Between The Lines’ Scott Harris spoke with Timothy Karr, senior director of strategy and communications with the media democracy group Free Press. Here, he takes a critical look at what the AT&T-Time Warner merger will mean for consumers and the danger inherent in the increasing consolidation of media ownership.
TIMOTHY KARR: This is part of a new wave of media consolidation that really was triggered many years ago when Comcast bought NBC Universal. What we’re seeing with Comcast NBC, what we’re now seeing with AT&T-Time Warner is a merger of different types of media companies. You have very large distribution companies like Comcast, which is the largest cable Internet provider in the country and in AT&T is not far behind in terms of their Internet services. They’re buying up content properties. NBC Universal has a number of television and cable stations, movie production studios and the like. The same is true in many regards with Time Warner, which owns HBO and CNN. So you have distribution companies taking over content creation companies, content production companies, and you creating what are called massive vertically integrated media companies that control distribution as well as creation of content.
And there are a number of reasons to be concerned about that. Primarily one of the current concerns that Free Press has is that these companies now that they control distribution via high- speed Internet and content creation will have even more of an inclination to prioritize information over the Internet to violate what’s called net neutrality, that principle that allows Internet users to choose what they want to watch and where they wanted to go online. And that rule was done away by the Trump administration and these companies are now merging in this way that will allow them to push certain types of content and services over their high-speed Internet connections. And conversely, to slow down or block your ability to access other services that they may not own.
BETWEEN THE LINES: Tim, I wanted to ask you about the issue of political speech. There are certainly a lot of concern about the control of these larger and larger companies have over consumer pricing. But as citizens, we’re concerned about access to dissenting points of view or points of view that don’t quite match up with the corporate view of the world. What is the concern about political speech here, if any?
TIMOTHY KARR: Looking over the last couple of years, you have to understand how important the Internet has become as an organizing tool for social justice, racial justice movement, a movement like Black Lives Matter relied very heavily on the Internet in order to get their message out when there was an uprising in Ferguson, in the wake of a police shooting there. The mainstream media was not paying a lot of attention to what was happening on the streets there, but people who are in racial justice movements, people who were on the streets, there were very effectively using online tools to get their message out, to get around a mainstream news coverage to an extent that it became so large in social networks and in alternative online media that the mainstream media could no longer ignore it. So, an open Internet is the reason that they were successful. If we have a scenario which we do have now, again, the net neutrality rules that we had in place were repealed and taken away on June 11 of this year where a company, where an Internet access provider who doesn’t like your political message, could block access to those websites without any real recourse under the law.
We have lost the legal protection that would prevent these large Internet service providers from, from blocking access to content. So, I think there’s reason to be very concerned not only on the economic front, as you mentioned, the cost to consumers, but also potentially the stifling of political speech, the stifling and political organizing, making it more and more difficult for people to use the open Internet as a tool for organizing.
BETWEEN THE LINES: I’ve recently read that we’re down to about six major companies that dominate all sectors of the media industry. And maybe you can express to us if there’s any hope that this trend of media consolidation can be reversed or at least slowed down.
TIMOTHY KARR: Well, I mean, we once relied upon the Federal Communications Commission to oversee media consolidation to try to limit it. What we’re seeing is a point where we may need to look not so much at the FCC, but at the FTC, the Department of Justice and see whether there’s a case to be made for antitrust or these companies getting so powerful and so monopoly-minded that it would trigger a antitrust concerns so that a company like a Google or a Facebook might need to be broken up because it’s amassed so much. I mean, obviously we also should look at things like AT&T and what it’s trying to do and what Comcast is trying to do and consolidate. And so there are mechanisms to push back against this type of consolidation. At the moment, we’re fighting a lot of these types of mergers at the FCC, but we’ve also, you know, there also the Department of Justice. So you’re seeing a moment where a lot of these companies feel like they have an opportunity. I mean, “Who knows how long President Trump and his administration will be around, then we need to seize the moment.” Comcast is pushing to buy Fox Television. So we’re seeing a lot of merger business happening during this administration. So one of the things that could change this wave of media consolidation is a new administration that is less open to letting very large and powerful corporations have their way.
For more information, visit Free Press at freepress.net.
