Compressed Air: When local media isn't there for the public
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Some media watchdogs say what happened immediately after a 2002 train derailment in Minot, N.D., illustrates the dangers of media consolidation. The derailment of the Canadian Pacific train early on the morning of Jan. 18, 2002 sent a cloud of hazardous chemicals drifting over the north-central North Dakota community. Minot authorities repeatedly tried to contact the local radio station, which was broadcasting recorded music, to inform people of the danger. No one was on duty at the local Clear-Channel-owned radio station. Operations were automated. Law enforcement and emergency workers tried but failed to override the radio signal to broadcast warnings. Finally, police tracked down a station employee, who managed to get to the station and broadcast warnings. A bad episode could have been a catastrophe. As it was, some 15,000 people were covered by the toxic cloud, one person died, 330 were treated for health problems and 1,000 had recurring illnesses. Many radio stations now rely heavily on content that they do not generate locally. Anniston's WDNG fills much of its broadcast day with syndicated programming. Tune in, and you are likely to hear the opinions of distant personages such as the New York-based conservative talk-show host Mark Levin. You aren't likely to get the low-down on anything in Anniston from Levin. You may, however, get an earful about the evils of everyone from Hillary Clinton to Mike Huckabee. Not getting the skinny on the latest city council meeting is one thing. Not getting crucial breaking news that could impact you in a major way is quite another. On a recent evening, as foul weather moved into the Anniston area and the sirens begin to sound, some residents reached for their radios and tuned to WDNG-AM/1450. Instead of weather information, what they got was the middle of what one listener later described as a "Levin rant" about the conservative shortcomings of John McCain and Huckabee. No doubt it was interesting subject matter. But with a tornado possibly imminent, Anniston listeners probably would have preferred to hear a weather update. The storm blew over, causing only heartburn. But the incident again raises the question: If local media no longer is local, how does it fulfill one of its most essential roles: informing the community in times of peril? Every broadcast station is required to be part of the FCC's Emergency Alert System — a way of informing the public in times of national or local emergency. If a true emergency had unfolded — a tornado tearing down Quintard Avenue perhaps — the EAS should have engaged at WDNG and all other local stations that day. Because no emergency developed from the storm, the system was not activated. But when the countywide siren system sounds, people generally want to know what's up. In days past, former local radio news reporter Mike Stedham recalls, most stations had a standing rule that if a tornado watch was issued, a reporter had to be in the station. If a tornado warning was issued (meaning a tornado has formed) the station went live with coverage. The area's lone remaining radio news reporter, Mike Mitchell of WCKA/Alabama 810 in Jacksonville, says that's the way his station still does it. If you want to get to the essence of broadcast media's mission to inform, Mitchell offers this answer: The public owns the airwaves. Commercial radio fills the airwaves, but the radio stations do not own the broadcast frequencies. They rent them from the public. In his book, "Fighting for Air," Eric Klinenberg compares the airwaves to natural resources and says the early broadcast philosophy of the government was that, with the FCC's oversight, the airwaves would be treated much like the air we breathe or the national parks — as resources that belong to the people. The public ownership concept dominated at the FCC until the Telecommunications Act of 1996. Before passage of the act, critics contend, the FCC was aggressive in promoting diversity and emphasized the importance of local news coverage and of competition. Although it was widely understood that the vast majority of license renewals would be approved, stations were put through a process to demonstrate that they were attempting to serve community needs. Today there's still a process, but it's widely seen in the industry as a formality, dubbed "postcard renewal." That term was used last December in a New York Times opinion piece penned by Alex Jones, the director of the Joan Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard, and seven other deans of top journalism schools across the country. They were arguing vehemently against an FCC decision to relax rules on newspaper and broadcast cross-ownership in major American markets, where more than 40 percent of the population lives. A majority of the FCC's governing board approved the rules change in December. "One of the real catastrophes of the FCC's willingness to allow consolidation in the radio business is that news on commercial radio has all but disappeared," Jones said when asked by The Star to discuss the radio landscape both in Calhoun County and nationally. "Local radio stations whose home-grown news operations had been essential in times of crisis are now hollow delivery systems for syndicated programming and canned music," Jones continued. "The fabric of our communities has been greatly damaged, because the local radio station is no longer reporting both the homey things that give a town its character and the more serious news that is essential to democracy. "The FCC was wrong, and it is time for that wrong to be put right." Notable in the FCC's December ruling was the absence of any mention of small towns and rural media marketplaces. More than half the population is outside the areas served by the large media markets. What of the places, such as Anniston/Calhoun County, that have seen an erosion of local broadcast media coverage over the years since the signing of the 1996 act? Mark Crispin Miller is a professor of media studies at New York University. He writes extensively on American media and often argues for media reform. Miller says he's greatly bothered by what he sees as "the lack of decent news throughout rural and small-town America." "The FCC's indifference to it is no surprise, since all they care about is what they call 'deregulation' — i.e., making sure there's no competition in the media," Miller said of the FCC's December decision. "That [President] Clinton and the rest of them all hailed the 1996 law for its pro-competitive effects is the sort of thing that Orwell would have found grimly amusing," Miller added. Cross-ownership is better than a big black hole, Miller concluded. "But better yet would be a media policy that serves the people, rather than the likes of Newhouse News, [Rupert] Murdoch and GE." In his push to loosen the rules governing media ownership at the end of 2007, Kevin J. Martin, chairman of the FCC, seemed to be making a financial argument in favor of newspapers, at least in the biggest markets in the nation. "If we don't act to improve the health of the newspaper industry, we will see newspapers wither and die," the chairman wrote in an op-ed in The Washington Post on Nov. 13, 2007. A newspaper owner, journalist, print man, salesperson might indeed celebrate the words of such a high-powered ally (while perhaps also asking why small markets such as this one did not also figure into the chairman's campaign). But they might also look deeper into what it is to be involved in the press. Without revenue, the print side is indeed in trouble. But the larger issue here is not so much who covers the news, but how it is covered and to what extent and to what level of fairness or balance, if you will. To reach deeper even, you touch what is the very best in media, to endeavor not only to inform but to encourage participatory democracy. Or put quite another way, to build within our society, local and nationally, a better citizenry. About this series The Telecommunications Act of 1996 poses a threat to broadcast media's essential role in democracy, according to critics. In a four-part series which began Sunday, Anniston Star Editor at Large John Fleming examines the law's impact on Calhoun County's once-abundant local news media. Related articles: |
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