A Tale of Three Cities: “Diverse and Antagonistic” Information in Situations of Local Newspaper/Broadcast Cross-Ownership

For more than half a century, a desire for "diverse and antagonistic sources" has been a fundamental principle of communications policy in the United States. Many question, however, whether current FCC policies intended to foster diversity of news and views in the content of the mass media actually do so. Nowhere is this issue raised more starkly than with respect to the Commission's controversial 1975 rule that prohibited the common ownership of a daily newspaper and a broadcast station in the same market. This Article examines the results of a study of diversity of information and viewpoints about the 2000 presidential campaign within cross-owned newspaper-broadcast combinations in three large American cities: Chicago, Dallas, and Milwaukee, and how those results impact the "diverse and antagonistic sources" doctrine of the FCC.