BEN COMPAINE ON MEDIA CONCENTRATION

In this month's Reason, Ben Compaine attempts to counter the recent public concern with FCC rule changes that would allow for greater media concentration ("Domination Fantasies"). Compaine's article is an eloquent statement of the argument that the FCC's critics are misguided, but Compaine misleads on at least one crucial point.

He uses the low Herfindahl-Hirschmann Index score for the media industry as a whole (a measure used in antitrust contexts; Compaine made his own calculations) to argue against the view that the industry is concentrated in an inappropriate and dangerous fashion.

Compaine simplifies here, however. More fine-grained analyses are necessary. A HHI score for the industry as a whole (i.e., for the nation as a whole) would be interesting and important if the relevant market were the nation itself. As the FCC itself recognizes, however, geography still matters in the media industry. Smaller markets may be more vulnerable to concentration that drowns out politically significant alternative voices than larger markets.

But it's not only geographic markets that matter. Because the media is not like other consumer goods (diverse information is important for our common political life, not just for individiual utility-maximization), one needs to be concerned about such issues as unequal access to information. Compaine, evidently, is not. The rise of the internet often is used in such discussions as a sign that access to diverse views is assured throughout the country (or at least coming soon if the government would only let market forces reign supreme), but access to the internet itself is still uneven across socio-economic and racial categories.

MORE: the original version erred on the author's name; I've made the correction above.