Media Watchate! The San Antonio Express-News loves ClearChannel and won't publish this letter

If you barely listen to our local radio stations anymore, you know it's because of ClearChannel and the media acquisitions that happened after the Republicans took the lid off media regulation - now we have media Deregulation - so much for local ownership and diverse voices. It's all about the money.

We, the people, deserve local radio, television and radio stations that are vitally interested and accountable to us. We get way too much ambulance, sex, and gossip, and all of us lose because there is no place to debate, discuss, get educated about the stories that affect our lives.

That's the way Big Media wants it.

Chuck Robinson is a media advocate and former television intern. Here is a letter he wrote to the SAEN regarding their anemic reporting of a new, smart, report on How Bigger Media Will Hurt Texas: A Report on Texas Media Markets and the Impact of Newspaper/TV Cross-Ownership Mergers, funded by national media reform organizations and written by Mark Cooper of McGannon Communications Center.
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Friday, November 3, 2006

Dear Editor,

You buried and misnamed the study “How Bigger Media will Hurt Texas,” (“Report says diversity lost in media mergers,” Oct. 21). In that story, the well-intentioned Melissa Monroe faced severe editorial discretion—forced not only to conceal facts (in Texas and most of our nation, TV and large local dailies have a duopoly of news, rabidly splitting 65% or more of the market), but to include the unsolicited opinions of a radio baron and editor Bob Rivard. Thankfully, your closest competitor, La Prensa, made the story front page news that Sunday (“Local activists fight cross-media mergers,” Oct. 22). Obviously it was a sensitive topic, because the E-N dressed Monroe as a scarecrow on Halloween ("Express-News also hit by US newspaper slide," Oct. 31) to ironically lament the paper’s loss of circulation; please excuse my lack of sympathy.

Want to beat TV in market share? Help the South, West and East sides get discount internet so they can read stories on mysanantonio.com—turn your writers loose to report news, not bury it—publish front page stories on voting fraud and the oil, development, weaponry and media industries lobbying our candidates. Your endorsements (11/3) of Perry, Dewhurst, Abbott, Combs, Patterson, Staples, Ames Jones, Hutchinson , Bonilla, and Smith clearly show the E-N’s GOP loyalty and tip the hat to corporations, not our community. Sadly, the issue remains unreported: two-thirds of our media (including E-N owner Hearst) are beholden to massive conflicts of interest, and can’t objectively report news, much less speak on behalf of public interest. Stop suppressing news!

Chuck Robinson
San Antonio, Texas

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