Viewpoint Diversity and Media Consolidation: An Empirical Study

One of the central predicates of legal regulation of media ownership is that ownership consolidation reduces substantive viewpoint diversity. Appellate courts and, in turn, the Federal Communications Commission have increasingly demanded evidence for this convergence hypothesis, but extant empirical...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Stanford law review 2009-02, Vol.61 (4), p.781-868
Main Authors: Ho, Daniel E., Quinn, Kevin M.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Acquisitions & mergers
Antitrust
Broadcasting stations
Company acquisition/merger
Conservatism
Court decisions and opinions
Data collection
Data entry
DISCRIMINATION
DIVERSITY
Diversity indices
Editorials
Empirical evidence
EVIDENCE
Federal court decisions
Federal regulation
Hypotheses
Journalism
LANGUAGE
Law and legislation
Liberalism
Market domination
Market share
Mass media
Mass media industry
MEDIA
Mergers, acquisitions and divestments
News content
Online database
Online databases
Organizational structure
Ownership changes
Retirement policies
Review committees
Statistical methods
STATISTICS
Studies
Telecommunication
U.S. states
United States. Federal Communications Commission
Workshops
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Summary:One of the central predicates of legal regulation of media ownership is that ownership consolidation reduces substantive viewpoint diversity. Appellate courts and, in turn, the Federal Communications Commission have increasingly demanded evidence for this convergence hypothesis, but extant empirical measures of viewpoint diversity sidestep the problem, ignoring diversity, viewpoints, or both. Our Article develops and offers a finely tuned, time-varying statistical measure of editorial viewpoint diversity, based on a new database of over 1600 editorial positions in twenty-five top newspapers from 1988-2004. Using this new measure, we assess the validity of the convergence hypothesis by examining the evolution of editorial viewpoints over the course of five major mergers and acquisitions. Our data reveal complex patterns that defy extant accounts, showing stability, convergence, and divergence of viewpoints in the face of—and depending on the circumstances of—consolidation. These findings fundamentally challenge extant empirical regulatory assumptions—pointing to the crucial role of editorial policies—and deeply inform the viability of the ownership regulations and the interpretation of the 1996 Telecommunications Act.
ISSN:0038-9765
1939-8581