The FCC's thinking about media ownership and power is being exposed as an "incoherent muddle," says Knight journalism ethics professor Edward Wasserman. Policymakers' decision to allow the companies
to own both newspapers and TV stations in big cities applies to two obsolescent technologies--print and over-the-air TV, he says.
More "troubling" is Cablevision's purchase of
Newsday, the country's eleventh-biggest paper--a deal the FCC can't touch. Wasserman says the FCC is also too late in encouraging localism in local TV. Soon national networks will be using
online and cable and "localism will be all that's left for local TV stations."
Read the whole story at Miami Herald »