Media consolidation shuts out women and minorities

As the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) considers sweeping changes to the nation's media landscape, Free Press on Sept. 20 released a new report on female and minority media ownership that shows the consequences of further consolidation. The new study, "Out of the Picture," is the first complete assessment and analysis of female and minority ownership of full-power commercial broadcast television stations. The report argues that the FCC has abandoned its responsibility to monitor and foster the diversity of media owners, while ignoring the impact of its own policies. "The pressures of consolidation and concentration brought on by bad policy decisions have crowded out women and minority owners," said S. Derek Turner, research director of Free Press and co-author of the study. "The FCC can't even accurately account for the current state of media ownership, and now it's preparing to make the situation even worse." "Out of the Picture" finds that pro-consolidation policies enacted by the FCC already have had a significant impact on minority ownership, indirectly or directly contributing to the loss of 40 percent of the stations that were minority-owned in 1998. Among the report's findings: ¨ Women comprise 51 percent of the entire US population, but own only 4.97 percent of all TV stations. ¨ Minorities make up 33 percent of the entire US population, but own only 3.26 percent of all stations. ¨ While the level of female and minority ownership has advanced in other industries since the late 1990s, it has worsened in the broadcast sector. Hispanic- or Latino-owned stations reach just 21.8 percent of the Latino TV households in the United States. Ninety-one percent of African-American TV households are not reached by a black-owned TV station. Markets with minority owners are significantly less concentrated than markets without them, even if the size of the market is held constant. "This is the first study to show the direct link between increasing media concentration and the lack of minority ownership in the media," said co-author Mark Cooper, director of research at the Consumer Federation of America. "It not only presents statistical analysis but also provides a detailed assessment of the stations that left minority hands as a result of specific policies adopted by the Congress and the FCC to allow media concentration."