On a cold Thursday in February at the Library of Congress, Bill Clinton signed The Telecommunications Act of 1996 into law. The FCC called it “The first major overhaul of telecommunications law in almost 62 years.” The law was designed to increase competition among telecommunications companies and reduce consumer costs through deregulation. At the time, Clinton had stock in AT&T and some of the Baby Bells, who were owned by AT&T until they were broken up as a result of an antitrust suit by the Department of Justice in the 1980s. These Baby Bells would later merge back into AT&T and Verizon over the next several years. According to filings, Clinton’s ownership in AT&T and telecom companies would rise over the years following 1996. From 1995 to 1997, Bill Clinton would hold stocks in Bell Atlantic, Bell South, and AT&T — all of which would benefit from the Telecommunications Act of 1996.

Photo by Sebastian Derungs and edited by Patrick Mackie

One of the most recognized scholars in telecommunication policy, Nicholas Economides, stated, “The 1996 Act has resulted in a series of mergers in the telecommunications industry. [The Act] has been a victory for the incumbent monopolists rather than of the US Congress.” The effects of the Act were drastic. A 2005 report by Common Cause found the Act led to a 50 percent cable rate increase in seven years, allowed 90 percent of the top 50 cable stations to be owned by the same parent company, lifted the limit on how many radio stations one company could own, and increased the broadcast license from five to eight years. Common Cause stated that the Act led to “more media concentration, less diversity, and higher prices,” allowing for less public debate overall.

The few companies that control American media are often collectively referred to as the “Big Six.” These companies’ subsidiaries include: news organizations, movie production studios, TV stations, and monetary stakes in other media companies.

“There are just five or six companies in America that dominate the media landscape — giant multinational conglomerates. So there may be a lot of different voices but they’re coming from the same ventriloquist.”

- Jonathan Adelstein, FCC Commissioner in 2007

Together Comcast, Disney, Time Warner, National Amusements, Verizon, 21st Century Fox, and News Corp have a market capitalization of over $700 billion. It’s no surprise that media conglomerates are the biggest hidden lobby in Washington. In 2002 John McCain called the National Association of Broadcasters the “most powerful lobby in Washington.” McCain followed up by stating:

“I think one of the reasons is, is because they can say we’d like for you to meet with the general managers of every television station in your state. You go into a room, hear the people that carry your message, and they never — they’re very sophisticated. They’re not saying do what we want done. Don’t get me wrong, it’s not that kind of a scenario, but it’s very clear that these are the people that shape the opinion to a large degree of the people who are your constituents.” — John McCain, 2002

According to McCain, the power of the media conglomerates is derived from their stranglehold on the messages delivered to the American people. In addition, the conglomerates are big spenders in Washington.

Photo of Congressman Greg Walden. Taken by Sam Churchill and edited by Patrick Mackie

Congressman Greg Walden (R-Oregon) who is chairman of the Communications and Technology subcommittee was given $95,219 in contributions by The National Association of Broadcasters in the 2015–16 election cycle. This was three times as much as any other donor to his campaign. His second highest donor was Comcast with $31,900. During the same election cycle, the telecom and television/movies/music industries donated over $350,000 dollars. These donations don’t go unrewarded. Walden, a fierce critic of the FCC, has sponsored bills that would eliminate daily newspaper cross-ownership rules, remove FCC rules on the internet, and a bill which helped delay and change regulations that affected broadcast stations and cable providers respectively.

Walden was the main sponsor of a bill titled, The STELA Reauthorization Act of 2014. In a cost estimate of the bill, the congressional budget office wrote, “The bill also would direct the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to delay or amend certain regulations affecting television stations and cable carriers.” According to Radio + Television Business Report, the bill passed with support from 21st Century Fox, Disney, the American Cable Association, the American Television Alliance, CBS, DIRECTV & Dish Network, and the National Cable and Telecommunications Association.

Photograph by Sagansapien and edited by Patrick Mackie

Walden isn’t the only member of Congress plunging a hand into the conglomerates’ pockets. The big six spent a combined $412 million dollars in lobbying in the past five years (since 2011) according to statistics from OpenSecrets. This is 22 times as much as the NRA has spent in lobbying in the same timeframe.

The deregulation of media is not split on party lines. Both Republicans and Democrats have been more than willing to pull back regulations and help conglomerates get bigger. Republicans tend to argue that deregulation is good for business. Democrats often say deregulation measures will help minority ownership in media and protect consumers.

William Orville Douglas who served on the Supreme Court from 1939 to 1975 called the mass media “essentially the voice of the establishment” in his book Points of Rebellion, which was published in 1970.

In Points of Rebellion, Douglas warned of the dangers in agencies converging with private companies stating that the relationships between lawmakers and businesses have led to “those who have agency discretion exercising it for the benefit of those who run the corporation state.” Douglas worried that the federal agencies that were meant to serve the people would in turn become a tool of the private sector. The media conglomerates have manipulated the FCC into serving their narrow interests of increasing their own profit, less regulation, less competition, and more control. According to OpenSecrets, 78.4% of the lobbyists who lobbied for the six conglomerates have held a job previously within the government in 2015–16.

In January of 2011, the FCC approved the Comcast/NBC merger. The merger was one of the biggest media mergers in the past ten years. Meredith Attwell Baker, an FCC commissioner at the time who voted yes on the merger, stated, “The NBC/Comcast merger took too long, in my view.” Baker left to become Senior Vice President of Governmental Affairs for NBC Universal, just four months after she voted yes to approve the merger. The only commissioner to vote against the merger was Michael Copps who stated:

“In sum, this is simply too much, too big, too powerful, too lacking in benefits for American consumers and citizens. Our job is to determine whether the record here demonstrates that this new media giant will serve the public interest. It puts new media on a road traditional media should never have taken. It further erodes diversity, localism and competition-the three essential pillars of the public interest standard mandated by law. I would be true to neither the statute nor to everything I have fought for here at the Commission over the past decade if I did not dissent from what I consider to be a damaging and potentially dangerous deal.” — Michael Copps

The lobbying has had a devastating effect on taxpayers. In 1997 the FCC gave away an estimated (by the FCC) $20–70 billion in broadcast airwaves for free. The Los Angeles Times described it as the “most important innovation in U.S. broadcasting since the introduction of color TV in the late 1950s.” While the FCC would normally charge for the airwaves, they justified their actions by claiming Americans would receive a more clear broadcast video in return. Senator John McCain stated in 2002 that the FCC’s giveaway received, “very little attention, in fact, no television coverage.” McCain later stated, “If some entity got $70 billion worth of land in Arizona, everybody would be up in arms. I mean they’d go crazy.”

Beyond the monetary effect on the taxpayer, consolidation has had a detrimental effect on the information Americans are exposed to. Ted Turner, the Founder of CNN, stated in 2004:

“More consolidation has often meant more news-sharing. But closing bureaus and downsizing staff have more than economic consequences. A smaller press is less capable of holding our leaders accountable. This ability to control the news is especially worrisome when a large media organization is itself the subject of a news story. Networks have also been compromised when it comes to non-news programs which involve their corporate parent’s business interests.” — Ted Turner, 2004

Turner highlights in his piece My Beef With Big Media how a Viacom executive stated, “In this duopoly, we should be able to control the news in the marketplace.” and a Disney executive stated “I would prefer ABC not cover Disney.” According to The Young Turks founder Cenk Uygur, when he was a political commentator on MSNBC he was asked to pull a piece that was critical of an advertiser. Later at MSNBC an executive told him to “tone it down” due to a negative response from Washington. Uygur has described the mainstream media as “desperate to get access”.