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13 Comm. L. & Pol'y 1 (2008)

handle is hein.journals/comulp13 and id is 1 raw text is: 




13 COMM. L. & PoL'Y 1-27 (2008)                     i) Routledge
Copyright c Taylor & Francis Group, LLC                 Taylor&Francis Group
ISSN: 1081-1680 print/1532-6926 online                  T
DOI: 10.1080/10811680701754910



ONE OWNER, ONE VOICE? TESTING
A CENTRAL PREMISE OF
NEWSPAPER-BROADCAST
CROSS-OWNERSHIP POLICY


DAVID PRITCHARD*
CHRISTOPHER TERRY**
PAUL R. BREWER***


        Empirical questions about the relationship between ownership struc-
        ture and media content are central to the debate about media owner-
        ship policy in the United States. At the core of the debate is the concern
        that an individual or company owning multiple media outlets will
        slant news and opinion in an attempt to distort public opinion and/or
        influence public policy. The premise is that a single owner represents
        a single voice, regardless of how many media outlets the owner op-
        erates. This article, which features a study of news and commentary
        about the 2004 presidential campaign from commonly owned news-
        papers, television stations and radio stations in three communities,
        tests the validity of the one owner, one voice premise in the context of
        newspaper-broadcast cross-ownership. The results of the study-one
        of the very few studies of newspaper-broadcast cross-ownership to in-
        corporate radio content-suggest that there is no empirical basis for
        believing that cross-owned media do any less than other media to serve
        the public interest.






  *Professor, Department of Journalism and Mass Communication, University
of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
  **Ph.D. student, School of Journalism and Mass Communication, University
of Wisconsin-Madison.
  'Associate Professor, Department of Journalism and Mass Communication,
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.
  Jessica Birthisel, Melody Hoffmann, Jennifer Janscha, Zak Mazur, Angela
McManaman and Kristi Shileny, graduate students at the University of
Wisconsin-Milwaukee, provided coding and research assistance.

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