Facts relating to Media Ownership

from freepress.net

Facts relating to Media Ownership

66% of respondents said news organizations tended to be biased when covering political and social issues, while only 26% thought they dealt fairly with all sides, according to a survey in the summer of 2003
Mark Jurkowitz, "Public's Cynicism About Media Has Become a Pressing Concern", The Boston Globe, April 14, 2004

USA Today reports that only 36% of Americans believe what they read, see or hear in the media.
Marvin Kalb, "A Quest for More Sensation is Killing Journalism", Financial Times, April 1, 2004

The FCC claimed to base its ownership rule-change in summer 2003 on a study that examined the importance of local sources of news for the American public, citing a study that indicated that only 29% say their main source of news is newspapers. A new survey refutes this claim, saying the FCC figure was less than half of the actual total, 61%.
New Survey Finds Americans Rely on Newspapers Much More Than Other Media for Local News and Information, Consumer Federation of America, Jan., 2004.

In the first five months of 2003, when the FCC was debating the media cross-ownership rules that were overturned in June of that year, the commercial TV and cable networks showed "virtually no coverage" of the issue, with the big networks typically airing nothing until a week before the FCC decision.
Charles Layton, "News Blackout," American Journalism Review, Dec./Jan., 2004

In 1985, only 13% of survey respondents were willing to label news organizations as "immoral", but by 2003 this opinion was shared by 32% of those surveyed. Less than half of the respondents in 2003 would label the media as "moral".
Mark Jurkowitz, "Public's Cynicism About Media Has Become a Pression Concern", The Boston Globe, April 14, 2004.

70% of respondents to a summer, 2003 survey said that news outlets were often influenced by powerful people and organizations, while only 23% believed outlets to be free of such influences.
Mark Jurkowitz, "Public's Cynicism About Media Has Become a Pressing Concern", The Boston Globe, April 14, 2004

From 1998 to 2003, the number of hours each week devoted to children's programming in Los Angeles decreased by more than 50%, the largest decreases occuring on stations that are part of media duopolies.
Big Media, Little Kids: Media Consolidation and Children's Television Programming, Children Now 21 May, 2003

Two-thirds of people polled believe special interests or a self-serving corporate-political agenda infect news coverage.
Kirk LaPointe, "Losing Faith in the Media", Maclean's,September 29, 2003
Prior to relaxing media ownership rules in 2003, FCC officials met behind closed doors 71 times with the nation's major broadcasters, but had only five such meetings with Consumers Union and the Media Access Project, the two major consumer groups working on the issue. The meetings were not recorded.
Bob Williams "Behind Closed Doors: Top Broadcasters Met 71 Times With FCC Officials," The Center for Public Integrity 29 May, 2003

Over the past eight years, FCC Commissioners and staff have received almost $2.8 million in travel and entertainment expenses mainly from the telecommunications and broadcast industries that it is supposed to regulate. The number one travel destination is Las Vegas with 330 trips, followed by New Orleans with 173.
Bob Williams "On the Road Again--and Again: FCC officials rack up $2.8 million travel tab with industries they regulate," The Center for Public Integrity, 13 June, 2003

Since 1995, the number of companies owning commercial TV stations has declined by 40%
Facts On Media In America: Did You Know? Common Cause, 8 May, 2003
In 1995, Clear Channel accounted for 1.3 of the radio industry's revenues, but by 2001, deregulation allowed the company to grab more than 20% of revenues.
Tiny to Titan in Six years, Fortune, 3 March, 2003 p. 20

Heavy viewers of the Fox News Channel are nearly four times as likely to hold demonstrably untrue positions about the war in Iraq as media consumers who rely on National Public Radio or the Public Broadcasting System
study by the Program on International Policy Attitudes, which surveyed 3,334 Americans who receive their news from a single media source.

One fifth of all programing billed as educational for children had "little or no educational value," according to a 1999 U. of Pennsylvania study.
Meg James, "TV Networks Find Ways to Stretch Educational Rules," Los Angeles Times, 23 Feb. 2003

Between 1996 and 2000, the fifty largest media firms and the four media trade organizations spent $111 million on lobbying Congress.
Charles Lewis "Media Money," Columbia Journalism Review, Sept./Oct. 2000 pp. 20-27

32% of local reporters have acknowledged that they have softened the tone of a news story on behalf of the interests of their news organization.
Self Censorship: How Often and Why, Journalists Avoiding the News The Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, 30 April, 2000.

73% of journalists believe that buyouts of news organizations by big, diversified corporations has a negative effect on journalism.
Self Censorship: How Often and Why, Journalists Avoiding the News The Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, 30 April, 2000.

33 million Americans live in poverty, yet most people in this country think that the total is only 1 to 5 million.
Public Misconception About Poverty Continues, U.S. Newswire, 7 Jan., 2003

26% of local journalists say they have been told to ignore a story because it was dull or complicated, but suspect the real motivation to be potential harm to the company's financial interests.
Self Censorship: How Often and Why, Journalists Avoiding the News The Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, 30 April, 2000.

Cable TV rates have risen 40% since the passage of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, a law designed to increase competition in the cable industry.
Facts On Media In America: Did You Know? Common Cause, 8 May, 2003

Among people who have heard a lot about the FCC's cross-ownership rule change, 70% say the impact on the country will be negative, while only 6% say it will be positive. People who have heard a little about the change fall in at 57% negative, 8% positive.
Strong Opposition to Media Cross-Ownership Emerges The Pew Research Center for the People and the Press, 13 July, 2003.

86% of people in 2000 were at least "somewhat concerned" about media mergers, with 50% saying they were "highly concerned".
David Lieberman, "Media Merger Anxiety," USA Today, 9 Oct., 2000

By the end of summer 2003, over 2.3 million people contacted the FCC or Congress to voice their opposition to media concentration.
Estimated by FCC commissioner Jonathan Adelstein.