The media system should be made open to all perspectives and competing voices through promoting diversity of ownership and content, while stopping media consolidation and monopoly control of the public airwaves. We support:

• Stronger media ownership rules at the FCC that would stop media consolidation by tightening ownership caps on radio and television, and ban cross ownership of newspapers and broadcast outlets in individual media markets.

• Initiatives that expand opportunities for women and minority ownership of media, including support for a Minority Ownership Tax-Credit.

• Policies that promote diverse, independent and locally produced media content, including support for community programming requirements and Public, Educational, and Government cable access centers.

• Policies that put low-power FM radio licenses into the hands of more communities.

Who Owns the Media?

Check out the charts below for information on which corporations own the national and local media outlets from which we get our news, entertainment and information.

• Columbia Journalism Review Ownership Chart
  
• Interactive Media Ownership Map by Free Press
  
• Viacom Ownership Poster by Center for International Media Action

• False Premises, False Promises: A Quantitative History of Ownership Consolidation in the Radio Industry
  - December 18, 2006 by Future of Music Coalition
  http://www.futureofmusic.org/images/FMCradiostudy06.pdf
  
  
• Out of the Picture: Minority & Female TV Station Ownership in the United States
  - September 20, 2006 by Free Press
  http://www.stopbigmedia.com/files/out_of_the_picture.pdf
  
  
• The Employment & Wage Effects of Radio Consolidation
  - August 9, 2006 by Future of Music Coalition
  http://www.futureofmusic.org/research/index.cfm
  
  
• Minority Ownership and Employment in the Mass Media
  - November 1, 2005 by Leadership Conference on Civil Rights
  http://www.civilrights.org/issues/communication/
  MinorityOwnershipreport.pdf
  
  
• Ownership Concentration and Indecency: Is There A Link?
  - September 2005 by Center for Creative Voices in Media, Free Press, Fordham University
  http://www.creativevoices.us/cgi-upload/news/
  news_article/FINALReport090605.pdf
  
  
• Mass Deregulation of Media Threatens to Undermine Democracy
  - June 3, 2003 by Consumers Union and Consumer Federation of America
  http://www.consumerfed.org/pdfs/FCC_Rule.pdf
  
  
• Radio Deregulation: Has it Served Its Citizens and Musicians?
  - November 8, 2002 by Future of Music Coalition
  http://www.futureofmusic.org/images/FMCradiostudy.pdf