There is a way to compel disclosure of covert consolidation agreements, given the fact that broadcast licenses are involved. Stearns notes news companies are keenly aware of their license obligations and no they must adhere to those obligations, which is why in one particular case of consolidation all the staff of a station was laid off except for two people (the minimum number of staff required to maintain a license).
Reinish compares the Comcast-NBC merger deal to covert consolidation saying, while there was likely evidence of supposed backroom conversations and infrastructure being put in place before the merger was eventually approved, covert consolidation is worse because no rules are being violated. New companies are able to erode principles of the press and violate tenets of competition, localism and diversity of viewpoints, which the FCC has been chartered to defend, without the FCC or public ever knowing they are committing any violations.
The FCC will be going through its quadrennial review of media ownership rules. Organizers with Free Press hope the FCC will raise the issue and take a strong stance against the practice.
Additionally, Free Press will be doing crowdsource reporting to uncover more instances of covert consolidation in the nation. They will be urging citizens to go into public files, find copies of legal arrangements, find comments people submitted on the agreement, research how many jobs were lost and how money changed hands, etc.
What has been uncovered is only the tip of the iceberg and they expect once Americans know covert consolidation is happening and begin to detect it while they are watching their local news, they will want to fight back against this practice.
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To coincide with the launch, Free Press has posted this report on covert consolidation.
Again, news stations are making agreements called "Local News Service Agreements" to pool and share editors, journalists, equipment and content.
The report features various points from the Poynter Institute on the "pitfalls" of LNS agreements:
1. Stations that don't have journalists on the ground may miss out on important sources or angles of a story.
2. The product coming out of a video pool may be devalued by the newsroom, because traditionally only routine or b-roll video was collected this way.
3. Pseudo-events and public relations stunts can take on false importance when one camera crew's video and just one perspective ends up being re-used across multiple stations, creating an echo chamber and a misleading impression of real significance.
4. The deep context is traded for the quick shot, ignoring the "why and how" of an occurrence.
5. Journalists inevitably lose their jobs. Fewer are needed when one person and a camera covers a few beats for multiple stations.
6. Not all stations in a market necessarily take part in a pool--which is a good thing in terms of not diluting a non-participating station's coverage, but actually could make the sharing stations lose viewers in the long run.
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