Newspapers and Public Policy p.

By: George Garneau

Congressmen address RBOC battle and recycling legislation at NAA annual meeting
CONGRESS CAN LEGISLATE a national communications policy by the time it adjourns in 1994, according to Rep. Edward Markey (D-Mass.).
Markey is chairman of the House telecommunications subcommittee and has aided the newspaper industry in trying to restrict regional phone companies in providing information services.
He told a session at the Newspaper Association of America convention in Boston April 26 that trying to write a law with newspapers on one side and phone companies on the other was like stepping into a feud between Godzilla and King Kong.
By any measure, the issue of whether the regional Bell operating companies, as regulated monopolies, should enter the unregulated business of providing information services has produced a great deal of argument but little in the way of resolution since a federal judge reluctantly freed the Baby Bells from the information restriction.
The newspaper industry was pinning its hopes on a bill, sponsored by Rep. Jack Brooks (D-Texas), that would have restricted the Bells, but it died when Congress recessed last year. It would have barred the regional Bell companies from providing information in markets in which they had monopoly control.
However, Markey emphasized the need for legislation to set a road map for private development of a modern national communications infrastructure, which he said could generate billions of dollars in business and would accompany a restructuring of the media as they currently operate.
"We are on the edge of a new era," he said, portraying a global information order of wireless and wire-line media in which traditional industries such as broadcasters, phone companies and cable television die and are reborn in new incarnations. In this scenario, the First Amendment "mantle" that newspapers take so seriously will be up for grabs as powerful new networks emerge to move information.
The good news, Markey said, is that Congress unanimously supports the creation of a national telecommunications infrastructure. The bad news is: "No one has the vaguest idea what it is."
While information networks and providers are expected to remain in the private sector, Markey said, government has an important role to play in ensuring that whatever systems evolve are interconnectible and accessible.
Expressing continued support for the newspaper industry's general goals, he said he favored safeguards to protect information providers, such as newspapers and "information entrepreneurs," from possible predatory pricing by Bell information subsidiaries.
In advance of any national legislation, he supported the terms of an agreement reached earlier this year between New Jersey Bell and the New Jersey Press Association.
To protect information providers from being forced to compete unfairly with a local phone company that provides information and owns the information network, Markey supported two strategies: Baby Bells must establish separate subsidiaries to act as information suppliers and regulators must establish formulas for allocating costs so that regulated phone customers do not unwittingly subsidize a phone company's foray into information services.
"Any proposal worthy of enactment must have these two elements," he said, calling on publishers to "get involved."
"You must understand these issues," he told a meeting room three-fourths empty on Monday afternoon of the convention.
Saying that Congress, after failing to resolve the telecommunications issue last year, was ready to get the job done this year or next, Markey urged newspapers to become active before the latest version of a bill limiting RBOC involvement is marked up in committee.
He warned the publishers that the newspaper industry wants the law passed, not the Bell companies, which have an open door to expand their regulated telephone monopolies and become unregulated information providers. The Baby Bells have an interest in preserving the inertia that has dominated the issue, Markey said.
"You are the moving party, so you must provide the energy if anything is going to move," he said.
He supported the idea of an "entry test" to gauge whether enough competition exists for local phone service to justify allowing a Bell operating company to enter information services.
Markey also offered hope that newspapers and Baby Bells will settle their differences and cut a "deal."
Also at the session on public policy, Rep. Al Swift (D-Wash.), who sponsored a recycling bill in 1991 that failed to become law, said newspapers stand a good chance of avoiding, at least for the time being, recycling legislation that could require newspapers to use government-specified levels of recycled newsprint.
Newspapers will probably "duck the bullet" of recycling legislation in this Congress, Swift said, because the Clinton administration has targeted clean water and Superfund laws as its first priorities.
Nevertheless, environmental groups, which support laws mandating how much recycled newsprint is used and which opposed a scaled-down recycling bill before, are looking for just such a measure now, he said.
Newspapers supported Swift's recycling bill because it did not mandate use of recycled newsprint, but it was amended in committee by John Dingell (D-Mich.), who added language opposed by the newspaper industry requiring that newspapers over 200,000 circulation meet goals on use of recycled paper.
Suggesting Dingell could again support mandatory levels of recycled newsprint, Swift urged publishers to be vigilant.
"You should try and keep an eye on where this is going," he said. "You should not relax because this could still pop up and bite you."
Swift said the media, including newspaper newsrooms, were "too gullible" about the claims of environmental groups, which he called powerful interest groups that have their own agendas and $200 million a year in funding among the top 10 groups.
He said many arguments "never get to the public" because the media accept environmental groups less critically than politicians and other interest groups.
Swift said newspapers have the third best recycling record of any industry, reusing 54% of all the newsprint they consume either as newsprint, tissue or other product.
However, at a separate session, Michael Alexander, a policy analyst at the Brattleboro, Vt.-based Northeast Recycling Center, a non-profit agency that coordinates recycling in 10 Northeast states, said the newspaper industry's figure was inflated because about 10% of all recycled newspapers consists of ad inserts.
Alexander projected that by 1996, the average amount of recycled fiber in newsprint would rise to 30%, from 20% now.