Ownership of the media of mass communication

Ownership of the Media of Mass Communication

According to the Communication Act of 1934 the custom that was assigned or arranged for the media anchors was to satisfy "the public interest, convenience, and necessity." With the passage of time the FCC and regulators have established that this can only be achieved with an atmosphere of contest, variety and residency in the market (Ann, 2003).

The medium of Mass Communication that I have chosen is the medium of telecommunication. Since the alterations brought about to the outlook of media by the Telecommunications Act of 1996; telecommunication as a medium of Mass Communication was manifested to create a superior and mutual link between the rigid regulations and the current media drive, creating as a result, variety and residency in the market flow. Its documented function was "to promote competition and reduce regulation in order to secure lower prices and higher quality services for American telecommunications consumers and encourage the rapid deployment of new telecommunications technologies (as cited in Ann, 2003)."

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To maintain the procedure of this "deregulation" in an efficient manner, the Act had to carry out an analysis every two years of the overall management laws (Ann, 2003).

The Commission shall review its rules adopted pursuant to this section and all of its ownership rules biennially as part of its regulatory reform review under section 11 of the Communications Act of 1934 and shall determine whether any of such rules are necessary in the public interest as a result of competition. The Commission shall repeal or modify any regulation it determines to be no longer in the public interest (as cited in Ann, 2003)."

The Notice of Inquiry was the medium that primarily printed the initial Biennial Regulatory Review [1998], which posted the element of Variety as the most important for the modeling of a functional framework by the Commission, which came up with three main categories of the element: (1) perspective: "helping to ensure that the material presented by the media reflect a wide range of diverse and antagonistic opinions and interpretations (as cited in Ann, 2003)," (2) channel: "a variety of delivery services (e.g., broadcast stations, newspapers, cable and DBS) that select and present programming directly to the public (as cited in Ann, 2003)," and (3) basis: "promoting a variety of program or information producers and owners (as cited in Ann, 2003)." However, it was plain to see that there a major gap in the viewpoints with the commission at that time as to the implication and significance of variety (Ann, 2003). On example could be in the viewpoint of Commissioner Susan Ness (Democrat) who concentrated on the Supreme Court expression: "diverse and antagonistic."

Antagonistic' sources can only be truly antagonistic (in the best sense of the word) if they are separately owned and genuinely compete in the marketplace of ideas. We should not confuse 'multiple' choices with 'independent' choices. For example, we now have 'multiple' sources of news and information offered by NBC -- the national broadcast network, CNBC, and MSNBC -- which is all to the good. However, by contrast, 'independent' choices are available to viewers by the emergence of competitors to CNN -- MSNBC and Fox News (as cited in Ann, 2003)."

While, on the other hand, Commissioner Michael Powell (Republican) paid attention to the intangible, manifold proposes and implications of variety:

In all likelihood, however, the pivotal issues in this proceeding are likely to revolve around diversity. While competitive concerns are traditionally evaluated using well-established analytical standards, diversity is a much more visceral matter -- bathed in difficult subjective judgments and debated in amorphous terms. It has always been difficult to articulate clearly the government's interest in 'diversity', and it has become even more difficult to do so in light of current judicial precedents. Yet we must do so, if we are to affirm any of our ownership rules based on such an interest, and we must do so with adequate rigor and clarity in order for such rules to withstand judicial scrutiny (as cited in Ann, 2003)."

Even though the above declarations exhibit the wide difference of opinion with the Commission in the 2002 Biennial Review, the general view of the nation appeared to be mainly analogous regarding the imminent regulation alterations in the sphere of telecommunication till abruptly prior to the ballot on June 2, 2003. A survey carried out in February 2003, by an affiliation of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism: the Project for Excellence in Journalism brought forth stats that showed that only four % of the respondent had "heard a lot" or had proper information about the projected regulation alterations while 72% of the respondents had learned "nothing at all (Ann, 2003)."