4
concentrated ownership constricts the number and kinds of speakers. Owners of the
communication systems that deliver content can erect bottlenecks that favor certain content
providers and thwart others. In more pointed analyses that link the ownership question to the
predominantly advertiser-supported structure of US media, concentrated mass media are
understood to shape content in ways that reproduce the prevailing structures of power and
dominant cultural norms. At the very least, a commercially based media system is structurally
biased toward content connected to marketable products and services, and, related, is biased
away from content valued by the poor. For content that cannot attract sponsorship tends not to
see the light of day. To rectify these problems, Congress, the antitrust agencies, and the Federal
Communications Commission enacted a set of policies over the decades designed to address
media concentration by separating communication industries from each other and restricting
common ownership. These policies were pursued under the general rubric of a concept of a
“diversity of owners” or “maintaining a diversity of voices.” In some instances, such as those
concerning newspaper and broadcast outlets in the same market, common ownership was directly
prohibited. Under the same diversity logic, the FCC also set ceilings on the numbers of
broadcast outlets any single person or corporation could own. These limits, and the FCC’s
authority to make them, were upheld, occasionally even compelled, by the federal appellate
courts.
6
In the early years “diversity” was not explicitly articulated as the theory that legitimated
6
The Supreme Court traditionally upheld the structural regulation of media against First Amendment
challenge by corporate owners. Associated Press v. United States has already been mentioned. Other
prominent cases include National Broadcasting Co. v. United States, 319 U.S. 190 (1943), in which the
Court ruled in favor of the FCC’s “chain broadcasting” regulations; United States v. Storer Broadcasting
Co., 351 U.S. 192 (1956), in which the Court upheld the FCC’s limit on the number of broadcast stations a
single entity could own nationally; and FCC v. National Citizens Committee for Broadcasting, 436 U.S.
775 (1978), in which the Court upheld the newspaper-broadcast cross-ownership prohibition.
Convention