Media Ownership and Democracy in the Digital Information Age

MEDIA OWNERSHIP AND DEMOCRACY IN THE DIGITAL INFORMATION AGE combines a detailed review of First Amendment jurisprudence with rigorous economic analysis to demonstrate the continuing need for structural limits on media ownership to promote democratic discourse. Among the key findings:

· Economic forces in mass media markets result in the undersupply of diverse sources of information, inadequate production of investigative "watch dog" news and the exercise of market power by media owners.
· Increasing commercialism, concentration, consolidation and conglomeration undermine the ability of newspapers, television and the Internet to promote the robust exchange of views on which a vibrant democracy depends.
· Each medium produces a separate product based on a different stream of resources that is used by the public in different ways to meet different needs.
· The Internet has not dramatically altered sources of news and information.
· In spite of the growth of national entertainment outlets, markets for local news and information are highly concentrated by traditional antitrust standards.
· Previous decisions to relax ownership limits on broadcast television, radio stations, prime time programming and cable TV systems resulted in swift increases in concentration and loss of diversity.

Criticizing the proposal by the Federal Communications Commission to virtually eliminate current rules limiting ownership, the book uses a rigorous quantitative approach based on First Amendment policy to propose media merger standards that promote the "widest possible dissemination of information from diverse and antagonistic sources" as well as vigorously competitive media markets.