Book Review: Economics and Freedom of Expression: Media Structure and the First Amendment

• Author: Bruce T. Allen
• DOI: 10.1177/0003603X7802300310
• Published date: 01 September 1978
• Date: 01 September 1978
• Subject Matter: Book Reviews

BOOK REVIEWS

Bruce M. Owen, Economics and Freedom of Expression:

Media Structure and the First Amendment, Cambridge,

Mass.: Ballinger Publishing Company (1975).

This is an important book.

Its

author, who teaches eco-

nomics

at

Stanford, is one of perhaps a half-dozen first-rate

economists who have turned the traditional economic analysis

of monopoly to questions of mass media structure and regula-

tion. His

past

work includes treatments of crossmedia owner-

ship,' an econometric study of television performance,"

and

a

stint

at

the

Federal

Office

of Telecommunications Policy.

What

this book offers isafresh, fundamental look

at

First

Amendment questions of speakers' rights in access to media.

Owen

interprets

these rights as access

at

competitive, not

zero, prices. This he sharply contrasts with the "public in-

terest"

doctrine by which the Federal Communications Com-

mission indirectly controls television programming by its

threat

not to renew broadcast licenses. Nor is this freedom

the absolute

right-rejected

recently in the Supreme Court"

-to

zero-cost expression of one's views in the newspapers.

Nor is

it

the

right

to

insert

one's own thoughts into a "pre-

viously edited collection of messages." Similarly, it is prob-

ably not the same as the policy of the TV cable regulators in

this reviewer's home city, where revenues from viewers of

regular programming

are

used to cross-subsidize the "public-

access" cable productions of a small

group

of local media

enthusiasts. Access, in Owen's view, carries apositive social

cost,

and

its users should

pay

competitively

set

prices reflect-

ing it.

1B. M. Owen, "Newspaper

and

Television Station

Joint

Owner-

ship," The Antitrust Bulletin,

XVI

(1973) 787-807.

2B. M. Owen,

J.

H. Beebe,

and

W. G. Manning,

Jr.,

Television

Economics (Lexington, Mass.: 1974).

SMiami Herald Publishing Co. v. Tornillo, 418 U.S. 241 (1974).

689