Safire on the 5 Sisters of US Media

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

Delivered-To: dfarber+ () ux13 sp cs cmu edu
Date: Mon, 16 Feb 2004 13:55:37 -0500
From: Peter Jones <peter () redesignresearch com>
Subject: Safire on the 5 Sisters of US Media
To: andy () bigbeef com, dave () farber net


February 16, 2004

OP-ED COLUMNIST
The Five Sisters
By WILLIAM SAFIRE

 WASHINGTON - If one huge corporation controlled both the production and
the dissemination of most of our news and entertainment, couldn't it
rule the world?
Can't happen here, you say; America is the land of competition that
generates new technology to ensure a diversity of voices. But consider
how a supine Congress and a feckless majority of the Federal
Communications Commission have been failing to protect our access to a
variety of news, views and entertainment.

The media giant known as Viacom-CBS-MTV just showed us how it controls
both content and communication of the sexiest Super Bowl. The five other
big sisters that now bestride the world are (1)
Murdoch-FoxTV-HarperCollins-WeeklyStandard-NewYorkPost-LondonTimes-Direc
TV; (2) G.E.-NBC-Universal-Vivendi; (3) Time-Warner-CNN-AOL; (4)
Disney-ABC-ESPN; and (5) the biggest cable company, Comcast.

As predicted here in an "Office Pool" over two years ago, Comcast has
just bid to take over Disney (Ed Bleier, then of Warner Bros., was my
prescient source). If the $50 billion deal is successful, the six giants
would shrink to five, with Disney-Comcast becoming the biggest.

Would Rupert Murdoch stand for being merely No. 2? Not on your life. He
would take over a competitor, perhaps the Time-Warner-CNN-AOL combine,
making him biggest again. Meanwhile, cash-rich Microsoft - which already
owns 7 percent of Comcast and is a partner of G.E.'s MSNBC - would
swallow both Disney-ABC and G.E.-NBC. Then there would be three, on the
way to one.

You say the U.S. government would never allow that? The Horatius
lollygagging at the bridge is the F.C.C.'s Michael Powell, who never met
a merger he didn't like. Cowering next to him is General Roundheels at
the Bush Justice Department's Pro-Trust Division, which last year waved
through Murdoch's takeover of DirecTV. (Joel Klein, Last of the
Trustbusters, now teaches school in New York.)

But what of the Senate, guardian of free speech? There was Powell last
week before Chairman John McCain's Commerce Committee, currying favor
with cultural conservatives by pretending to be outraged over Janet
Jackson's "costume reveal." The F.C.C. chairman, looking stern, pledged
"ruthless and rigorous scrutiny" of any Comcast bid to merge
Disney-ABC-ESPN into a huge DisCast. Media giants - always willing to
agree to cosmetic "restrictions" on their way to amalgamation - chuckled
at the notion of a "ruthless Mike."

McCain's plaintive question to Powell - "Where will it all end?" - is
too little, too late. This senatorial apostle of deregulation, who last
week called the world's attention to the media concentration that helps
subvert democracy in Russia, has been blind to the danger of headlong
concentration of media power in America.
The benumbing euphemism for the newly permitted top-to-bottom
information and entertainment control is "vertical integration." In
Philadelphia, Comcast not only owns the hometown basketball team, but
owns its stadium, owns the cable sports channel televising the games as
well as owning the line that brings the signal into Philadelphians'
houses. Soon: ESPN, too. Go compete against, or argue with, that
head-to-toe control - and then apply that chilling form of integration
to cultural events and ultimately to news coverage.

The reason given by giants to merge with other giants is to compete more
efficiently with other enlarging conglomerates. The growing danger,
however, is that media giants are becoming fewer as they get bigger. The
assurance given is "look at those independent Internet Web sites that
compete with us" - but all the largest Web sites are owned by the
giants.

How are the media covering their contraction? (I still construe the word
"media" as plural in hopes that McCain will get off his duff and Bush
will awaken.) Much of the coverage is "gee-whiz, which personality will
be top dog, which investors will profit and which giant will go bust?"

But the message in this latest potential merger is not about a clash of
media megalomaniacs, nor about a conspiracy driven by "special
interests." The issue is this: As technology changes, how do we better
protect the competition that keeps us free and different?
You don't have to be a populist to want to stop this rush by ever-fewer
entities to dominate both the content and the conduit of what we see and
hear and write and say.  

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