Free Press, in its recent initiative, Media 2070, asserts that diversity of media ownership must occur in addition to other reparations to address the “anti-black racism [that] has always been part of our media system’s DNA.” Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chair Jessica Rosenworcel underscored this observation upon the release of the agency’s Fifth Biennial Ownership Report in September 2021. She noted: Today’s report provides data from 2019 that reflect the state of broadcast ownership in the United States. As has been the case for too long, this data makes clear that women and people of color are underrepresented in license ownership. This requires attention because what we see and hear over the public airwaves says so much about who we are as individuals, as communities, and as a Nation.

This paper begins by exploring two court cases, separated by fifty-two years, that both address media ownership and the FCC’s related actions. The first of these cases, the Office of Communication of the United Church of Christ v. Federal Communications Commission, remains a landmark precedent, being the first case to allow media consumers to directly participate in FCC proceedings.3 A group of private citizens challenged, and the appeals court overturned, the FCC’s renewal of a license for a Mississippi television station that broadcasted openly discriminatory programming and coverage during the civil rights movement in a market primarily composed of African Americans.4 In contrast, in the second case, FCC v. Prometheus Radio Project, the United States Supreme Court sided with the FCC and upheld its relaxing of restrictions to the local ownership rules despite its use of imperfect data to determine whether those changes would negatively impact women and minority ownership.5 The cases illustrate how starkly different the FCC and the courts analyze the nexus between media ownership and their consumers’ exposure to diversity of viewpoints. After discussing the cases and their importance, the authors first turn to the future and explain why having diverse ownership matters, and then conclude by offering suggestions for a path forward in a post-Prometheus regime to help ensure minority and female ownership in media.

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