FCC Hearing Draws Criticism of Local News Programming
Portland, Maine - The quality and quantity of local news reporting, as presented by Maine’s newspapers, television and radio stations, was the topic of a seven-hour public discussion Thursday night in Portland, where the Federal Communications Commission held its fifth of six nationwide public hearings.
Virtually everyone agreed that local programming is essential. Some said media outlets owned by large conglomerates are not providing enough coverage of local people and events, while those outlets defended themselves, emphasizing the donations and free air time they give to charitable organizations.
Hundreds of people from all over New England streamed in and out of Portland High School to listen to 23 panelists and 140 members of the public take the microphone in a rare opportunity to testify before the FCC, an FCC spokeswoman said. The hearing was broadcast live on the FCC Web site.
Four of the five presidentially-appointed FCC commissioners were present. The panelists, each given five minutes to speak, were broadcasters, station managers, newspaper publishers, professors and union organizers from around New England. Their discussion focused on Maine and whether the trend of large media companies purchasing newspapers and stations has negatively or positively influenced coverage of the state’s local issues.
“We have got to find a way in this country…to enhance the performance operations of consolidated media,” said Democratic FCC Commissioner Michael J. Copps in his opening remarks. Copps chaired the meeting in the absence of Chairman Kevin J. Martin.
During the two public comment periods, more media representatives, politicians and news readers, listeners and viewers expressed their specific frustrations with Maine media, including: virtually no locally produced children’s television programming, offensive portrayals of the homeless population, too few local musicians on the radio, overtly sexual news anchors and a lack of diversity among the ethnic backgrounds represented by anchors and on the panel.
Panelist Ben Haskell, executive vice president and academic dean of New England School of Communications in Bangor, said the broadcasting industry knows it must respond to the public demand for local news.
“Whether you call it ‘localism’ or ‘serving in the public interest,’ it cannot and will not go away,” Haskell said.
Some disagreed. Jon Bartholomew, national media and democracy organizer for Common Cause, spoke during the public comment period and said in-depth local news coverage is disappearing.
“Instead of just a P.S.A. [public service announcement] on the homeless population, we need to know why there are homeless people, what our legislators are doing about it, how citizens can get involved and what we need to do about it,” Bartholomew said.
Many newspapers, radio and television stations lamented the high cost of local news coverage and insisted they are doing all they can to feature stories from their communities alongside national news.
Judy Horan, president and general manager for WLBZ 2 in Bangor, rose during the first public comment period to explain the financial and professional resources her station has gained since it was purchased by Virginia-based Gannett Co. Inc. in 1998. Gannett also purchased WCSH 6 in Portland.
“I like to say that investment strengthened a local voice and a local business important to the residents of eastern and central Maine,” Horan said. “Automation that centralized some of our operations now allows all employees to produce local content, online as well as on air.”
Paul Dupuis, operations director for Cumulus Radio in Brewer, emphasized the collaboration between his company, the Maine Public Broadcasting Network and Clear Channel Communications to coordinate news updates in the event of an emergency.
The FCC decided in 2004 to hold the series of “localism” hearings. The first one took place in California in October. When Portland appeared on the list of locations, U.S. Sen. Olympia Snowe encouraged the FCC to schedule the hearing as soon as possible, her staff said Thursday.
“I applaud the FCC for convening today in Maine, because the views of local communities are essential in determining how to move forward in securing localism at this critical juncture,” Snowe said in a prepared statement. “The information the Commission does gather at these hearings will be invaluable for its reevaluation of media ownership rulemaking and, more specifically, the promotion of competition, diversity of voices and localism.”
The FCC recorded the hearing and said the recording will be made available to the public. The public may also file comments or other documents with the commission and should reference MB 04-233. Filing instructions are provided at http://www. fcc.gov/localism/filinginstructions.doc.
© 2007 The Bangor Daily News
I grew up with TWO local television stations that competed with one another to produce the local news. I can recall the deterioration of that news in my teenage years, and now it has vanished completely. The anchors are all “faces” that hope to make it to a bigger market. Rarely, a reporter with vague notions of JOURNALISM will join the ranks of those who see the evening news as a position of celebrity rather than integrity. The news itself has become PR releases from drug companies, or travel companies, presented as news. The station with pretenses to journalistic integrity does their own voice overs of the PR clips, while the other station just plays them “as are”. Aside from a rundown of the criminal activities of the day, there is no local news. No update on the Mayor’s office, or the City Council, accept as it relates to new jobs coming, or being wooed. Within those stories, there are no questions of tax abatements, or donated land, buildings, training. It is, again, a story with only positive spin, as fed to them by a Public Relations agent. No journalism involved. The local newspaper still survived, the last time I was there, but was considering a buyout by Gannet.
Companies like Gannet, or Clear Channel don’t serve local interests and we cannot have “local” news with these distant leaders at the head of the organization. They have GLOBAL goals and GLOBAL interests, and it is that point of view that comes across in their “news”. It cannot be accidental. It is hard to run a war if the local paper is reporting on the number of local kids who have gone and died. It is harder to marginalize the voices of dissent in a small community on which the local paper is dependent. It is difficult to present the positives of globalization in a truly local media that has lost its advertising base to the ravages of the very same mechanism.
Kurt Vonnegut, most eloquently in his novel “Bluebeard”, made the argument that we have lost diversity to this drive for the global. That local storytellers are not longer able to compete with the very best in the world and so the world loses out on their talents as the locals opt for the Danielle Steele’s and John Grisham’s, instead. We lose the storytellers who tell OUR stories, but instead are directed to stories of New York, or Los Angeles. We lose sight of the world outside our doors and imagine that we are part of some other community. The community that produces our news and our entertainment, but has never lived through loss of family farms, or the local downtown, locals businesses left and right, been abandoned by companies moving South, but leaving behind a lifetime supply of PCBs or other deadly toxins. We don’t have the stories of local heroes, or local villains. We feed, instead, at the trough of the BIG PUBLISHING machines and imagine we are part of the culture we create, forgetting our neighbors and our history.
Local music, too, is a victim. With no “local” news to report on local musicians, there is no interest. With Clear Channel dominating the airwaves instead of local stations, a local band gets NO AIRTIME. Local venues, rather than hiring local musicians, hire cover bands, reproducing what is on the radio. While I live in a town where local music is vibrant, I also spent years in a community where a formerly vibrant scene DIED COMPLETELY as the radio market was bought out by national organizations.
When my dad was a little boy, he remembers taking family trips across the country and how exciting it was to sample the sodas and candies that were different in each place. The LOCAL FLAVOR was what made the trip exciting. But, now, we have no local flavor. We have the same candies and sodas across the nation. Even international travel does not get one the exotic flavors it used to, as Coke and Pepsi dominate the globe and influence the local tastes.
It is not enough to talk, as Michael Copps suggests, “…to find a way to enhance the performance operations of consolidated media.” That is a losing battle. It is time to return control to the local. It is time to break up the media empires, big and BIGGER, and have local flavor. Local interest. Local solidarity. Local concern. Local news. Local FLAVOR, so that we can all enjoy the variety that such a large country SHOULD offer.
Our local news is pathetic and I live in liberal Madison, WI which features the fine university and a very vibrant liberal left activist community. You wouldn’t know it. When watching the “news” here you’d think you were up in conservative Green Bay or the Fox River Valley (Appleton, Oshkosh, Neenah, Menasha).
What passes for news here is mostly crime, gossip and celebrity.
I once monitored the news for the Feingold for U.S. Senate campaign what was considered the top news station in Madison, Channel 3 HARDLY MENTIONED the campaign, forget about the issues.
There were plenty of tv ads though.
Unknown Arts: Excellent commentary. One point also to mention is that this methodology of big animal swallowing up the little guys creates an end run around censorship. At work is a modus operandi that indeed fosters the “politics of excluded alternatives.” Unknown arts mentioned candy, how about the same package stores and generic food corps in every town and city? Frank Zappa joked about this trend in “200 Motels.” That every small American town had one other staple in common, “churches and liquor stores.”
Siouxrose wrote: One point also to mention is that this methodology of big animal swallowing up the little guys creates an end run around censorship. At work is a modus operandi that indeed fosters the “politics of excluded alternatives.”
You would think, looking back at the sheer volume words in my post, that I would, indeed, have covered *everything*. Alas, no. Thanks, Siouxrose
Here in Pittsburgh, it’s all crime, sports, and weather. That’s the gist of our local news. Our star quarterback catches a cold, and there are press conferences on it.
“Local music, too, is a victim. With no “local” news to report on local musicians, there is no interest. With Clear Channel dominating the airwaves instead of local stations, a local band gets NO AIRTIME. Local venues, rather than hiring local musicians, hire cover bands, reproducing what is on the radio. While I live in a town where local music is vibrant, I also spent years in a community where a formerly vibrant scene DIED COMPLETELY as the radio market was bought out by national organizations.”
That’s the way it is here. The only way to find out about local bands in my city is to check out the local indy papers like The City Paper. The indy music scene is there, and the artists survive, but you have to look around for them.
I’m not into hip-hop, but there’s such an active hip-hop scene here in Pittsburgh, but you hardly ever hear about it.
But if Jimmy Buffett comes to town, hooooboy! It’s all you hear about for 6 weeks.