Abstract
In this essay the authors, all faculty at Howard University, advocate more egalitarian ownership of broadcast media, especially with respect to minorities and women. They designate five areas for attention: objective standards for judging public interest performance; strengthening public oversight; strengthening localism; identifying metrics for diversity and localism; and mechanisms to promote minority and female ownership. They offer recommendations for the implementation of each area. In a larger sense, they argue that media ownership policies remain blocked by corporate-oriented neoliberalism, and the current media oligopoly needs to be dismantled under an antitrust model to insure robust discussion of issues of common interest into the future.
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.Author notes
*
Professor, Department of Journalism, Howard University.
†
Assistant Professor, Department of Radio, Television & Film, Howard University.
‡
Assistant Professor, Department of Radio, Television & Film, Howard University. The authors appreciate the comments of DeVan Hankerson, research director, and Kenneth Mallory, fellow, at the Minority Media Telecommunications Council; as well as the helpful suggestions of Benjamin Cramer, editor of Journal of Information Policy.
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The Howard Media Group (HMG) is a multicultural collaborative composed of faculty members and graduate students at Howard University. HMG's goals are to 1) advance greater understanding of media industries and public policy through education; and 2) promote egalitarian communications policies through scholarship.
Copyright © 2011 by The Pennsylvania State University. All rights reserved.
2011
The Pennsylvania State University
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