Finally, the International Bureau is responsible for representing the FCC in all satellite and international matters. It also concerns itself with foreign investment in the United States, ruling that outside governments, individuals, or corporations cannot own more than 20 percent of stock in a U.
As previously discussed, the FTC primarily dedicates itself to eliminating unfair business practices; however, in the course of those duties it has limited contact with media outlets.
In , the agency created this registry to prevent most telemarketing phone calls, exempting such groups as nonprofit charities and businesses with which a consumer has an existing relationship.
Although originally intended for landline phones, the Do Not Call Registry allows individuals to register wireless telephones along with traditional wire-based numbers. Over the years, several antitrust acts law discouraging the formation of monopolies have been passed into law. The Sherman Antitrust Act was put into place in to dissolve trusts such as these.
The Sherman Antitrust Act served as a precedent for future antitrust regulation. The problem with the Clayton Act was that, while it prohibited mergers, it offered a loophole in that companies were allowed to buy individual assets of competitors such as stocks or patents , which could still lead to monopolies. Established in and often referred to as the Antimerger Act, the Cellar-Kefauver Act closed that loophole by giving the government the power to stop vertical mergers.
Vertical mergers happen when two companies in the same business but on different levels—such as a tire company and a car company—combine. The act also banned asset acquisitions that reduced competition Financial Dictionary. These laws reflected growing concerns in the early and midth century that the trend toward monopolization could lead to the extinction of competition.
Government regulation of businesses increased until the s, when the United States experienced a shift in mind-set and citizens called for less governmental power. Media deregulation actually began during the s as the FCC shifted its approach to radio and television regulation. Begun as a way of clearing laws to make the FCC run more efficiently and cost effectively, deregulation truly took off with the arrival of the Reagan administration and its new FCC chairman, Mark Fowler, in Television licenses were expanded from 3 years to 5, and corporations were now allowed to own up to 12 separate TV stations.
The shift in regulatory control had a powerful effect on the media landscape. Whereas initially laws had prohibited companies from owning media entities in more than one medium, consolidation created large mass-media companies that increasingly dominated the U.
Before the increase in deregulation, eight major companies controlled phone services to different regions of the United States. Today, however, there are four Kimmelman. Companies such as Viacom and Disney own television stations, record companies, and magazines. Bertelsmann alone owns more than 30 radio stations, publishing outlets, and 15 record companies Columbia Journalism Review. Today, deregulation remains a hotly debated topic. Some favor deregulation, believing that the public benefits from less governmental control.
Others, however, argue that excessive consolidation of media ownership threatens the system of checks and balances. Is what you see on the Internet being censored? Television is audience driven. The larger the audience, the higher the rates charged for commercial time and the greater the profits. Critics have charged that this situation reduces hard news coverage and requires flashier packaging of the news. For example, local TV stations give considerably less airtime to political news than to the weather report, sport scores, and human interest stories.
Indeed, the line between news and entertainment programming is becoming increasingly blurred. Growing numbers of young viewers say they receive their political information from comedy programming like The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and The Colbert Report. Newspapers and magazines are largely protected from government interference by the First Amendment. The Supreme Court refused to block their publication, noting that prior restraint was a violation of freedom of the press.
The press cannot print stories that are known to be false or are intentionally damaging to a person's reputation, however. Content is also controlled by obscenity statutes. Practically from its inception, the broadcast media has been subject to regulation. Indecent or obscene speech has been an important regulatory content issue. The freedom of expression promised in the First Amendment has been limited by the proliferation of television and radio outlets accessible by young children.
During the s and s, fraught with cultural change, obscene speech became an issue on radio and television, culminating in the decision in Federal Communications Commission v. Indeed, although the FCC has always played a role in the cultural conflicts of its time, it has been an important player in the so-called culture wars since the s. As Congress considered legislation in allowing telephone companies to offer cable broadband services and to limit or eliminate local franchising, the FCC remained in the middle of controversies on Internet neutrality and the nature of public-interest obligations in a deregulated environment.
This article was originally published in Brian Caterino is a writer living in Rochester, New York. He also worked in a public access channel for many years. A protest over the seizure of this public access channel was indirectly the spur for the Supreme Court case Town of Greece v. Galloway , for which he provided video materials. Among his academic work, he recently published The Decline of Public Access and Neo-Liberal Media Regimes Palgrave Macmillan which deals in part with free speech issues in communications media.
Aufderheide, Patricia. Communications Policy and the Public Interest. New York: Guilford Press, Besen, Stanley M. Krattenmaker, A. Richard Metzger, and John R. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, Linder, Laura. Westport, Conn. McChesney, Robert W. Broadcasting, — New York: Oxford University Press, Paglin, Max D.
A Legislative History of the Communications Act of
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