Dispersal of ownership (also ownership dispersal, dispersed media ownership) is a standpoint that opposes concentration of media ownership and mergers of media conglomerates. This position generally advocates smaller and local ownership of media as a way to realize journalistic values and inclusive media public sphere in the society.
Background
Media ownership concentration is a state that fewer individuals or organizations control many and various media entities. For decades this consolidation of media ownership has been progressive and also controversial in the United States. Recent study shows that many media industries in many areas and countries are highly concentrated and dominated by a very small number of firms. Such media conglomerates own large numbers of companies in various media domains, such as television, radio, publishing, movies, and the Internet. For example, the Walt Disney Company, the largest media conglomerate in the United States in terms of revenue, owns the ABC television network, cable channels (for example, ESPN, Disney Channels Worldwide, and ABC Family), and eight television stations. Moreover, they have radio stations such as ESPN Radio, and publishers like Marvel Comics.
One of the most prominent critics on this issue, Robert W. McChesney points out that these media conglomerates can have a strong and harmful impact on media culture. According to him, media giants are most likely to be politically conservative, because they usually take advantage of current social structure, and “any upheaval in property or social relations, particularly to the extent that it reduces the power of business, is not in their interest”. He warns possible lack of views that can oppose current societal structure.
Other criticism comes from the aspects of mass media as business activities. U.S. Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Commissioner, Michael J. Copps criticize concentrating and highly commercializing media ownership by mentioning that “when TV and radio stations are not longer required by law to serve their local communities and are owned by huge national corporations, viewers and listeners have become the products that broadcasters sell to advertisers.”
Rationale for the standpoint
In 2003, then FCC Chairman Michael K. Powell pushed to relax the FCC's long-standing rules on media concentration, which regulate the market share of cable networks in a market, the number of television stations owned by national networks, and newspaper-TV cross ownership. Powell planned to allow a single company to own up to three television stations, eight radio stations, a local newspaper, a monopolized cable provider and an internet service provider in a single market. He insisted that although FCC had a historic role to protect the diversity of news and information, the recent circumstances surrounding newspaper publishing and television industries forced them to form centralized institutions, for their own survival.
C. Edwin Baker, the Nicholas F. Gallicchio Professor of Law and Communication at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, proposes rationale for the standpoint of media owner dispersal, in challenging this FCC's attempts of deregulating media ownership restrictions.
Democratic distributive value
This normative value is based on the egalitarian premise of democracy, the "One man, one vote" requirement. Baker advocates that this premise should be applied to voice in the public sphere, since voice influences and forms public opinion, more than vote does. In other words, voice can form public opinion and it can also provide the possibility of public deliberation. Consequently, this view leads to discussion that dispersal of media power should be maximized because the media is regarded as the central institution of domestic public sphere. Therefore, according to this value, concentration of media ownership does essentially harm basic principle of democratic society. These are the backbones of the recommendation for a maximization of dispersed media power, which is ultimately represented by the ownership.
Regarding this egalitarian "equal voice" goal, Baker noted three caveats.
