Question: What businessman said, “The economic system that world history has demonstrated maximizes consumer welfare more than others are those that make efficient use of market mechanisms”?

Answer: No businessman at all. They are the words of the Chairman of the Federal Communication Commission, Michael Powell. If Powell’s sentiments convey a slightly messianic hubris, it is because he is on a mission: Remake the FCC to fit the needs of business.

Mr. Powell has vowed to review media ownership laws originally enacted to prevent monopolies in news programming. Paradoxically, he sees his job as facilitating the preservation of free, over-the-air TV. The seeming inevitability of consolidation among TV networks is a forgone conclusion in Powell’s mind. After all, the rules of a profit driven media industry dictate that businesses take everything they can get their hands on, and if that means serious, informative news is replaced by irrelevant sensationalism, the government should stand back and let it happen. But as Powell explains, matters of ownership "…are hard questions that have been waiting to be dealt with for decades. We're going to do the hard stuff, and we're going to do it first." (Broadcasting and Cable, July 23, 2001). Accordingly he has hit the ground running since President Bush appointed him chairman of the five-person board.

In the last eight months under Powell, the FCC has granted waivers allowing a company to own more than one network and allowing a company to own newspapers and a broadcaster in the same city (both waivers benefited Fox Television and its Australian-based parent company News Corp.) Under Powell’s leadership, the FCC will also discuss a review of laws that prohibit a single broadcasting network from reaching more than 35% of the households in the nation (unless the Supreme Court rules on this issue first). As Mr. Powell points out, the FCC has always granted waivers. This is true: in 1995 the foreign-ownership of the growing Fox TV was found to exceed its 25% cap and was given a waiver. What is remarkable about Powell’s agenda is how it flies in the face of the FCC’s role of protecting the public’s best interest.

Regarding Fox TV’s station purchases dissenting FCC Commissioner Gloria Tristani wrote that the “decision effectively eliminates the requirement that merger applicants demonstrate to the FCC that their license transfer would serve the public interest.” ()

In the same statement she wrote, “This decision also shows the lengths the Commission will go to avoid standing in the way of media mergers.” Within weeks of this decision, Tristani resigned. Bush, by law, must nominate another Democrat to fill her spot, although a Democrat is no guarantee of protection from unchecked business interests. Just look at the Clinton Administration.

So, why, if the concentration of power within the broadcasting industry undermines an informed public, does Mr. Powell foresee the revision and possible repeal of ownership rules? He simply doesn’t believe media monopolies are a bad thing. “The minute you talk about media concentration you’re talking about another cherished American value that gets implicated: The First Amendment to the Constitution, the broadcasting industry, not just as a business but as a mouthpiece, as someone [sic] who sets the tone of what we hear, or gives the vision of what we see, the message we play. First Amendment speaks to the idea that the government should be hesitant and limited in its ability to control what we should see.” (Lehrer Newshour, August 2001.) What about other large organizations that would distort or limit what Americans see? What about for-profit news (which in itself is a slightly absurd idea-how profitable can facts be)?

Many Americans don’t know that the US has been bombing Iraq since the Gulf War. They don’t know that Quebec almost seceded from Canada. The poor have ceased to exist in American media. Americans do know, however, that Monica Lewinsky Fed-Exed her semen-stained dress. They do know that O.J. Simpson drove a white Bronco. They know all about Madonna’s second wedding.

Mr. Powell makes it clear that his guiding principle as FCC chairman is that nothing should inhibit the needs of capitalism. In his own words, “American market capitalism is the home in which Bill Gates can come into being. It is the place where entrepreneurs and innovators can take great risks, reap those rewards and provide new and cutting edge services to consumers.” (ibid). Considering that Gate’s Microsoft has been found guilty of monopolistic practices, Powell’s choice of examples is strangely telling.
But Powell asserts he isn’t naïve. “I’ve spent years [4] in the anti-trust division and in private practice and I understand that commercial actors act principally in their self-interest. More often than not that self-interest can be concomitant with the interest of the consumer.” (ibid.)

“Consumer” is a favorite word of Powell, one he confuses with “citizen.” Consumers participate in economies, citizens participate in democracies. While the needs of the two sometimes overlap, they often diverge. Having 90 cable channels provides lots of “diversity” for consumers. Having six major companies own the cable channels, broadcast affiliates, and cable providers (not to mention Internet service providers) limits the variety of opinion and perspective in the news, especially concerning issues in which the broadcaster’s parent company has a vested interest -- for example the Microsoft ruling, as covered by MSNBC, or NAFTA covered as a policy story by any of the major networks.
According to Powell, what Americans cherish most in media is “diversity, localism, and a robust competitive medium.” But diversity in what sense--the hairstyles of the news anchors? What does he mean by localism? It doesn’t matter if the news affiliate is based locally or 80 miles away when the so-called news is merely infotainment and press releases cloaked as current events. Location is not an end in itself. Neither is competition. In the city where this article is being written, the network affiliates tout their news as superior to that of their competitors, but the same affiliates uniformly miss or ignore important stories (regarding policy, politics, matters of public interest) in favor of movie reviews and lifestyle pieces. The FCC states that it isn’t in the business of regulating content. . In the past 20 years, it hasn’t been in the business of encouraging truthful, fact-based news programs in the public’s interest, either.

As the son of Secretary of State Colin Powell, one can imagine the remarkable environment in which Michael grew up. A back injury ended his own military career just two years after he joined. Ten years after his discharge from the Army, Michael Powell was appointed a commissioner of the FCC. In the intervening years he attended law school and worked as a law clerk at the US Court of Appeals and associate at O'Melveny & Myers, where he claims he never did work on behalf of media companies he would soon be in charge of regulating. There is little on note in these claims. What is notable about Michael Powell’s resume is that, except for a few months spent stationed in Germany in the Army, he has never strayed far from the centers of power. His father grew up in Harlem. Michael grew up in the controlled world of base housing. Colin Powell was familiar with the underprivileged, the marginalized, and those written out of the mainstream. Michael Powell, who says he was “taught to be an open-minded thinker,” has had no opportunity to experience (according to his resume) a life outside the centers of power.
Military life is not famous for embracing a plurality of differing voices. Military life teaches leadership and a service to the group at the expense of the individual. Dissenting voices have never served Michael Powell and he can see no reason to protect them in the world of broadcasting today.