FCC urged to oppose media consolidation

Support more voices in Seattle media, avoid business consolidation and please give people more time before holding a hearing to review media ownership rules.

About 750 people packed Town Hall on Friday to deliver those messages to members of the Federal Communications Commission.

The commission is reconsidering rules such as the ban on a daily newspaper from owning a broadcast station in the same market. Also under review is a rule governing how many radio and television properties one company can own in a market. It is believed the commission may decide what, if anything, to do as early as December.

Friday's Seattle hearing went late into the evening and attracted state leaders and ordinary residents.

Gov. Chris Gregoire said democracy depends on a free flow of ideas from various sources and that the public owns the airwaves.

"Concentration stifles creativity," she said. "We need competition, not concentration."

The governor also criticized the commission for giving the public about a week's advanced notice of the meeting.

The meeting grew tense at times when some people booed and interrupted commission Chairman Kevin Martin, a Republican appointee, particularly about the timing of the hearing notice.

Martin said he had proposed guidelines on letting the public know about hearings, but the full commission never approved them.

The overall review of the rules and process, he said, needs to be fair for all parties, and the commission will listen to everyone's concerns.

"We (also) have a responsibility to implement what Congress tells us to do," he said.

Commissioners Michael Copps and Jonathan Adelstein told the audience that Seattle Times Publisher Frank Blethen had done much work on the issue of local media ownership.

"He has the public interest in his bones," Copps said, as people cheered.

The two are Democratic commission members.

The Blethen family controls 50.5 percent of The Seattle Times Co. The Seattle P-I is owned by the New York-based Hearst Corp.

King County Commissioner Reagan Dunn said media ownership is a bipartisan issue. "I'm a Republican. I'm a capitalist. But some areas of our economy need to be regulated," he said.

State Attorney General Rob McKenna said media consolidation could hurt small businesses by blocking them from buying advertisements at affordable prices.

University of Washington President Mark Emmert talked about visiting countries with no free flow of news and information. He found that some students in those countries lack the thinking skills to challenge professors and authority figures.

But Ray Heacox, KING Broadcasting general manager, spoke of the advantage of owning two stations in Seattle.

While KING/5 typically broadcasts national coverage on election nights, its sister station, KONG TV, carries local political news, he said.

Earlier Friday, Jonathan Lawson of Seattle-based Reclaim the Media, an advocacy group, said the current rules should be kept. "Media concentration is a counterforce," he said.

Seattle resident Heather Ayres, 36, waited outside the Town Hall auditorium to testify.

"We've already given so much to big business," she said. "This is about information. You can't entrust that to one company. We've already lost a lot of faith in media."

GET INVOLVED

If you want to file a comment to the Federal Communications Commission about media ownership, visit www.fcc.gov/ownership/comments.html.