Abstract
Reviewed by: George L. Daniels, Assistant Dean, College of Communication and Information Sciences, The University of Alabama
With a pretty generic title such as African Americans and Mass Media, Richard Craig’s case for diversity in media ownership might be overlooked. But, once you peek inside this five-chapter treatment on minority ownership, you get a stern reminder of what is still left to be accomplished in the long struggle to diversify the media landscape. As we near the end of the second decade of the 21st century, this book is a useful review of where the mass media have come since the end of the last century in the area of media ownership. At the same time, it provides some challenges that need to be met in the current media ownership environment where “BIGGER is still BETTER.”
No doubt when Craig published this book in 2015, he could not have predicted that Donald Trump would occupy The White House and the Federal Communications Commission would have a chairman who is the son of immigrants from India. That same son of immigrants would call for the relaxation of media ownership limits in the same month as he established an advisory committee on diversity and digital empowerment.
These political changes in the rapidly changing media landscape make a discussion about the traditional goal of diversifying media ownership even more important. Craig’s first chapter takes a step back to review the problem when there are few media owners from diverse background. The chapter lays out the main goal of this book, which was to examine delivery of news and public affairs programming on an ethnic media outlet after the passing of the Telecommunications Act of 1996. Craig argued that relaxing media ownership policy prompting more media consolidation actually impeded the progress toward diversity of media content. Indeed, he notes “the presence and portrayals of underrepresented groups in news and public affairs programming may suffer greatly due to the concentration of ownership in the hands of media conglomerate whose leadership may lack cultural diversity” (p. 10).
Then, in Chapter 2, he shifts to the primary case of his book—the story of Black Entertainment Television (BET). It is useful to be reminded that the years right after of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, BET aired five news and information-oriented programs: BET News, Our Voices, Teen Summit, Lead Story, and BET Tonight. The chapter recaps some of the statements of BET Founder Robert Johnson about the importance of news and public affairs programming while also reviewing what happened when Viacom purchased controlling interest in the network.
The third chapter revisits one of the most sweeping regulatory acts in history—The Telecommunications Act of 1996. This is also the “theory” chapter of the book where one finds a thorough examination of welfare economics versus free market economics and the market model versus the public sphere model. There is also a good discussion of what Craig calls the “flawed FCC Diversity Index,” the Herfindahl-Hirschman Index, which was used to measure the concentration effects of proposed mergers in local markets.
In talking about diversity in media ownership, one cannot just review the regulations without understanding the larger context. Thus, Chapter 4 focuses on what it all means through a closer examination of political economic implications of having media outlets in fewer hands. He noted that while the commercialization of media functions in the better interest of media owners’ ability to generate profit, it minimizes the public’s interest, restraining the public from its ability to participate in society.
Finally, Craig ends with a strong argument for the power of ethnic media. Starting with a review of the tradition of the Black press, he subsequently questions the value of affirmative action measures that were supposed to level the playing field for minority voices in media. “It is reasonable to deem affirmative action policies to have actually had injurious consequences on the operation of Black Entertainment Television and the likes of ethnic media in general” (p. 78). In discussing the importance of ethnic media, Craig makes mention of the acquisitions of such media by majority-owned media companies such as Time Inc’s purchase of Essence magazine in 2005 and NBCUniversal’s purchase of Telemundo in 2002, presumably to exploit the revenue opportunities of ethnic media.
At first glance, one might think that this book is just a boring dissertation-length study on an age-old topic—the lack of minority media ownership. Organized much like a dissertation with no fewer than 40 endnotes with each chapter and a rich bibliography, African Americans and Mass Media provides an academic treatment on a crucial period in media regulatory history. At the same time, one who wants to change the status quo and utilize this book as a springboard for advocacy will see it as a useful tool. Scholars in the fields of political economy, media management, and media diversity can turn to this volume as an important backgrounder for their research.