“If the FCC (Federal Communications Commission) proceeds with a vote tomorrow (Tuesday Dec. 18th) on media ownership issues, I urge all the commissioners to weigh carefully the impact of any new rules or waiver standards on the historic policy values of diversity and localism. Our democracy relies upon an informed citizenry and there are few issues that the FCC will address that will have a more profound impact on our civic institutions than the media ownership proposals that may be voted upon tomorrow.”

Except from a letter released Monday Dec. 17th by Representative Edward J. Markey (D-MA), chairman of the House Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet, from the Government Accountability Office (GAO), providing an update on media ownership issues in 16 case study markets around the country.

FCC Chairman Kevin Martin is a man on a mission. Despite overwhelming popular opposition to proposed relaxing of media ownership rules and even a bipartisan group of 25 U.S. senators threatening to override the FCC if the agency votes to loosen media ownership restrictions at a meeting scheduled for this past Tuesday (if he goes ahead with the vote, “we will immediately move legislation that will revoke and nullify the proposed rule,” the letter states), Martin feels that he (and his friends in big media) knows what is best for the American people. He wants to let the pigs loose at the trough.

Martin (as of this writing) is steamrolling the vote to lift the 1975 media cross-ownership rule that forbids a company from owning a newspaper and television or radio station in the same city (a merger that combines a big daily newspaper and a TV or radio station would be allowed in the 20 largest markets, as long as none of the top four TV stations were involved.). The vote is a forgone conclusion because the Republican majority (Chairman Martin and commissioners Robert M. McDowell from Virginia and Deborah Taylor Tate from Tennessee) is expected to vote for the proposed changes with the Democratic minority (Jonathan S. Adelstein from South Dakota and Michael J. Copps from Wisconsin) anticipated to vote against it. On Monday, he said he would, “temper” his planned relaxation of media ownership rules and that the latest changes would make newspaper-broadcast mergers in smaller markets more difficult (to be considered for a waiver in a smaller market, a newspaper must have lost money three straight years, and a TV station airing no local news would have to supply at least seven hours a week) than under the plan he originally proposed.

This is what Martin had to say regarding the proposed changes when he testified before members of the Senate Commerce Committee in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday, Dec. 5th.

“The media marketplace has changed considerably since the newspaper/broadcast cross ownership was put in place more than thirty years ago. Back then, cable was a nascent service, satellite television did not exist and there was no Internet. Consumers have benefited from the explosion of new sources of news and information. But according to almost every measure newspapers are struggling. At least 300 daily papers have stopped publishing over the past thirty years. Their circulation is down, their advertising revenue is shrinking and their stock prices are falling. Permitting cross-ownership can preserve the viability of newspapers by allowing them to share their operational costs across multiple media platforms.”

That would sound reasonable enough if it were the truth. Problem is that it isn’t. Newspaper profits are down, but on average, publicly traded newspaper firms still generate profit margins that are greater than the average for the Fortune five hundred. Dean Singleton, owner of the York Daily Record and dozens of other papers of the Media Newsgroup, said that the newspaper industry is, “very, very, very profitable and it will continue to be for a long time.” Scarborough Research, a firm that is closely affiliated with the Newspaper Association of America, concluded in their recent report on the state of the newspaper industry that, “they continue to find that when online readers are considered, the story of newspaper readership for many papers transforms from one of slow, steady decline to one of vibrancy and growth.”

When confronted with this information by congressman Mike Doyle (D - PA) during questioning at the hearing, Martin replied that he hadn’t.

Truth is that he doesn’t give a shit.

And that’s what it comes down to. The hundreds of people that spoke out against the changes (as they did here in Richmond in 2003 when then FCC Chairman Michael Powell was trying to push through similar deregulation) until 1 in the morning in Seattle during one of the committee’s 6 public hearings over the issue know their opinions amount to a pile of feces to Martin. Over the last 18 months, the overwhelming message Martin and the committee has received from the general public is don’t do it.

In today’s FCC, what the public wants doesn’t matter.

The de-regulation of the media and its subsequent collapse into a very few holders of the majority of market share is frighteningly similar to the unary media control in the former USSR. It should not be allowed to happen. It most likely will have a positive effect on media investors but not on the population in general.