Extract
Competition Among Broadcast-Related Web Sites.
A principal tenet of many normative communication theories is that competition among journalists is frequently in the public interest. In this view, competition for readers and viewers is thought to push journalists to work harder to meet the interests and needs of the consumers who read newspapers or watch television. In 1947, the Hutchins Commission called upon the federal government to use antitrust laws to maintain competition among the media. The Commission wrote, "We need a market place for the exchange of comment and criticism regarding public affairs. We need to reproduce on a gigantic scale the open argument which characterized the village gathering two centuries ago (Commission on Freedom of the Press, 1947, pp. 67-68)."
Such thinking has been implicit in the concern over both the decades-long decline in the number of daily newspapers published in the United States and increasing concentration of newspaper ownership in chains (Busterna, 1989). The notion that competition promotes better journalism also underlies US national policies that have restricted the number of broadcast stations that a single broadcast network can own and cross-ownership rules that restrict single ownership of broadcast properties and newspapers in a single market (Gillmor, Baron, Simon & Terry, 1990)....See the full content of this document
Sponsored links
