{"id":4040,"date":"2021-01-09T00:07:44","date_gmt":"2021-01-09T00:07:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/revolutionsincommunication.com\/law\/?page_id=4040"},"modified":"2026-04-09T16:24:32","modified_gmt":"2026-04-09T16:24:32","slug":"anti-trust-media","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/revolutionsincommunication.com\/law\/anti-trust-media\/","title":{"rendered":"Competition, anti-trust law & media"},"content":{"rendered":"\r\n\r\n\r\n
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Evergreen University media monopoly chart<\/p><\/div>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

If competition has a public benefit<\/strong> when an ordinary commodity or service is involved, isn’t competition that much more important in a sector like the media, which has enormous public influence?\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\r\n

Doesn’t less competition mean fewer voices, less diversity and more chance for dangerous influences to take hold? And do we now actually have less media competition, through social media and the internet,\u00a0 than in the previous era of traditional media?<\/p>\r\n

This is part of the debate about media mergers, media concentration and anti-trust law.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\r\n

The mass media have been treated differently under US antitrust laws for reasons that, theoretically, promote a more diverse marketplace of ideas. <\/a>\u00a0 One example of a law that exempted news media from antitrust rules was the Newspaper Preservation Act of 1970<\/a>, allowing competing newspapers to enter\u00a0 into joint operating agreements to keep them from bankruptcy.\u00a0 But in other cases, the court held the media up to the same standards that are applied to other companies; these included\u00a0 NBC v US,\u00a0 Associated Press v US , and\u00a0 Microsoft v US.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\r\n

“The Biden administration made antitrust enforcement a cornerstone of its economic policy and its Justice Department filed a record number of cases, including more monopolization lawsuits than at any time since the trust-busting era of the early 1900s. Under Trump, the Justice Department has moved to settle several of them.” — Insurance Journal, April 9, 2026<\/a>.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

As noted on the previous page, this litigation is driven by two different theories about\u00a0 public interest and the objectives of American communications policy. One is market-oriented and sees deregulation as promoting competition to serve consumer preferences.\u00a0 The other sees a need for government regulation of media industry structure in order to promote a diversity of voices.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n

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Historical Anti-Trust <\/span>Media <\/span>cases\u00a0 \u00a0<\/span><\/h3>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n
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Thomas Edison, c. 1915<\/p><\/div>\r\n

Motion Picture Patents Co. v. Universal Film<\/strong>,<\/a> 1915, \u00a0broke up Thomas Edison’s monopoly on film equipment which Edison was using to try to control the movie business. Edison and MPPC lost the lawsuit, and the film industry moved away from New York to Los Angeles.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Associated Press v. International News Service,<\/a><\/strong> 1918 — William Randolph Hearst’s International News Service had been barred during World War I from using British-owned telegraph lines since Hearst had been openly sympathetic with the Germans. INS then began re-writing Associated Press dispatches. The court partly agreed with INS when it said that the copyright section of the Constitution was not intended to confer ownership of facts. But it supported the AP’s contention that INS was violating its copyright.\u00a0 One underlying issue in this suit was the longstanding problem of the Associated Press monopoly, established after the Civil War with the help of Western Union telegraph service, and not challenged until 1945 in AP v US.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Associated Press v. National Labor Relations Board, 1937,<\/strong> established that like any other business, the AP could not fire employees for organizing unions. AP had attempted to hide behind the First Amendment. The Newspaper Guild,<\/a> the union which AP tried to ban, is still active today.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Associated Press v. U.S.<\/a> 1945<\/strong> — (Barriers to entry<\/em><\/span>) When the Chicago Sun newspaper applied for AP membership, the Chicago Tribune newspaper, already an AP member, objected. According to the AP rules at the time, new members had to pay exorbitant dues to join. The Justice Dept. challenged the Associated Press, and the Supreme Court said that the fact that AP handles news while other companies handle goods “does not afford the publisher a peculiar Constitutional sanctuary… Freedom to publish means freedom for all and not for some … Freedom of the press from government interference doesnt sanction repression of freedom by private interests.”<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

U.S. v. Paramount Pictures, Inc<\/a>.1948<\/strong> — The Supreme Court decision to force movie studios like Warner Bros., United Artists, and Paramount Pictures. to divest vertically integrated holdings in theater chains is sometimes seen as the end of the Golden Age of Hollywood, but it led to an increase in independent movie producers and more competition in the film industry.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

Lorain Journal Co. v. US<\/a> 1951<\/strong> — (Refusal to deal<\/em><\/span>) An Ohio newspaper refused to accept advertising from anyone who bought ads on a new radio station. This is a classic “refusal to deal” case, and is illegal. Note that this is one of the primary issues in the US v. Microsoft case of 1998.\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\r\n

BMI v CBS,<\/a><\/strong> 1979 —\u00a0 Did Broadcast Music Inc (a copyright clearinghouse for music) engage in illegal price-fixing? The courts said no in this case, which represented a retreat from the “per se” rule to the “rule of reason.”\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n

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Newspaper Joint operating agreements\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/h3>\r\n

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Newspapers were one area where the shift to a neoconservative “rule of reason” approach to antitrust law in the 1970s had an impact. Newspaper readerships were declining, and in the 1950s and ’60s competing newspapers combined into joint operating agreements (JOAs), where the newsrooms were separate but advertising, business and production were combined.\u00a0 So the content was produced independently, but the structures were combined.<\/p>\r\n

U.S. v. Citizen Publishing Co., 1969<\/strong>, was a case involving a joint operating agreement<\/span> between two Tucson, AZ newspapers. Their JOA was\u00a0 held to be in violation of anti-trust law. Justice William O Douglas said the only defense against anti trust was the “failing company doctrine.” Many JOAs were begun in cases where neither newspaper was actually failing. After a debate about competition from radio and TV, publishers pushed Congress into passing a newspaper preservation act.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n

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The Newspaper Preservation Act of 1970<\/strong> <\/a>legalized existing joint operations and cleared the way for new ones, in effect overriding the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizen Publishing. The Justice Dept. opposed other kinds of mergers, blocking them in cases where the two papers were in an adjacent market. It was legal for chains to own many newspapers in various places, but not in close proximity.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\r\n

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Despite high-level legal protection, the US newspaper industry eventually collapsed, with circulation dropping from a high of 64 million per day in the 1980s to 20 million by 2023.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n

\u00a0Other traditional news media have also suffered. Since 1980, the television networks have lost half their audience for evening newscasts, and the audience for radio news has shrunk by 40%.\u00a0<\/p>\r\n

The question (with 20-20 hindsight in the 21st century) is whether it might have been better to force competition in the newspaper industry back then, rather than to allow the dominance of one newspaper in each city until, given the lack of competition and vision, the industry collapsed anyway.\u00a0 \u00a0<\/p>\r\n

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Media Mergers\u00a0 \u00a0<\/h3>\r\n

The concentration of media ownership is controversial in most countries around the world.\u00a0 In the US, media ownership is highly concentrated in about six major corporations., according to a Wikipedia article Media Concentration:\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\r\n

Robert W. McChesney<\/a> (who was a University of Illinois communications professor) argued that the concentration of media ownership is caused by a shift to neoliberal deregulation<\/a>\u00a0policies, which is a market-driven approach. Deregulation effectively removes governmental barriers to allow for the commercial exploitation of media. Motivation for media firms to merge includes increased profit-margins, reduced risk and maintaining a competitive edge. In contrast to this, those who support deregulation have argued that cultural\u00a0trade barriers<\/a>\u00a0and regulations harm consumers and domestic support in the form of\u00a0subsidies<\/a> hinders countries in the development of their own strong media firms. The opening of borders is more beneficial to countries than maintaining protectionist<\/a>\u00a0regulations.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\r\n

Critics of media deregulation and the resulting concentration of ownership fear that such trends will only continue to reduce the diversity of information provided, as well as to reduce the accountability of information providers to the public. The ultimate consequence of consolidation, critics argue, is a poorly informed public, restricted to a reduced array of media options that offer only information that does not harm the media oligopoly’s growing range of interests.<\/p>\r\n

Recent media mergers\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\r\n