Media Mogul, Kennedy Do Battle : Murdoch Criticizes Senator’s Effort to Force Sale of Papers

A cat fight tailor-made for a tabloid newspaper has broken out between Sen. Edward M. Kennedy and media mogul Rupert Murdoch, pitting the publisher’s two scrappy tabloids, the mayor of New York, two U.S. senators and the Newspaper Guild against the liberal Democratic senator from Massachusetts.

All the noise, however, obscures a bigger struggle: Should the federal government allow media companies to acquire newspapers, television stations and radio outlets in the same city, a concentration of media ownership currently against the law?

In Congress’ catchall spending bill passed just before Christmas, Kennedy snuck in a last-minute addition that effectively forces Murdoch to sell or close the New York Post and the Boston Herald, if he retains ownership of TV stations in the same cities.

FCC Granted Waivers

Such so-called cross ownership of media is illegal under current federal regulation. But the Federal Communications Commission granted Murdoch, who acquired the TV stations only recently, temporary waivers so that he could have time to find buyers for the papers.

Kennedy’s rider to the spending bill directed that the FCC not extend waivers to the cross-ownership ban--a move aimed directly at Murdoch, the only media owner currently holding such waivers--and forbade the FCC to change the cross-ownership law, a move the FCC already is considering.

When Kennedy’s maneuver was finally discovered several days later, the news staffs of Murdoch’s tabloids went to work.

Since Sunday, for instance, the Boston Herald has run more than 20 front-page stories about the brouhaha, which it labeled in a front-page editorial “Kennedy’s Vendetta.”

Koch Backs Murdoch

In a special Senate hearing in New York on Thursday, Mayor Edward I. Koch, a favorite of Murdoch’s editorial writers, called Kennedy’s action “a noxious assault on the First Amendment.” And New York Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a liberal Democrat who sponsored the hearing, promised to propose legislation that would allow Murdoch to keep the New York Post, at least temporarily, a move endorsed by the state’s Republican Sen. Alphonse M. D’Amato.

Kennedy, meanwhile, said he acted because Murdoch already “had it wired” through an inside deal for the FCC to change federal regulations to allow him to keep his newspapers. “The fix was in,” Kennedy said.

Murdoch, making a rare television appearance on Cable News Network’s “Crossfire” program, in reply charged that “Sen. Kennedy’s allegation of a fix is not only libelous and malicious, it is totally inaccurate.”

The cross-ownership rule, passed by the FCC in 1975, was designed to inhibit concentration of the American media in the hands of a few major conglomerates.

Rule Called Obsolete

Appointed by President Reagan, the FCC, which has repealed or modified many of the most important regulations governing broadcast ownership, has recently begun to entertain arguments that the cross-ownership rule is obsolete.

“Since its adoption in 1975, a great deal of change has occurred in media,” said Murdoch attorney Howard Squadron, such as “the advent of cable television, a proliferation of new local TV stations, the evolution of the computer.”

Squadron, however, said Murdoch does not seek to repeal the cross-ownership ban. He merely wants the FCC to be allowed to apply it on a case-by-case basis.

Craig Smith, president of the Freedom of Expression Foundation, a media industry funded group that has asked the FCC to repeal or amend the cross-ownership rule, argued that the cross-ownership ban has actually helped kill financially troubled newspapers by forbidding them to own profitable TV stations in their own cities.

But Andrew Jay Schwartzman, executive director of a communications law firm called the Media Access Project, said he believes “there is a substantially increased need for the cross-ownership rules. . . . In the last seven years the Reagan-era FCC has lifted most of the regulations limiting media concentration.

“And each time they have made one of these changes they have pointed to the fact that the cross-ownership rule still existed” as part of its assurance that there was no danger.

Kennedy Incensed

Kennedy was particularly incensed, spokesman Jeff Smith said, because the FCC had earlier this year tried to repeal without congressional debate the Fairness Doctrine, which required broadcasters to offer time to all sides of important issues of public debate. When Congress tried to reinstall the doctrine, President Reagan threatened to veto the catchall spending bill.

Actually, the action Kennedy took before Christmas was one Sen. Ernest F. Hollings (D-S.C.) had written into a bill last spring, said Kennedy spokesman Smith, but the bill had stalled in conference.

When it appeared it had no future, Kennedy contacted Hollings about attaching it to the spending bill. If they waited until the new year to hold hearings on a bill, Smith said, Kennedy believed the FCC would unilaterally abolish the cross-ownership rule.

As for Murdoch, Smith said, Kennedy is convinced the media baron would have been granted an extension to his waiver until the rule was abolished.

Murdoch Denies Charge

Murdoch issued a statement Friday denying that charge.

Kennedy knew his amendment would spark a furor, those familiar with the action said. Yet he didn’t mind taking on Murdoch while Hollings went on safari in Africa.

Murdoch’s papers long have been a thorn in Kennedy’s side. In the 1980 presidential campaign, the Post sent reporters to Europe to find women who claimed to have had liaisons with Kennedy and it published a series on the 1969 Chappaquiddick incident.

“There is no love lost between Kennedy and Murdoch,” one insider said. “In the best spirit of yellow journalism, the Herald has really had a field day with Kennedy and his family over the years. I think Kennedy has had his fill.”