A Capital Times Editorial on “Breaking up Big Media Concentration“:

The consolidation of American media has robbed this country’s citizens of the competing journalism, the honest dialogue and the cultural diversity that the founders intended when they wrote a “freedom of the press” protection into the First Amendment to the Constitution.

American media were never perfect, of course.

But the quality and independence of the media have suffered over the past three decades, as Congress and federal regulators rewrote the rules to make it easier for big media companies to buy up more and more of the country’s communication outlets. As recently as 1996, a single company could only own a few dozen radio stations nationally. Now, because of the rule changes contained in the Telecommunications Act of 1996, one company, Clear Channel, owns more than 1,200 stations and dominates many local media markets around the country.

Not a word about the increasing concentration of the daily newspaper business, however. The internet is addressing this question, of course.