in Macy, Nebraska.1 Francis Critics initially dismissed Bagdikian’s observations& as alarmist, but only a decade after publication of the first edition of The Media Monopoly, media ownership had shrunk to half of the first reported numbers. Today, less than a dozen corporations dominate the media industry, with the evolution of this trend placing 90 percent of the media in the hands of a few content providers and the decision makers for these corporations now determiningTaylor what kinds of information reach consumers on widely distributed channels.2
BEN BAGDIKIAN AND THE MEDIA MONOPOLY Among Ben Bagdikian’s notable contributions to journalism included his book The MediaCopyright Monopoly. First published in 1983, the book allowed Bagdikian to make the case that contemporary media operates as “an oligopoly, the rule of a few in which any one of those few, acting alone, can alter market conditions” (The New Media Monopoly, 2004, 5). Bagdikian first rose to prominence after joining the Washington Post in 1970, later serving as its assistant managing edi- tor. In June 1971, he met with Daniel Ellsberg, who supplied the Post with 4,000 pages of the Pentagon Papers (see Chapter 13). Bagdikian argued in favor of publication of the documents, arguing the public had a right to know about gov- ernment activities. He became the second ombudsman of the Post in 1972, but The Press and the Making of Modern Media 227
he left the paper after disputes with Ben Bradlee, executive editor, over internal and external complaints about management. Bagdikian taught journalism ethics courses at the University of California, Berkeley, between 1976 and 1990, and served as dean of the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism from 1985 to 1988, earning an honorary title upon departure. Critics first considered The Media Monopoly, published during his UC tenure, as overly alarming, but it has since received support for its analysis of the troublesome nature of journalism when practiced under the control of large, corporate interests. The New Media Monopoly—published as the seventh edition of the original—described contem- porary corporations and their leaders as having “more communications power than was exercised by any despot or dictatorship in history” (Bagdikian, 2004, 3). Bagdikian died March 11, 2016, in Berkley, California. While controversial for his original analyses, he left a legacy as “probably the most quoted, certainly one of the most acute, commentators on media ownership.”3 Group
While the number of corporations in control of media-related subsidies changes from time to time based on acquisitions, mergers and splits, the most powerful names associated with ownership (at least through the end of 2017) include Time Warner, Disney, News Corporation, Bertelsmann (Germany),Francis and Viacom (formerly CBS).4 Among a select group of others media giants,& the NBC Television Network and NBC Universal Media, and Thomson Reuters top lists of content providers. Newcomers to this list of media giants include Alphabet, the holding company owning Google; ZenithOptimedia, which owns the media networks of Disney, such as ABC; and Com- cast, which owns fifteen national cable networks and Hulu.5 Until the beginning of the twenty-firstTaylor century, owners focused on acquiring tradi- tional media outlets, but recent acquisitions demonstrate the importance of new media (or “social media”) companies as well. The effect of acquisitions registers in a num- ber of ways, including the consolidation and elimination of media-related jobs. These expectations in turn have resulted in demands for fewer employees to exercise more skills, sometimes described as multi-tasking, for relatively larger companies—cer- tainly a challenge for new journalists entering the media landscape of the twenty-first century. The increasedCopyright growth of each media outlet, often fueled by technological innova- tions, contributes to these pressures. As companies attempt to exercise control over a wider range of media platforms, they face increasingly tight budgets and competition, which in turn—given the space and time constraints of contemporary media, as well as the demand for a constant supply of breaking news—has produced effects on media as a whole, from online content to broadcast and newspapers.6 Traditional companies in general focused their efforts on providing specialized services, but larger ones now produce a wide range of services that require employees to demonstrate skills in a number of individual and interrelated skills. A new hire at any number of media organi- zations might need to show, for example, that they can write, edit, and produce content 228 The Press and the Making of Modern Media that includes multimedia features, such as visual elements, links to additional materials on the Web, video, and audio content, all as parts of the same package. In the end, a single corporation that controls dozens of subsidiaries can play a major role in determining the kinds of stories produced. For example, The Walt Disney Com- pany owns the ABC Television Group, ESPN Inc., and Vice Media. If Disney—for whatever reason—played a role in producing a particular news story about the com- pany on any given day (and given its size and power, a likelihood exists), its subsidiar- ies would out of self-interest cover Disney in only a positive light. Alternatively, if the news brings attention to problems associated with Disney or any of its affiliates, the heads of these outlets may simply decide not to cover it—the same of course applies to any other large company. Time Warner, which for the moment owns CNN, might likewise exert either direct or indirect pressure on its news outlet to suppress negative news stories about the parent company’s activities and instead promote other outlets associated with Time Warner. While these generic scenarios apply to conglomerates in general, they do have real effects, as examples from the world of “traditional” journalism can demonstrate.Group Con- sider for example the role that General Electric (GE) played in the delivery of news after it acquired NBC in the late 1980s. In 1987, NBC broadcast a documentary that promoted nuclear power. GE had an interest in the success of the documentary, as it supplied parts and technology for nuclear power plants. The documentary won a Westinghouse- sponsored prize for science journalism, but Westinghouse Electric Company also builds nuclear power stations. Shortly after the screeningFrancis of the documentary, nuclear power plants in France had accidents that jeopardized& the safety of citizens. NBC did not report the story, although some U.S. newspapers did.7 News organizations have had longstanding explicit or implicit codes of conduct for employees—more specifically, journalists—as reporters produce work not only for the public but also for their editors and producers. These codes of conduct ensure a level of professionalism in the productionTaylor of news, but they also sometimes create pressures that run contrary to the principles of the First Amendment. According to surveys, about 1 in 5 reporters indicated they faced criticism or pressure from their bosses after pro- ducing or writing stories seen as damaging to their company’s financial interests—a form of censorship that has hindered the press from focusing on news at the expense of their respective audiences.8 Copyright THE FOURTH ESTATE REVISITED As members of the Fourth Estate, journalists by definition must seek to produce stories that share facts and do not falsely claim that an opinion or biased version of the truth passes as news. With many individual outlets no longer reporting news but instead quite often presenting it in accordance with their own prefer- ences and prejudices, the most prevalent ethical issues faced by modern journal- ists are how to continue informing the public while meeting business demands, avoiding plagiarism, and doing diligent research. A well-informed citizenry can The Press and the Making of Modern Media 229
expect members of the Fourth Estate to practice fair, balanced, transparent, and inclusive journalism—expectations rooted in the best practices of traditional media but shaped by the ways the economy, technology, and society affect it. The media lacks transparency when major corporations are intentionally omit- ting stories or having them written in a specific way to deceive the public. For these reasons, aspiring press members should take to heart guidelines established by the American Press Institute, which hold that journalism practiced correctly provides citizens with information necessary for them to make “the best pos- sible decisions about their lives, their communities, their societies, and their governments.”9 Maintaining a level of ethical journalism also ensures that audiences of all types will receive information based in accuracy and fairness and that the media exercises honest and courageous newsgathering and the reporting and inter- preting of fact-based information.10 Considering the United States as a diverse collection of demographics, views, and beliefs, journalists acrossGroup an array of platforms cannot please every member of their audience; however, they must still remember that their work extends well beyond national borders and has audiences throughout the world. “The story everywhere is one of an uphill strug- gle,” writes Aidan White, director of the Ethical Journalism Network. “Corrup- tion and cynicism inside newsrooms saps the confidenceFrancis of media staff leading to crumbling levels of commitment to ethics, a lowering of the status of journal- istic work and a pervasive lack of transparency& over advertising, ownership, and corporate and political affiliations.”11 These realties entail extraordinary chal- lenges, and only the best practitioners in the industry will succeed.
In another example, the CBSTaylor News Division encountered a conflict when CBS Cor- porate prevented the airing of a 1995 story that detailed a public health risk. Jeffery Wigand, a former executive for the Brown & Williamson tobacco company, had pro- vided information to Lowell Bergman, a producer for the popular 60 Minutes news program, documenting ways the tobacco industry had systematically hidden the health risks of their cigarettes.12 Copyright MIKE WALLACE Television journalist Mike Wallace, born in 1918 in Brookline, Massachusetts, found fame primarily for his work on the CBS program 60 Minutes. In the 1960s, he became a full-time correspondent for CBS. In 1968, the network asked him to co-host 60 Minutes, a leading prime-time news show. Wallace’s role included the exposure of fraud and corruption, and he mastered a style of reporting described as “ambush journalism” in which he used hidden cameras to approach an inter- view subject without warning. He developed a reputation for asking challenging 230 The Press and the Making of Modern Media
questions and interviewed world leaders, including Ronald Reagan, John F. Ken- nedy, Richard Nixon, Vladimir Putin, and Ayatollah Khomeini, using a confron- tational style of questioning. The 1999 Touchstone movie The Insider portrayed Wallace’s role in the fiasco surrounding Brown & Williamson tobacco as leaving him bitter about CBS’s management of the news division, but he continued with a role at 60 Minutes until 2006, making occasional appearances thereafter.13 He died April 7, 2012.
Bergman began developing a report for 60 Minutes correspondent Mike Wallace to deliver using the inside information, but he ran into opposition from Don Hewitt, who had originally created the series, along with CBS lawyers, who feared a lawsuit from Brown & Williamson. CBS’s financial interests took precedent over the public’s right to know, and the company’s executives prevented it from airing. The Wall Street Journal instead broke Wigand’s story, and the incident damaged the Groupreputation of CBS news.14 As the fiasco surrounding60 Minutes and Brown & Williamson demonstrated, big media owe a debt to their stakeholders, as the airing of the tobacco exposé would have jeopardized an intended merger between CBS and Westinghouse, along with the interests of CBS’s stockholders and advertisers. As one of the long-term consequences of such conflicts, journalists and reporters have increasingly turned to the already popular genreFrancis of soft or features news to com- municate their messages. Researchers have documented& how soft news over the past two decades has indeed grown in its prevalence over hard news with a demonstra- ble rise in sensational content and less time-bound stories of practical value. They note that news stories with no clear connection to policy issues have nearly doubled since 1980, and hard news stories have declined by a corresponding degree on local and national levels. This evidenceTaylor suggests that soft news and critical journalism have diminished public’s interest in politics and affected the very nature of the American electoral system.15
MAKING A MEDIA EMPIRE What we have subsequently read, seen, heard, or understood as news in the current media age has demonstrated the conflicts of individual companies with stakeholders on a much granderCopyright scale. Advertising constraints have defined more narrowly the kinds of content journalists can produce, pulling them away from the kinds of hard-hitting news formerly covered by the traditional press.16 As a result, soft news and entertainment have grown as favorite commodities among major media companies, contributing to what media analysts have described as “infotainment,” a form of communication that both informs and entertains. Large media companies generally promote this content, but for illustrative purposes, we can look at one in particular, Time Warner, as a model for the new media industry. The multimedia giant grew from the establishment of Time magazine, an influential news publication first produced by Henry Luce. Born on April 3, 1898, Luce estab- lished himself as among the most prominent, prolific, and important figures in the The Press and the Making of Modern Media 231 history of journalism. On March 3, 1923, he published with Yale classmate Briton Hadden the first issue of Time, which summarized and interpreted weekly news and reached a circulation of 200,000 in its first five years. (In November 2017, the Meredith Corporation, an American media conglomerate, bought Time for $2.8 billion).17 Upon Hadden’s unexpected death in 1929, Luce launched Fortune magazine, which explored the area of business. He later acquired Life, a picture magazine of politics, culture, and society that dominated American visuals in a period prior to the popularity of television. Among his most notable editorials for Life included a February 1941 piece titled “The American Century” that exhorted Americans to recognize their role as leaders in a global economy.18 After World War II, Luce continued to advocate U.S. global dominance. In the Time essay “Struggle for Survival” (1948), he urged Ameri- cans to take offense in the Cold War against the Soviet Union.19 He continued to expand
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Image 14.2: “Clare Boothe Luce, U.S. Ambassador to Italy, and Husband, Publisher Henry Luce, Arriving at Idlewild Airport, New York, New York,” a World Telegram & Sun photo by Phil Stanziola, published 1954.20 232 The Press and the Making of Modern Media his publishing empire, and by the 1960s made Time Inc. the most successful publishing empire in the world. He died of a heart attack on February 28, 1967, at the age of 68. In 1935, Henry Luce married Clare Boothe. Clare Boothe Luce played a major role in the success of the family dynasty. As the daughter of a prominent Connecticut family, she emerged as a leading playwright, editor, and politician, representing Connecticut in the U.S. House from 1943 until 1947. As one of the first American women appointed to major ambassadorial positions, she enjoyed access to exclusive stories. Life, for exam- ple, obtained coverage of NASA’s efforts to send Americans to the moon—a scoop that made the magazine the envy of competitors. In 1981, President Reagan appointed Clare Booth Luce to the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, and in 1983, she received the Presidential Medal of Freedom. She died October 9, 1987, leaving the majority of her estate to The Henry Luce Foundation, and she was buried next to her husband’s remains in South Carolina. In time, the publishing empire birthed by Henry Luce and Clare Boothe Luce grew into a multimedia empire. By most estimates, Time Warner (originally Time Inc.) has grown over the course of almost a century to rank among the top Groupcompanies in size and net worth on both domestic and international levels. (In November 2017, the U.S. Justice Department announced plans to block a proposed merger between AT&T and Time Warner, which federal officials claimed would create monopoly conditions.)21 From a series of acquisitions and mergers, Time Warner now exercises control over three divisions—Home Box Office, Inc., Turner Broadcasting System, Inc., and War- ner Bros.—with holdings well beyond U.S. borders.Francis A sample of HBO’s influence, for example, includes the seven 24-hour channels& HBO Comedy, HBO Latino, HBO Signature, and HBO Family. An even smaller sample of Turner’s assets includes chan- nels such as CNN, HLN, TBS, TNT, Turner Classic Movies, Cartoon Network, Adult Swim, Boomerang, and TruTV. Warner Brothers, while primarily concerned with film- making, includes several divisions that extend into other areas of media, from music to comic books. Taylor In building their media empire, the Luces developed a method of cross-promotion, which essentially entailed using one of their assets to advertise on behalf of another one of their assets. This strategy ensured growth in a two-for-one approach (or, later, an “all for one” approach). In a simple way, Time magazine, for example, might offer discounts to new subscribers of Fortune magazine, or vice versa. On a more sophisticated level, Time Warner’s divisions can cross promote through a wide range of inter-related media. We can see the results of this approach in contemporary advertising strategies. Among Copyrightthe most popular content shared on social media channels now includes spon- sored magazine articles, online webisodes, music videos, and short films—the kinds of content users find so entertaining, informative, and engaging that they view and share it of their own volition, all the while passing embedded advertising for the producer to their friends or family. The message marketed may be upfront or almost invisible, but the content producer’s strategy simply involves spreading the message to as many consumers as possible. Advertisers have used other subtle ways of reaching potential customers by embedding material discreetly in webpages or at the beginning of videos. These successful strategies have led media companies that depend heavily on revenue THE PRESS AND THE MAKING OF MODERN MEDIA 233
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Image 14.3 : “Set-up for Press and Convention Parties at the Republican National Convention, Sep- tember 1–4, 2008, CNN Building next to the Xcel Center, St. Paul, Minnesota,” photographer Carol M. Highsmith, published September 3, 2008.22 Francis from advertisers to alter their coverage of topics to favor advertising interests. Adver- tisers have responded with even more sophisticated& methods of targeting Web users with content tailored to their individual tastes based on previous Internet searches and trending topics.
GLOBAL CORPORATIONSTaylor AND CONTENT While Time Warner may have led competitors in its cross-promotional efforts, other companies certainly followed this trend, and in putting a priority on the interests of their stakeholders and advertisers alike, corporations now reach consumers in even more innovative ways. Using social media, advertisers now market content identifi ed as “branded,” with a rationale that social media allows individual content providers to leapfrog traditional media and forge relationships directly with customers.23 The for- mula hasCopyright contributed to the growth of companies well beyond the scope of American borders, as consumers identify with particular names and products regardless of their geographic origin. One of the most famous American media moguls, Rupert Murdoch, in fact has roots not in the United States, but in Australia. His empire grew steadily from a start in tab- loids and through the art of self-promotion, branching into television, social media, and well-established newspapers. News Corporation, like other transnational media con- glomerates, has profi ted from its various assets by promotion of each one individually to build the company’s overall strength. 234 The Press and the Making of Modern Media
RUPERT MURDOCH AND NEWS CORPORATION Rupert Murdoch, executive chair of News Corp. and 21st Century Fox, was born on March 11, 1931, in Melbourne, Australia. He inherited two newspapers owned by his father, the Sunday Mail and The News. He expanded his operations by purchasing Perth’s Sunday Times and Sydney’s Mirror, allowing him the opportunity to create Australia’s national daily paper, the Australian. Murdoch then branched out to the United Kingdom and United States by first purchasing the English the News of the World and The Sun. In the 1970s, Murdoch acquired several U.S. newspapers, including San Antonio’s Express and the Evening News and the New York Post and New York Magazine. He diversified his acquisitions with the purchase of the 20th Century Fox Film Corporation, as well as several independent television stations that would become the Fox television network. Murdoch now heads a multimedia empire with assets around the world. He has an estimated net worth of more than $12 billion. Group
In December 2017, News Corporation CEO Rupert Murdoch demonstrated an inter- est in scaling back the size of his media empire while at the same time contributing to the growth of another one. The Walt Disney Company struck a deal to acquire much of Murdoch’s 21st Century Fox Corporation, payingFrancis more than $52 billion in stock, which analysts anticipate will have major implications& for Hollywood film studios. The deal gives Disney access to 21st Century Fox’s international holdings, including Star India, Sky, Tata Sky, and Endemol Shine Group.24 As daunting as these international business trends may appear to aspiring individual journalists, analysts still have mixed reviews about the future of the press. Thomas Patterson, a professor of governmentTaylor and the press at Harvard University, has issued a warning, writing that the continued embrace of soft news by the contemporary con- glomerations will lead to the end of journalism. “To believe otherwise is to assume that people follow news for its entertainment or shock value,” he writes. Patterson has observed that a news habit takes years to create and years to diminish, and once dimin- ished, a consumer cannot easily restore it.25 Still others indicate the contemporary state of media offers grounds for optimism. Although the ownership of media by large companies has had a generally detrimental effect onCopyright production of hard news since the 1980s, consumers at the very least now have both more responsibilities and opportunities when it comes to finding news that matters. Dan Gillmor, director of the Knight Centre for Digital Media Entrepreneurship at Arizona State University, suggests that we can still find more quality information than ever before available. “Increasingly, the trick will be finding it,” Gillmor writes.
At some level, we have to ask a lot more of audiences in this new world. People will have to be more literate about how media work, and more willing to go deeper on their own. Most of all, they’ll have to be relentlessly skeptical. They’ll need help from trustworthy news organizations and from self-designated editors who point to the good stuff.27 The Press and the Making of Modern Media 235
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Image 14.4: “Remote Control, 2000,” Nebojsa Seric Shoba, artist, a poster showing a remote-control device capable of “life/death” decisions, suggesting the power to manipulate one person’s life is often in another person’s hands,Copyright created in response to the September 11 terrorist attacks on the United States.26
A NEW REGULATORY ENVIRONMENT Since its establishment in 1934, the Federal Communications Commission has played a role in regulating communication via the most popular forms of media, including radio, television, wire, satellite, and cable. Its jurisdiction extends over the fifty United States and the District of Columbia, with a Media Bureau advocating innovation in the media industry as a whole. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC)—a separate entity that predates the FCC—works as an agency of the United States government to 236 THE PRESS AND THE MAKING OF MODERN MEDIA promote consumer protection and the elimination and prevention of anti-competitive business practices, such as coercive monopoly. The growth in media corporations has increasingly brought the interests of the FCC and the FTC together, posing problems in some cases beyond the ability of either one or both institutions to solve. With companies such as Time Warner, News Corporation, Bertelsmann, and sev- eral others exercising infl uence in nations around the world, U.S. regulatory systems have only limited effectiveness in controlling monopolistic practices. Take for example a dispute between European nations and the United States over different conditions each party intended to impose on Google regarding its search practices. In early 2014, antitrust authorities for the European Union signaled interest in curtailing Google’s
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Image 14.5 : “Google Headquarters, Mountain View, California,” photographer Carol M. Highsmith, pub- lished 2012.29 The Press and the Making of Modern Media 237 domination over searches for online content. U.S. regulators resisted interference with the interests of the American tech giant, but ultimately, the parties settled a three-year antitrust case that required Google to change the way it displays competitors’ results. The concessions had the potential of restoring a level playing field with competitors, said Joaquín Almunia, antitrust commissioner for the EU antitrust commissioner. Just one year prior, the FTC dropped its inquiry into Google, ruling the firm’s search prac- tices did not harm consumers, and with Google pledging to change operations related to other business, such as patented technology use.28 However, instead of making regulatory initiatives clearer and allowing for interna- tional precedents, Google has since entered a new cycle of trouble with orders in 2017 from the EU to pay a $2.7 billion fine for abusing its agreement and promoting its online shopping services.30 Part of the reason for the difficulties between interested parties—whether govern- mental or political—stems from constant changes in technology. Increasingly in our contemporary life, advances in technology occur more rapidly than institutions can adapt to them. The FCC, for example, initially exempted strictly informationalGroup ser- vices, such as broadband Internet access, from regulation, but in 1996, the Telecommu- nications Act required the FCC to modify its approach to new technologies. By 2015, the FCC recognized that nearly 55 million Americans did not have access to services requiring broadband technologies, and it reclassified broadband Internet access as a telecommunications service, which made it subject to regulation. In November 2017, the FCC voted to remove keyFrancis roadblocks to increased consol- idation among media companies, potentially &unleashing new deals among television, radio, and newspaper owners seeking to compete with online media.31 The FCC had first recognized these regulations in the 1970s to ensure inclusion in the media a diver- sity of opinions, but since then, the rise of blogs, websites, and podcasts has posed a dramatic increase in competition to traditional media, making these rules obsolete. One of the long-standing rulesTaylor repealed had prevented one company in a given media market from owning both a daily newspaper and a television station. Another removed rule blocked television stations in the same market from merging with each other if the combination would leave fewer than eight independently owned stations.32 The FCC’s new approach to keeping pace with developing technologies now extends into online communications as well. Legal reclassifications stemming as far back as the 1996 Telecommunications Act now allow the FCC a legal basis for imposing rules on the Internet under a system known as net neutrality. The principle of net neutrality holds thatCopyright Internet service providers must treat all data on the Internet the same and not discriminate or charge differently by user, content, website, platform, application, type of attached equipment, or method of communication. For instance, under these principles, Internet service providers are unable to intentionally block, slow down, or charge money for specific websites and online content. In the United States, net neutrality has been an issue of contention among network users and access providers since the 1990s. While no clear legal protections had previ- ously required net neutrality, in 2015, the FCC reclassified broadband technologies as a communication service and listed providers as “common carriers” instead of “infor- mation providers.” The FCC in a long-awaited and for the most part publicly derided maneuver decided in December 2017 to do away with the protections established under 238 The Press and the Making of Modern Media the guides of net neutrality. While the FCC Chairman Ajit Pai has argued that net neutrality has interfered with the ability of Internet content providers to flourish, sup- porters of First Amendment rights, including the American Civil Liberties Union, have pledged to challenge the legitimacy of the agency’s action. The outcome of this deci- sion will take years to unfold, but nearly twenty state attorneys general immediately challenged the FCC’s assertion that it could block states from imposing their own net neutrality rules. At the same time, according to the ACLU, state legislators across the country have examined whether they could maintain net neutrality mandates through state legislation. Even towns and counties in Iowa, Washington, and elsewhere have explored options to develop locally based net neutrality principles with Internet service providers.33
RECAPPING THIS CHAPTER Looking back on this chapter, you should see how media corporations have acted both independently and interdependently to create a kind of storytelling thatGroup requires simul- taneous attention to multimedia production values and the constraints of advertising. It explained the reasons why contemporary media tend to focus on soft news, as larger media organizations have had to adjust content to meet the demands of advertisers and large audiences alike. It described the growth of what media analyst Ben Bagdikian called “The Media Monopoly,” a phenomenon that has created difficulties in maintain- ing journalistic standard. Francis Using materials from this chapter, you should& be able to explain how media has evolved with trends in technology into transnational organizations. You should have an understanding of the challenges in reporting stories using traditional techniques in this new climate, and you should be able to identify how ownership affects the content of news. The following chapter describesTaylor how media jobs in the twenty-first century reflect institutional, economic, and social conditions, and it describes the scope and influence of the traditional press relative to social media. It shows how contemporary profession- als practice in a world quite different from their predecessors, as employers expect new hires to perform multiple tasks in a media that no longer rewards specialization only.
NOTES 1 “MediaCopyright Position,” Library of Congress, accessed February 13, 2017,
8 Andrew Kohut, “Self-Censorship: Counting the Ways,” Columbia Journalism Review, 39, 1 (May 2000): 42, accessed December 2, 2017,
31 David Shepardson, “U.S. Regulator Votes to Loosen Media Ownership Rules,” Reuters, November 16, 2017, accessed December 10, 2017,
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