December
6, 2005
The Honorable Barbara Boxer
U.S. Senate
Attn: Alex Hoehn-Saric
112 Hart Senate Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20510-0505
Dear Senator Boxer:
The Department of Professional
Employees (DPE) of the AFL-CIO
represents over 500,000 professional
and technical employees in the
entertainment and news sectors,
which includes news writers,
editors, producers and technical
staff in the TV and radio news
industry.
In 1996, Congress gave broadcasters,
for free, digital TV licenses that
could have brought in up to $70
billion to the federal government if
that had been auctioned.
Broadcasters were given these
licenses in exchange for the promise
to serve the public interest,
provide local news coverage and
offer a diversity of voices.
According to a recent study, four
companies now control what
commercial radio listeners hear on
news format stations. Radio news
itself is shrinking and in some
markets it has almost disappeared.
From 1994 through 2001, nationwide
the number of full-time radio
newsroom staff shrank by 44 percent
and part-time news staff by more
than 71 percent.
The DPE is deeply troubled about the
current effort by one of these media
giants—Viacom/CBS—to reduce local
news and public affairs reporting
and consolidate radio news
operations in the major media
markets of California, Illinois and
New York. By denying listeners and
viewers the benefits of competing
news sources, citizens of
California, Illinois, and New York
would actually have fewer options
for local news-news about matters
that affect them and their families
directly on a daily basis.
At the same time, Viacom/CBS is also
attempting to remove news producers
from the CBS-Writers Guild of
America collective bargaining
contract. Among their
responsibilities, these news
producers decide broadcast content.
They assure that the highest
journalistic standards are applied
to news programming. In that regard,
it is critical that their work—which
determines the substance of the
broadcast lineup—is immunized from
corporate bias and influence. The
WGA-CBS contract does exactly that
by ensuring that news producers are
protected and free from the fear of
retaliation. Removing these members
from the Guild, as proposed by CBS,
would eradicate an important level
of journalistic accountability,
likely jeopardizing content
integrity and inuring loyalty to
commercial goals at the expense of
the news objectivity that the public
expects and deserves.
These actions by CBS/Viacom are part
of a continuing pattern by media
conglomerates to downgrade news
coverage in small, medium and large
media markets. They are also a
direct result of the media merger
mania that has already taken place
and a byproduct of
telecommunications deregulation.
As the Senate Commerce Committee
continues its assessment of the
state of the American media in the
context of revisions to the 1996
Telecommunications Act, we urge that
the matters raised herein be given
due consideration.
Sincerely,
Paul E. Almeida
President
