Taking on the media big guys...again!

It’s lost in the fray of presidential politicking, but there’s another less visible struggle taking place in Washington, D.C. – but it has far-reaching consequences.

Senator Byron Dorgan of North Dakota has introduced Senate Joint Resolution 28, “disapproving the rule submitted by the Federal Communications Commission with respect to broadcast media ownership.”

You may recall the de-regulatory chicanery foisted upon the commission in December by the media giants, who want dearly to super-size themselves even more with new rules promulgated by the FCC. Chairman Kevin Martin unwittingly led the charge on behalf of the media big boys, approving rules that relax media ownership restrictions and allow cross-ownership of newspapers and television stations. Thanks to Dorgan, there is a bi-partisan push in the 110th Congress to once again reel in the burgeoning power of big media.

It's time for folks of all political persuasions to notify their congressional delegation to support S.J. Res. 28. Read more about the hazards of media consolidation as compiled by the good people at Common Cause!

SDPB Radio Station Planned for Spearfish

It won’t be happening anytime soon, but a full-service South Dakota Public Broadcasting FM radio station is being planned for the northern Black Hills. It would be located in Spearfish.

The Federal Communications Commission has granted a permit to SDPB for construction of a 6,000-watt radio station that would replace the low power FM translators that serve Belle Fourche (91.9 Mhz) and Spearfish (91.1 Mhz). The new station will operate at 91.9 Mhz.

This is great news for those of us who often have to resort to the Wyoming Public Radio station at Sundance for a reliable signal. It’s difficult to hear the two translators outside the city limits of Belle Fourche and Spearfish. And the terrain of the northern Black Hills doesn’t allow a good signal from either Rapid City or Faith, the two nearest SDPB full-service stations.

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The transmitter for the Spearfish station will be located at an existing tower site in north Spearfish. You may click on the map at left to see a larger image of the planned coverage area. Programming will duplicate KUSD-FM, the SDPB flagship station at the University of South Dakota in Vermillion.

The construction permit was granted on January 17, 2008 and is valid for three years. It will likely be toward the end of that three-year period before the station is operational.

South Dakota Public Broadcasting operates a statewide network of radio (NPR) and television (PBS) stations.

Behind Closed Doors

How morbidly fitting that the death knell for an attempt to modernize South Dakota open records laws should be determined days earlier behind closed doors.

Apparently that’s what happened this week in Pierre when the House State Affairs Committee, chaired by Representative Larry Rhoden of Union Center, heard open testimony from six proponents of SB 189. They also listened to a single opponent, Jeff Bloomberg of the Bureau of Administration. The measure had already passed the Senate with bipartisan support.

Bloomberg’s last minute sandbag job in the House committee probably wasn’t even necessary. We’ve been told that a closed caucus of House Republicans – days earlier – allowed lobbyists against the bill to wax eloquent in their opposition. When the Wednesday morning public hearing came, SB 189 was pushed to the back of the committee agenda, allowing Chairman Rhoden to frequently chide proponents to hurry along with their testimony because of the “tight schedule.” Despite crossover Republican support, the bill was stopped cold on a 7-6 vote.

At the end of the hearing, Rep. Rhoden gave an almost gleeful benediction, harkening back to his displeasure – or “heartburn” as he put it – over an incident involving the release of public records some time back by the Sioux Falls Argus Leader.

Black Hills Monitor has often criticized the Rapid City Journal, and we’re not always a big fan of the Argus-Leader. Alas, this seemed to be more of a grudge match between the Argus-Leader and Governor Mike Rounds. The Governor won this round. The media got its ears pinned back.

But the real loser was open government and the people of South Dakota.

While virtually all other states have modernized their laws with a presumption of openness for public documents, South Dakota continues to muddle along with a restrictive and confusing set of laws. SB 189 was a good measure, championed by Senator Nancy Turbak Berry of Watertown. Proponents promise to be bring the issue back next year.

Perhaps our biggest disappointment was with Rep. Chuck Turbiville of Deadwood. Our conversations with him led us to believe that he would give the measure a fair hearing. In retrospect, we didn’t know that a “fair hearing” would include a closed GOP caucus meeting with die-hard opponents of the bill.

It was a sad day for open government.

Chantix may not be for...(anyone?)

Amid reports last week in the Wall Street Journal that Pfizer’s smoking-cessation drug Chantix might be tied to serious psychiatric symptoms came even more disturbing information about certain drugs.

The New York Times on Friday (February 1) reported that, according to the Food & Drug Administration, some drugs used to treat epilepsy, bipolar illness and mood problems double the risks of suicidal thoughts and behavior, and patients taking them should be watched for sudden behavioral changes. Read the story.

As health care in the United States becomes an increasingly prominent and volatile issue, certain things seem clear:

1) while our knowledge of medicine and capabilities to provide health care are enormous, our ability to actually deliver services is broken; and

2) drug companies spend enormous amounts on “research and development,” but talk little about how much they spend on advertising – luring Americans to believe a pill will cure whatever ails us;

I applaud those national media which aggressively report what’s going on at major pharmaceutical companies, but more needs to be explored.

What about the unparalleled extent to which drug companies go to indoctrinate the doctors of tomorrow – while they’re still in medical school – to a mindset that drugs are a cure-all?

What about pervasive advertising that serves only to lure more people into drugstores and pay higher prices for all drugs, many of marginal value, but including those that are life-saving?

A recent random sampling of ABC World News Tonight and NBC Nightly News found that some two-thirds of all advertising on the half-hour television programs was for pharmaceutical companies. Personally, I miss the dog food, automobile, and floor wax commercials of yesteryear! But they apparently can't pony up the kind of big bucks available to the drug companies.

It makes the drug culture of the ‘60s look lame by comparison.

Tracking the Media Giants

Media ownership remains a major concern. While the FCC marches ahead with plans to allow even further consolidation of bloated media companies, there is a move afoot in the U.S. Senate to create some restraints. With this in mind, we'll be tracking the ultimate outcome of S.2332, introduced last November. The latest report from GovTrack will be imbedded in our left-hand column under Media Ownership, and we encourage you to check out its status from time to time.

Global Events -- Our Neighborhood, too

How regrettable that it took the death of a charismatic Pakistani leader today to get the U.S. media to pay attention to world events. Beyond coverage of our involvement in the war in Iraq and early campaigning for the U.S. presidency, there really is another world out there.

Continuing strife in Darfur, the growing military might – and pollution – that symbolizes an emerging world power in China, severe human rights violations in much of Latin America…. The list of significant world events seems beyond the reach of American media. Not because they lack the technology, but because the corporate entities that own much of the media lack the will to support coverage beyond their “sales market.” The bottom line reigns supreme.

The circumstances surrounding the suicide bombing that claimed the life of former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, 54, will be explored heavily today – and maybe tomorrow – by mainstream U.S. media. Then, short of all-out revolution in Pakistan, the topic will ebb away from media consciousness like the tide rolling back out to sea.

Only with Reuters, Deutsche Welle, BBC, and a few other web sites can we expect much meaningful world news. A few print media in our country – the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal among them – help keep us peripherally informed. Alone among domestic broadcasters, NPR and PBS do a good job of covering the globe. In our neck of the woods, we're thankful for South Dakota Public Broadcasting and Wyoming Public Radio. Their stations provide not only excellent coverage of world events -- they also do the best job of broadcasting state/regional news and features.

Would that we could get others to recognize that we’re a part of global community.

Newspaper Videos Blossom

We received a most welcome e-mail from our niece in Texas today. It provided an internet link to a video produced by the Lubbock (TX) Avalanche-Journal, telling the story of our grandnephew, Sergeant Shawn Walton, who was seriously wounded earlier this year in Iraq. We posted the video on the Galey Archives family web site.

Shawn has spent most of the past four months recuperating at the Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio. He’s been going through some aggressive physical therapy, and this video provided some good news for family members far and wide. The production quality of the video won’t win any awards, but it was still good news.

And these kinds of videos may also be good news for the newspaper industry. As the Fifth Estate becomes more adept at using video, perhaps they’ll also land upon a business model that will allow them to continue and expand creative uses of video and other internet tools.

Last week, the Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, Kevin Martin, pushed through a new media ownership rule. It will allow newspapers to own television stations in the largest markets of the country. It’s a dumb idea. There already is too much concentration of power within the media.

Chairman Martin waxed eloquent about the plight of newspapers, citing significant declines in subscriptions to many well-known dailies. He neglected to mention that despite such declines, profits within the newspaper industry remain quite high, thank you very much!

While I’m opposed to the kind of increased concentration promoted by the cross-ownership rule, I fully support the blossoming video activities being pursued by newspapers and reported extensively in a recent article in the American Journalism Review.

Even the Rapid City Journal has been getting into the game of late. I find their video offerings -- categorized under "Multimedia" to the right side of their on-line news page -- a bit sparse. The interface is a bit awkward, but I suspect that they’re still taking baby steps with the new technology. Look for them to improve over time.

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Happily, Journal Editor Mikel LeForte told me some time back that the paper plans to continue its emphasis upon print reporting. They view video as merely complementing their print effort. And that’s the way it should be.

But for those of us who’ve advocated converging technologies to maximize journalistic efforts, this is a move in the right direction.

The Chinese have a PLAN -- Do We?

Bully! The Wall Street Journal today had a nice opinion piece written by Bret Stephens about "The Great White Fleet" sent around the world by President Teddy Roosevelt in 1907-09. It was Teddy's way of demonstrating to the world that the United States had arrived as a naval power.

Stephens' article is another alarm bell of the wakeup call that doesn't seem to have stirred anyone. He writes, "...a supremely powerful Navy is not a luxury the U.S. can safely dispense with. In September, ships of the Chinese People's Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) made their first-ever port calls in Germany, France, Britain and Italy, and Chinese admirals are frequent guests on American warships.

He further quotes a senior Navy official as saying "The Chinese Great White Fleet is not too far off on the horizon." In fact, the UK Daily Mail last month reported that U.S. military leaders were "dumbstruck" by an undetected Chinese submarine popping up at the heart of a recent Pacific exercise and close to the aircraft carrier USS Kitty Hawk.

Coupled with unfolding nautical developments in the Middle East, where Russia will soon establish an 11-ship presence in the Mediterranen, led by the carrier Kuznetsov, it appears we have tangible evidence of Sino-Soviet inclinations for bolstering their naval power. If the Iranians then begin operating submarines from a base in Syria, which reportedly has the Israelis on edge, we may begin waking up to the possible radical change in military strength in both the Pacific and Atlantic. Take a look at this UK web site named Chinese Defence Today that outlines growth of the People's Liberation Army Navy (PLAN).

I'd like to think that the U.S. Department of Defense and our crack intelligence program (gulp) are on top of things. Lack of media coverage about these unfolding events means that most Americans are probably watching their favorite reality program. We may truly be "asleep at the switch."