FCC Solicits Input on Media’s Future
The FCC asked a series of questions about the future of the media and news industries, in a public notice released Thursday. The goal is to produce a report about the media’s future that will help the commission make policy in a variety of pending proceedings, such as media ownership, broadband, open Internet and kids’ media issues, the notice said. “With this crucial initiative, the FCC commits to fully understanding the fundamental changes underway in the media marketplace and examining what impact such changes may have for Commission policies, while vigorously protecting the First Amendment,” Chairman Julius Genachowski said in a news release. Commissioner Michael Copps praised the initiative, but Commissioner Meredith Baker seemed skeptical of federal government involvement in news.
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“Nothing the Commission is doing in any area rises to a higher level of importance than this,” Copps said of the notice. Examining the future of news and media should be an urgent priority, he said. “Enduring 5-10 years more of the present journalistic decline is not an option America can afford.” Free Press also praised the notice. “The government has a critical role to play ensuring that communities have a vibrant Fourth Estate to hold government and corporate leaders accountable,” said Executive Director Josh Silver. He blamed industry consolidation for cutbacks in news departments. “In examining newsgathering in the digital age, the government needs to consider the impact of its own media policies on serious newsgathering and reporting.”
With the media industry facing tough times, FCC Commissioner Meredith Baker said the government shouldn’t become a source of funding. “However well-intentioned and well-crafted, I vote ‘no’ on this public option. Direct government funding of journalism is the wrong answer,” she told a Media Institute lunch Thursday. “It is dangerous for industries to start looking to answers from Washington to resolve the fundamental challenges to their business. It inhibits self-reflection and is unnecessarily defeatist.”
Broadcasters and newspapers can address in some similar ways the problems facing both, Baker said in a Q-and-A session. “All industries are searching for how competition is going to work in this new Internet area. We don’t know what that new model is going to be. We need to make sure that the paths are open for all different experiments.” The government has a role in the debate over the future of media, Baker said in her speech.
Broadcasters’ public interest obligations were among the topics of the notice. It asked whether those obligations, including those on children’s programming, should be strengthened, relaxed or somehow rethought. It also asked whether those obligations should be expanded to other “media or technology companies.”
The notice asked far more questions about the Internet and mobile media than about commercial broadcasting. It asked about trends in online advertising, social media and the effectiveness of citizen journalism. It also asked how Internet search companies’ practices could hurt or help online news and whether minority-owned and minority-targeted media use broadband tools differently than other media.
The proceeding is exempt from the commission’s ex parte notice rules. While parties that discuss it with commission staff are encouraged to file notices of those meetings, they're not required to. “We considered all alternatives and we felt that the public interest would be served best by encouraging free communication between the commission and the public,” an FCC official said. “We're trying to make it as easy as possible for everyone to comment.”