NAA President and CEO John F. Sturm to Appear as Witness Before House Oversight Hearing on FCC’s Media Ownership Rule Review

ARLINGTON, Va. -- John F. Sturm, President and CEO of the Newspaper Association of America, will testify Dec. 5 before the Telecommunications and the Internet Subcommittee, House of Representatives Committee on Energy and Commerce.

Sturm will make the following points to the Subcommittee:

• FCC action to relax the decades-old newspaper/broadcast ownership ban is egregiously overdue. The restriction on the cross-ownership of a daily newspaper and a TV or radio station within the same local market has been in existence for 32 years. The prohibition stands alone along the series of broadcast ownership regulations enacted by the Commission in the 1960s and 1970s. Each of those rules has been relaxed by the agency on at least one occasion (For example, since 1999, broadcasters have been permitted to own two TV stations in many markets. In 1996, Congress determined that a single party should be permitted to own as many as eight radio stations in large markets.). By contrast, new newspaper/broadcast combinations are strictly prohibited in all markets.

• The proposed modification to the flat cross-ownership ban would provide only modest regulatory relief in an intensely competitive environment. Out of the 210 DMAs that exist in the U.S., Chairman Martin’s current proposal would permit cross-ownership only in the 20 largest markets and provide no assurance of relief from the ban in medium-sized and smaller markets. Until the FCC levels the regulatory playing field between traditional daily newspapers, broadcasters and their growing list of competitors, it will continue to inflict unnecessary economic injury on the nation’s traditional media.

• Removing the cross-ownership restriction would serve, and not harm, local communities. In the volume of evidence that have been accumulated on this issue, there is none that credibly shows that newspaper/broadcast cross-ownership is detrimental to the public interest. To the contrary, the record repeatedly and indisputably has demonstrated that cross-ownership enhances localism by enabling broadcasters to increase local news and does not detract from the diversity of viewpoints available to local audiences.

John Sturm’s testimony will be available on December 5 at 2 p.m. ET on www.naa.org.

In addition to Sturm, the second panel of witnesses (following the first panel of all five FCC commissioners) will include: Sidney Bliss, Bliss Communications; Jerald Fritz, Allbritton Communications; Juan Gonzalez, former president, National Association of Hispanic Journalists; Andrew Levin, Clear Channel Communications; Andrew J. Schwartzman, Media Access Project; and Faye Williams, National Congress of Black Women.

NAA is a nonprofit organization representing the $59 billion newspaper industry and more than 2,000 newspapers in the U.S. and Canada. NAA members include daily newspapers, as well as non-dailies and other publications published throughout the world. Headquartered just outside Washington, D.C., in Arlington, Va., the Association focuses on six key strategic priorities that affect the newspaper industry collectively: marketing, public policy, diversity, industry development, newspaper operations and readership. Information about NAA and the industry also may be found at www.naa.org.

First Published:
December 04, 2007