CONSUMER GROUPS RELEASE NEW SURVEY ON MEDIA USAGE HABITS
Two consumer groups said a new survey on the media consumption habits of American consumers showed that the FCC used faulty reasoning in deciding to loosen restrictions on ownership of local media. Consumers Union (CU) and the Consumer Federation of America (CFA) said their telephone survey showed that newspapers were more than twice as important to consumers for local news and information than the FCC had concluded in its media ownership proceeding. “Clearly, the FCC has no earthly idea what consumers really do,” CU Senior Policy Dir. Gene Kimmelman said.
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The new survey can’t be used by the groups when they argue their appeal of the new rules before the 3rd U.S. Appeals Court, Philadelphia, next month because it’s not part of the record. However, they plan to submit their survey and report to the FCC in support of their petition for reconsideration before the agency. The FCC has indicated it probably wouldn’t move to reconsider its June 2 decision on media ownership until after the court proceedings had concluded. Oral argument is scheduled for Feb. 11, where the FCC intends to defend its new rules.
Attorney Glenn Manishin, who’s working with the consumer groups on their court appeal, said the survey could appeal to the judges’ common sense on whether the FCC had a rational basis for making its decisions. The survey asked respondents specifically about the most important media sources they used for local news and information and their frequency of usage. CU and CFA faulted the FCC-sponsored research, saying it mixed national and local data and didn’t ask questions that were specific enough. For example, CU and CFA said FCC data showed cable as an important source of news, but when asked more specifically about local news, respondents didn’t cite cable news as an important source. That, CFA Research Dir. Mark Cooper said, is because cable carries lots of national news but not much local news.
CU and CFA said the FCC, in developing its rules, gave newspapers a weight of 29% in its “diversity index.” But the survey said newspapers actually were the most important and frequent source of local news for 61% of respondents. The FCC “dramatically overweighted the importance” of the Internet and radio, giving them a combined weight of 37%, the groups said, but the survey results showed that the Internet and radio were the most frequent and important source of local information for only 10% of the respondents.
With the national cap all but off the table for the court with the signing of the new 39% cap into law, the groups are focusing almost exclusively on the local picture. Kimmelman said: “Since newspapers are a much more important source for local news than the FCC gives them credit for, and TV is the second most important source, mergers between these 2 effectively eliminate diversity of viewpoints and competition of ideas in our local media, which is exactly what the FCC is supposed to protect.” He said much of investigative journalism was by newspapers, and combining TV and newspaper newsrooms could diminish newspapers’ role as community watchdog and whistleblower.
Cooper said the FCC based its new rules on information that was “just plain wrong.” Asked why the survey wasn’t made part of the record during the FCC’s comment period on the new rules, Cooper said CU and CFA had no idea what the Commission’s diversity index was based on until the last moment, and the agency hadn’t given adequate notice to allow the research to be conducted before the comment period ended. The survey, conducted Jan. 15-18, cost the groups $5,000, they said.