Dow Jones deal prompts call to broaden ownership ban
washington -- Federal rules try to limit media power by prohibiting a company from owning a newspaper and a TV station in the same city.
Billionaire Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp. faces no such hurdle in its pending deal to acquire Dow Jones & Co. and with it the country’s second-largest paper, the Wall Street Journal, even though it owns a broadcast TV network and a cable news channel that blanket the country.
Some Democrats say such national combinations should be scrutinized as well. Already not particularly fond of Murdoch’s News Corp. because of the perceived Republican tilt of Fox News Channel, they are urging the Federal Communications Commission to review the deal.
“The proposed merger between News Corp. and Dow Jones raises the serious question of whether a single company’s concentration on a national scale should continue to be unfettered and unchecked,” Sen. Byron L. Dorgan (D-N.D.) wrote to FCC Chairman Kevin J. Martin last week. “The FCC should consider studying whether the public interest would be served if media cross-ownership rules existed at the national level.”
News Corp. declined to comment. Near term, a national ban is considered a long shot.
Nonetheless, Dorgan and some other lawmakers, as well as Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards and FCC Commissioner Michael J. Copps, also a Democrat, would like to see the Dow Jones purchase pass the same litmus test local media owners must under existing cross-ownership rules.
New York is drawing special attention. Although the Journal circulates nationally, about 302,000 of its 2.1 million daily copies are sold in the New York metropolitan area, where News Corp. owns the New York Post and operates two TV stations with FCC waivers.
“In my view, this buyout will result in an overly consolidated media market, imperiling the diversity of opinions available to residents of the greater New York area and across the country,” Sen. Christopher J. Dodd (D-Conn.) wrote to Martin last week.
The Journal sells about 171,000 copies in Southern California, most of Arizona and southern Nevada. In Los Angeles, News Corp. owns KTTV-TV Channel 11 and KCOP-TV Channel 13.
A spokesman for Martin declined to comment on the letters and his position on the deal. Martin is highly unlikely to support a broader ban, having publicly questioned the need for the existing ban on cross-ownership in a single market. The FCC, which currently has a Republican majority, is holding hearings on whether to ease that and other media ownership rules.
The FCC’s authority is limited, as the current cross-ownership rule shows. The prohibition kicks in only when a TV station license is transferred or expires, which is why Tribune Co. has been allowed to own the Los Angeles Times and KTLA-TV Channel 5, along with similar combinations in New York and Connecticut, since purchasing Times Mirror Co. in 2000.
But Democrats in Congress could pass a national cross-ownership prohibition that did not rely on TV station licenses and require divestiture of any existing combinations, said C. Edwin Baker, a law and communications professor at the University of Pennsylvania.
Copps said Tuesday that the FCC should consider a national rule as part of its media ownership review, because traditional definitions are changing.
“Yes, the Wall Street Journal is a national paper and maybe the New York Post is a local paper, but they’re both in the top five nationally and the Wall Street Journal has a huge amount of its circulation in New York,” Copps said. “It’s enormous power in the city of New York.”
Edwards, who called the Dow Jones deal “the last straw when it comes to media consolidation,” has been weighing whether to call for a national ban, and he has asked some unions for their position.
joseph.menn@latimes.com
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