Since the days of the Revolutionary War, each community has often had more than one locally owned newspaper. Just as monopolies pose problems in the economic marketplace, the concentration of media ownership poses problems in the marketplace of ideas. Concentration of media ownership may reduce diversity of opinion Although a significant debate surrounds the wisdom, policy, and economics of the Sherman and Clayton acts, their application to the media has raised some particularly unique issues because of the media’s important function in a democratic society - providing citizens with the information they need to make informed decisions, as well as serving as a check on public officials. These acts were intended to ensure that economic competition would prevent any business from using its economic power illegally to manipulate prices for its products or to prevent new competitors from entering the marketplace. The Clayton Antitrust Act, adopted by Congress in 1914, made it illegal to engage in price fixing or discrimination, to bring about mergers of businesses or corporations that reduce competition, or to allow directors of one corporation to sit on the board of another. In 1890 that body passed the Sherman Antitrust Act, which made it illegal to monopolize or engage in practices that restrain trade. Over the years, Congress has adopted legislation to discourage the concentration of business ownership in the United States. Congress has attempted to discourage concentration of business ownership in US Thus in some situations the media receive specific legal exemptions from the normal application of antitrust laws to the ownership of news services such as television, radio, and newspapers.
news media are sometimes treated differently in the application of antitrust laws in order to promote a diverse marketplace of ideas under the First Amendment. (AP Photo/Ed Andrieski, used with permission from the Associated Press) Here, John Temple, left, editor and president of the Rocky Mountain News and Glenn Guzzo, right, editor of The Denver Post, talk during a photo session in Denver, 2001, after an announcement of a JOA between the papers. One example of a law that exempted news media from antitrust rules was the Newspaper Preservation Act of 1970, allowing competing newspapers to enter into joint operating agreements.
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