MOU or an IOU? Latina/os and the racialization of media policy

ABSTRACT

As media consolidation has led to debates over whether it has been good for communities of colour in the United States, political activism by civic groups regarding media policy has played a role in how regulation has taken shape. Through advocacy efforts over media policy, Latina/os seek inclusion within the media landscape. This article engages in an interpretive policy analysis of the 2011 Comcast/NBCU merger at the FCC and the racialization of media policy. Our article highlights the need to critically engage with the role of racialization regarding media policy, and the ways that representation should be thought of beyond notions of narrowcasting or numerical diversity in the media landscape. Despite efforts by Latina/o groups to participate and gain access to the broader media landscape, their efforts fell short in ensuring increased representation and decision-making power post-merger.

KEYWORDS:

• Federal communications commission
• Latina/o audience
• media diversity
• media policy
• Comcast merger
• racialization

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 For the purposes of this article, we use the term(s) Latina/o to distinguish a racially categorized group that collectively organizes itself along a variety of social factors related to language, geography, ethnicity and migration. The Latina/o category here is inclusive to include Hispanic, Chicano and Latinidad experiences as they are engaged with the media landscape and issues of media policy.

2 Since 2003, the FCC’s attempt to diversify the media with attention paid to minorities and women have legitimized the need to highlight racial and gender inequality within the media environment, yet have insufficiently developed ways to understand and implement good study designs for the attempts to craft policy around diversity efforts. This is a potential inflection point in the media policy process as it provides an avenue for Latina/os to assert claims over media exclusion at the FCC. Both viewpoint and programme diversity have been challenged at the FCC as the agency has been unable to define clearly which each measure means in relation to promoting a diverse media environment.

3 47 U.S. Code § 310 (d).

4 An MOU is a voluntary formal agreement entered by two or more parties which lays out terms and practices with the goal of achieving an identified objective. MOUs may be analysed by the Federal Government and incorporated into the regulatory decision-making process. MOUs are not legally-binding, but they do carry a significant amount of weight as a party’s reputation can be harmed by noncompliance with an MOU.

5 The HLO is labelled collectively in the MOU as representative of the National Hispanic Leadership Agenda (NHLA), the Hispanic Association on Corporate Responsibility (HACR) and the National Hispanic Media Coalition (NHMC).