Clyburn, Copps Back Inquiry on Public Interest for New Media
Gauging how new media serve the public interest and whether it can do more seems worthy of inquiry as the FCC held its first workshop Thursday on the Future of Media, Commissioners Mignon Clyburn and Michael Copps said. They and some other panelists expressed concern that online news may not always serve communities, while broadcast officials said the public interest shouldn’t be narrowly defined for stations. The Future of Media project is just gearing up (CD Feb 22 p6) and initiative head Steve Waldman said he hoped “some panelists will challenge us and provoke us.” His wish was granted by Allbritton Communications Senior Vice President Jerry Fritz.
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Communications Daily is required reading for senior executives at top telecom corporations, law firms, lobbying organizations, associations and government agencies (including the FCC). Join them today!
“There never has been a golden age of public interest, but there have been years when we've at least had public interest guidelines,” Copps said. Digital media has “thus far not been much subject to public interest consideration,” said Copps, unsure if the poor, disabled and others who aren’t “elite” will “have a chance of being heard.” As much media will one day “migrate, how do we ensure that it serves the public interest,” he asked.
Clyburn wants to know how “traditionally underserved populations” will find “the news and information they need,” she said. “We know where to find reliable reporting on national stories,” but may not apply to all types of news, she continued. “What kinds of information are citizens getting? Will communities that are sometimes neglected by the media, including minorities, end up being well-served in a new media environment?”
On broadcasters’ meeting the public interest, “the commission has struggled in defining what it is and how to comply with it … for every year of its 76-year existence,” said Deputy Media Bureau Chief Bob Ratcliffe. News isn’t the only way to measure how well a station serves its community, said NAB General Counsel Jane Mago. “It is not only news, there is public affairs programming. You cannot have a one- size-fits-all. Not everyone provides news.” Hundreds of stations run no news, Media Access Project President Andrew Schwartzman said. “Many don’t cover elections” aside from airing political ads, and “commercial radio is even worse,” he said. Wireless service providers face public-interest mandates, too, said CTIA Vice President Chris Guttman-McCabe.
The FCC should “keep out of our way” and children’s TV programming has been given “a super-favored status trumping all other public interest programming,” said Fritz. “How is that statutorily or constitutionally possible?” Professor Angela Campbell of Georgetown University’s Institute for Public Representation later asked: “Three hours a week for children’s programming is really problematic for you?” Everybody at the workshop “has a different sense of how they would program their station. Some broadcasters make one choice, some broadcasters make another choice,” Fritz said. “There’s Steve Waldman’s public interest. It’s not mine.” Waldman later joked that he wanted to keep the panel going until he asked a question whose premise Fritz agreed with.
“The public interest standard is really not a standard at all, since it has no meaning,” said Progress & Freedom Foundation President Adam Thierer. There are “practical problems” to expanding the standard, he said. Waldman asked how the public interest would change with a spectrum auction, as the FCC looks to get stations to voluntarily participate in one. Former FCC General Counsel Henry Geller replied: “If you make them pay, I would give up that you have to do the public interest -- that’s the quid pro quo. You don’t have to put profits second, you can be as rotten and mean as you want.” -- Jonathan Make
Future of Media Notebook …
“The online world is just as full of barriers to entry as broadcasting” albeit more “subtle,” said Navarrow Wright, president of Maximum Leverage Solutions. “Lower costs of entry are online,” versus other media, said the self- described minority entrepreneur and technology executive. Low barriers are accompanied by “an ever-expanding pool of minority talent online, marked in part by an over-abundance of journalists and media staffers who have been let go by traditional print and news outlets.” Navarrow was a late addition to the workshop, criticized earlier this week for not initially having had any minority experts (CD March 4 p11).
----
Some “very good” public access channels have a “very disappointing level of viewership,” FCC Media Bureau Chief Bill Lake said. That “may suggest there is a lack of demand” for public, educational and governmental channels, he continued. “What is the role for the government and the commission in particular” and “how do we achieve that?” Ex- FCC General Counsel Henry Geller said earlier on the panel that some PEG channels aren’t sufficiently funded. His reply to Lake: “You publicize it. Because if you don’t do the publicizing, people don’t know. After that, there’s not much you can do.”