Race and Media: Several Key Proposals for the Next Administration

38 Pages Posted: 11 Oct 2008

Date Written: October 8, 2008

Abstract

For the foreseeable future, the Internet and broadband technologies are not and will not serve as substitutes for broadcasting among people of color. Since people of color have less access to the Internet and broadband technologies, broadcast television and radio, which reach 99 percent of the population and are consumed more often than Internet services by African Americans and Latinos/as, still represent a valid separate market.

The FCC's Report and Order and Third Further Notice of Rulemaking, which adopted nondiscrimination rules for market transactions and advertising is insufficient to combat this problem, and with the shortage of spectrum to provide for new station licenses much of the effort to diversify media ownership has to focus on the sale of broadcast licenses in secondary markets.

The following measures should be adopted:

1. Reinstate the FCC's Minority Tax Certificate Program - a program repealed in 1995 by Congress;

2. Reinstate the distress sale policy and apply it to socially and economically disadvantaged businesses.

These programs should pass constitutional muster, both because after 13 years of sharp decline in minority ownership, enough data is available to justify their reimplementation, and because they are narrowly tailored to meet the need for diversification of media ownership.

3. In addition FCC would need to monitor both these programs closely to see what effect they are having on discrimination. In this way, it could further ensure that these programs and policies pass constitutional muster.

4. Additional measures include:

(1) Have the Small Business Administration (SBA) Guarantee Loans to Small Telecommunications Businesses;

(2 ) Require minority-owned businesses to retain the media property for five years or else forfeit the deferred capital gains tax. This provision should ensure that real minority owners buy the property and not fronts.

5. The U. S. should join the rest of the world and affirm its responsibility for protecting mutual respect within the diverse composition of its population. A statute should make diversity of media voices a core value and require that every action that the FCC takes is evaluated in the context of its effect on diversity of media ownership and media voices.

6. In order for people of color to have more access and content in the new world of ubiquitous broadband, two types of policies need to be implemented:

(1) Policies that ensure universal access to broadband and network neutrality;

(2) Expansion of the tax certificate, distress sale and SBA loan programs to providers of online content.

Keywords: SBA, FCC, minority tax, loans

Suggested Citation

Baynes, Leonard M., Race and Media: Several Key Proposals for the Next Administration (October 8, 2008). Lexington Books, Forthcoming, St. John's Legal Studies Research Paper No. 08-154, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1281001

Leonard M. Baynes (Contact Author)

University of Houston Law Center ( email )

4604 Calhoun Road
4604 Calhoun Road
Houston, TX 77204-6060
United States

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