[BC] Localism

[Reader]

At 01:31 AM 9/16/2006, Alan Kline wrote
>I found a website that posted a PDF of the draft report:
>http://www.stopbigmedia.com/blog/?p=24
>
>The link is in the first paragraph of the story.

Probe Called for in FCC's Quashing of Local News Study
By <http://www.tvweek.com/news.cms?newsId=10757>Ira Teinowitz
TV WEEK

Two days after a senator unveiled an unreleased Federal 
Communications Commission report saying locally owned stations 
delivered more news, a new allegation that the report was purposely 
quashed at a time the FCC was easing media ownership rules is 
prompting calls for an independent probe.
Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., unveiled the draft and unreleased 
report Tuesday at a Senate Commerce Committee hearing, and questioned 
FCC Chairman Kevin Martin about it.

The report, which Mr. Martin said he had never seen, was produced in 
2004 under former chairman Michael Powell, as part of a planned FCC 
look into "localism" that was never completed. It said that locally 
owned stations average 5.5 more minutes of local news per half-hour 
of news than other stations.

It was produced as the FCC studied the impact of ownership on local 
stations and was moving ahead with new ownership rules that would 
have resulted in more out-of-town ownership.

Today Adam Candeub, a law professor at Michigan State University and 
at the time a lawyer in the FCC Media Bureau, said officials of the 
FCC Media Bureau came into the office one day and told the two 
researchers who were working on the study to halt.

"They said that the project was dead, and to delete computer 
records," he told TelevisionWeek. He said the request was made even 
though the researchers had spent considerable time going through 
tapes of TV station news broadcasts to analyze their content.

Mr. Candeub's suggestion that the project has been killed and "every 
last piece" of the study destroyed was first reported today by the 
Associated Press.

Sen. Boxer yesterday asked Mr. Martin to investigate what happened to 
the study and whether it was "shelved because the outcome was not to 
the liking of some of the commissioners and/or any outside powerful interests."

"I am very concerned that this report would never have seen the light 
of day had someone not brought it to my attention," she wrote. "It is 
entirely inappropriate for the FCC to suppress facts in order to 
obtain the outcome it wishes."

An aide said today the senator will seek an independent probe by the 
FCC's Office of Inspector General if she isn't satisfied with Mr. 
Martin's answer.

Mr. Martin tonight released a letter saying that neither he nor other 
current FCC commissioners were aware of the report before seeing it 
at the hearing.

"I am attempting to determine why [it was never released] but the 
senior management of the Media Bureau and the chairman of the 
commission at the time [Mr. Powell] are no longer at the commission."

He also said he has now incorporated the report into the current FCC 
examining of "localism."

Consumer groups today asked an Inspector General probe begin immediately.

Consumers Union, Consumer Federation of America, Free Press and Media 
Access Project, in a letter to Mr. Martin, asked for the probe to 
"determine the circumstances under which the public was denied access 
to this important, taxpayer-funded research, the parties involved and 
the processes that may allowed any record of its existence to be destroyed."