| Media Concentration and Democracy: Why Ownership Matters Contributor(s): Baker, C. Edwin (Author) |
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ISBN: 0521687888 ISBN-13: 9780521687881 Publisher: Cambridge University Press OUR PRICE: $32.29 Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats Published: December 2006 Annotation: Firmly rooting its argument in democratic and economic theory, the book argues that a more democratic distribution of communicative power within the public sphere and a structure that provides safeguards against abuse of media power provide two of three primary arguments for ownership dispersal. It also shows that dispersal is likely to result in more owners who will reasonably pursue socially valuable journalistic or creative objectives rather than a socially dysfunctional focus on the ???bottom line???. The middle chapters answer those agents, including the Federal Communication Commission, who favor ???deregulation??? and who argue that existing or foreseeable ownership concentration is not a problem. The final chapter evaluates the constitutionality and desirability of various policy responses to concentration, including strict limits on media mergers. |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - Political Science | American Government - General - Social Science | Media Studies |
| Dewey: 302.230 |
| LCCN: 2006013920 |
| Series: Communication, Society and Politics |
| Physical Information: 0.67" H x 6.21" W x 8.89" (0.81 lbs) 272 pages |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: Firmly rooting its argument in democratic and economic theory, the book argues that a more democratic distribution of communicative power within the public sphere and a structure that provides safeguards against abuse of media power provide two of three primary arguments for ownership dispersal. It also shows that dispersal is likely to result in more owners who will reasonably pursue socially valuable journalistic or creative objectives rather than a socially dysfunctional focus on the 'bottom line'. The middle chapters answer those agents, including the Federal Communication Commission, who favor 'deregulation' and who argue that existing or foreseeable ownership concentration is not a problem. The final chapter evaluates the constitutionality and desirability of various policy responses to concentration, including strict limits on media mergers. |
Contributor Bio(s): Baker, C. Edwin: - C. Edwin Baker is the Nicholas F. Gallicchio Professor of Law at the University of Pennsylvania Law School and has been on the faculty at Penn since 1981. He also taught at NYU, Chicago, Cornell, Texas, Oregon, and Toledo law schools and at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government, and he was a staff attorney for the ACLU. He is the author of three earlier books: Media, Markets, and Democracy (Cambridge University Press, 2002), which won the 2002 McGannon Communications Policy Research Award; Advertising and a Democratic Press (1994); and Human Liberty and Freedom of Speech (1989). He has written more than fifty academic articles about free speech, equality, property, law and economics, jurisprudence, and the mass media, in addition to occasional popular commentary. |