New York Times Op-Ed essay by William Safire.
Originally published on September 17, 2003
The Senate Says No
By WILLIAM SAFIRE
How are a majority of Americans, standing with a bipartisan majority of both houses of Congress, going to stop the Federal Communications Commission from making the biggest mistake in its existence?
A handful of media giants want to further concentrate their power by gobbling up more local TV and radio stations, beyond the 35-percent-of-penetration limit. The F.C.C. chairman has called arguments for local diversity "garbage" and this week branded the proposed Senate resolution disapproving of his anything-goes ruling as "bordering on the absurd."
The Senate answered this arrogance yesterday by voting, 55 to 40, for Senator Byron Dorgan's resolution to disapprove the F.C.C.'s green light for power-grabbing. Though a House majority would agree, the G.O.P. leadership there declared the Senate bill "dead on arrival" and will block a vote. Therefore, the Senate's expression becomes a dramatic gesture, but not law.
Meanwhile, a federal appeals court in Philadelphia has put a hold on the F.C.C.'s ruling. When administration lawyers tried to yank the case over to a D.C. appeals court ó more likely to rubber-stamp the order ó the Philadelphia judges said nothing doing. That gives Congress time to pass legislation directing the F.C.C. to hold the line against the Disney-G.E.-Fox-Viacom takeovers.
The F.C.C. chairman, Michael Powell, sensing that not even his friendship with Senator John McCain nor his backing by Big Media is stopping the popular groundswell, has resorted to a fear appeal: that stopping more gobbling up of local stations by the broadcast networks will be the ruination of "free TV."
That's the ludicrous party line being peddled by G.E., which owns NBC. But four-fifths of broadcast network TV is now delivered to homes by cable or satellite ó not free ó and NBC, ABC, CBS and Fox are making money hand over fist. "Powell's Last Stand" on this false argument has become an embarrassment to the Bush White House, which has been foolishly threatening to veto any disapproval of the F.C.C.'s abdication of the public interest. (The G.O.P. leader Tom DeLay still can't get 148 signatures on a letter promising to sustain what would be Bush's first veto.)
How do we break out of this impasse, with the mediopoly and its political trained seals on the merger side, and with the most diverse coalition of lefties and righties ever assembled on the other?
Senator Trent Lott, a Republican, knows how these things work; I crosshatched his analysis with that of a savvy Democratic mole in the House.
Yesterday's Senate expression of disapproval was a good sign, but will die in the House. The bill already passed by McCain's Senate Commerce Committee detailing what the F.C.C. must do to protect diversity in TV as well as radio, and to restrict new cross-ownership of TV and newspapers, will not soon get a floor vote as the majority leader, Bill Frist, goes along with White House wishes.
But thanks to the canny Alaskan Ted Stevens, the rollback of the Powell abomination will appear in the Senate appropriations bill for the Commerce, Justice and State Departments. It is already in the House bill funding those departments, and Democrats will not let it be stripped out behind closed doors in conference. Thus even restraint of cross-ownership of newspapers and TV ó which those of us in diversity's ranks thought a lost cause ó may be carried along in the wave of resentment against the 45-percent-of-TV-audience penetrators.
"Today's victory ó and don't kid yourself, it stunned 'em ó is just one step in the process," says Lott. "The final step will be even harder for the president or the leadership to stop. An appropriations bill for Commerce-Justice-State ó that would be hard to veto over the issue of a regulatory review."
Why would the president want to bring the financing of the war on terror to a grinding halt to rescue an appointee aching to resign? Or to curry favor with a tight bunch of media biggies who might use their ever-greater power to turn on him when he least expects it? The first Bush veto should advance a principle, not be wasted on a bow to a muscular Mickey Mouse.
Libertarians of the left and right are resisting the concentration of power and insisting on the preservation of competition. This strange bedfellowship will not equivocate, and we will be heard.