• In Your Face, Rupert

    Josh Stearns
    March 8, 2013

    We’ve been fighting media consolidation for a decade, and this month we chalked up another win. Thanks to the efforts of Free Press activists and allies around the country, the Federal Communications Commission announced it will again delay its vote on whether to weaken the media ownership rules.

  • New Report: IRS Policy Is Hurting Nonprofit News

    Josh Stearns
    March 6, 2013

    A year ago 14,000 Free Press activists called on the IRS to help foster more nonprofit journalism in America. They followed up with meetings with members of Congress, making the case that nonprofit news is essential for all communities, and especially those left underserved by commercial news outlets.

  • The Crisis in Climate-Change Coverage

    Josh Stearns
    February 25, 2013
    The forces that shape U.S. media have not been kind to environmental reporting. Years of media consolidation have led to dramatic layoffs in commercial newsrooms, and environment and science desks are often the first to go.

  • Event: The Crisis in Climate Coverage

    Josh Stearns
    February 11, 2013

    For too long media outlets have treated climate change like a policy debate with two equal and opposing sides, even as the vast weight of science has stacked up on one side of the debate. This tendency to equate unequal arguments, to validate inaccuracies and spin, has undoubtedly slowed much-needed progress toward both broader awareness and better policies.

  • Big Trouble in Little Rock

    Josh Stearns
    February 7, 2013
    When I look at Little Rock, Ark., I see media consolidation. But that’s not what the Federal Communications Commission sees, and that’s a problem.

  • Keep the Pressure On

    Josh Stearns
    January 25, 2013

    Late last year, word got out that Federal Communications Commission Chairman Julius Genachowski was trying to rush a vote on a plan that would have weakened media consolidation rules, hurt media diversity and given Rupert Murdoch a green light to buy up major papers like the L.A. Times and the Chicago Tribune.  

  • Big Media Behaving Badly

    Josh Stearns
    January 16, 2013

    America’s biggest media companies are on a roll this month.

    Usually fancy new gadgets — not old-school media giants — are the focus of the Consumer Electronics Show. But this year the talk at CES was all about CBS.

    On the last day of the big electronics trade show, the technology site CNET was ready to announce its best-of-show awards. The winning gadget was a new digital video recorder (DVR) made by the satellite company DISH.

  • It's All About Trust: The Atlantic's Scientology Problem

    Josh Stearns
    January 15, 2013
    On Monday night, the Atlantic presented a Church of Scientology ad dressed up as a news article. Within hours the piece had been removed and replaced with a note from the editors promising to “review their sponsored content guidelines.”

  • Three Media Issues We Can't Ignore in 2013

    Josh Stearns
    January 8, 2013
    We’ve accomplished a lot in 2012, but when it comes to the fight for better media there is always more to do. Here are three critical issues we must tackle in the coming year.

  • Think Media Consolidation Is Good for Journalism? Think Again

    Josh Stearns
    January 3, 2013

    The Federal Communications Commission is pushing a plan to gut its 30-year-old newspaper/broadcast cross-ownership ban. This proposal would allow one company to own a local paper, two TV stations and up to eight radio stations in a single market. Advocates of more media consolidation argue that allowing TV stations and newspapers to merge is critical to cutting costs and saving local journalism.

Pages