Monopolies, including in news media, are not good for the public
The board game Monopoly has long been marketed as an opportunity to live the dream of becoming a tycoon. By design, Monopoly usually involves one person aggressively grabbing the best properties and slowly grinding everyone else into poverty. It’s a fair approximation of real-life monopolies; they are bad for almost everyone and are great at destroying friendships.
Monopolies have been with us a long time. Early monopolies were generally corporations chartered by European monarchs to accomplish government goals or reward loyal supporters. Colonial U.S. history features some prominent examples, like the British East India Company that famously lost a literal boatload of tea in the Boston Tea Party and the Virginia Company.
After the American Revolution, states tried to limit corporations and the abuses they could cause. So the Robber Barons of the 1800s used other business structures like corporate trusts to build their monopolies. Hence, anti-monopoly acts were referred to as “trust busting” and “antitrust.”
Our first anti-monopoly law was the 1890 Sherman Act, and it was followed in 1914 by the Clayton Antitrust Act. Both laws were responses to specific bad behavior. As Teddy Roosevelt put it, “we are not attacking the corporations, but endeavoring to do away with any evil in them. We are not hostile to them; we are merely determined that they shall be so handled as to subserve the public good. We draw the line against misconduct, not against wealth.” In other words, companies that play fair have little to fear.
However, some administrations have cared about fairness more than others, and enforcement of antitrust laws comes and goes. Monopolies gather power when our government turns a blind eye (oil, steel, tobacco, telecommunications), until it becomes too much for public opinion to bear. As the government has recently brought antitrust charges against Google, Amazon, and Facebook, this seems to be the case for Big Tech now.
If public opinion pushes anti-monopoly efforts further, the media sector is another ripe target. Media has become massively consolidated, whether we’re talking about film, TV, newspapers, or radio. And media monopolies are not just bad for consumers; their influence over public information also makes them bad for democracies. For example, Sinclair Broadcast Group creates “must-run” segments that use local news anchors as mouthpieces for Sinclair’s political views. And Sinclair isn’t even the largest owner of local television stations.
Our own local newspaper is not immune. The Press-Citizen is, along with the Des Moines Register and other Iowa papers, owned by Gannett Co. Inc, the largest owner of daily newspapers in the country. The Press-Citizen currently has only two reporters on staff; all other stories come from other Gannett newspapers. This situation isn’t entirely Gannett’s fault; the company has owned both newspapers for decades, and the decline of local and print media is a much bigger issue than Gannett can bear responsibility for. But it deserves some blame.
And the loss of local journalism is definitely hurting us as a community.
For example, in recent public meetings about proposed changes to Iowa City’s zoning ordinance, one complaint was the lack of media coverage on the issue. While complaining to the Planning & Zoning Commission about media coverage is barking up the wrong tree, it is true that the Press-Citizen did not cover the issue until after we wrote a column supporting the changes last month. But how much can two people do?
So when you think about monopolies, consider this: should Johnson County’s (population about 154,000) local newspaper have a smaller staff than Buena Vista County’s (population about 20,000) Storm Lake Times Pilot?
We are all affected by monopolies. If we prize our liberties, then we must defend them not only from government power but from, in Roosevelt’s words, “enslavement of the people by the great corporations who can only be held in check through the extension of governmental power.” It’s time for anti-monopoly efforts to expand to local media.
Kelcey Patrick-Ferree and Shannon Patrick live in Iowa City and write at www.ourlibertiesweprize.com. And biannual time changes must be abolished.
This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: Local journalism shouldn't be in the hands of just a few providers
