THE FREE PRESS
05 April 2003

One of the fundamental concerns of the framers of the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights was that the presses which dispersed information among the citizenry should remain independently under the control of those citizens. It was understood that a centralized media environment would lend itself to governmental manipulation, abuse and the threat of new tyranny.

The question which currently burns is whether consolidation among media sources is now threatening the independence of that vital democratic institution, the free press. For a number of reasons, consolidation leads to an atmosphere of institutional caution, which in turn leads to less willingness to question powerful interests, the government in particular, though these are the primary societal values of the function of the press.

For many, these constitutional questions remain hazy at best, with so many interpretations mounting so quickly as to render most debates unmanageable. But that same versatility has given great and consistent weight to the wording of this important document over two centuries. It of course becomes a strict governing principle that the government cannot legislate the role or the nature of the press. Many important legal and legislative battles have been waged over issues tied to this principle, and the result is that much remains unclear.

We can say, if we are careful enough, thoughtful enough, that for the press to remain free, government meddling must be minimal. But we can also say that some limits must be placed on the business-oriented aspects of decision-making within major media outlets. The reason for this is clear: without protections against consolidation, the laws of the marketplace break down, and the essential shelter which "independence" provides becomes eroded through rogue business tactics: i.e. competing by consuming or by anticompetitive tactics.

When the press begins to erode its own value, in the interests not of the freedom of information, but rather in the specific and narrow interests of its controlling ownership, the concept of the free press becomes something of a red herring, retroactively. It begins to appear that we may have abandoned the principle, as top-down decisions intrude increasingly upon the editorial makeup of our media.

One argument that has been made suggests that media outlets should be separated, in the interests of competition and free flow of information (to the general public), in the way that financial institutions had been, and will be again. This is the simpler solution, and would likely entail a great deal of selling and spinning-off of media assets, but would produce a new dynamic in a newly invigorated marketplace, which would assist in the restoration of the potency of a free and independent press.

This idea would be elaborated by pushing for one of two scenarios:

Again, some interpret this sort of reform as government involvement in the press, but commercial interests have already had the perverse effect of rendering public media, often sponsored by the government, the most objective and independent of all. [s]