Free Press and 17 other groups urged the Senate Appropriations...
Free Press and 17 other groups urged the Senate Appropriations Committee to avoid including in an appropriations bill language that a House panel adopted last week. The House panel language would restrict the FCC’s ability to implement a new rule…
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that would put some TV stations’ political file contents online (CD June 7 p2). “The laws that have been on the books for decades make clear that Congress intended the information in the political file -- which includes requests for and purchases of political ads -- to be made publicly available,” groups that also included Common Cause, Public Citizen and the Sunlight Foundation wrote (http://xrl.us/bnbot6). “Thus, the transition to an online public file will ensure that members of the public can enjoy fuller and more meaningful access to the broadcast records they already have a right to view,” it said. “That some broadcasters would in essence attempt to make it as difficult as possible for the public to access these records is inconsistent with their duties as licensees and trustees of the public airwaves.” Meanwhile, attorneys for and executives from a group of TV station owners who asked the FCC to reconsider the requirement met with an aide to FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski and with Media Bureau Chief Bill Lake Monday to push for their alternative proposal, an ex parte notice shows (http://xrl.us/bnbow3). They told the officials that it appeared “arbitrary and capricious for the FCC to assume that all information required to be placed in the stations’ hard-copy, local files in the past should be required to be posted on the FCC’s website in the future,” the notice said. “In fact the Commission exempted correspondence from the public form the website requirement because it was concerned about the risks and consequences of such online disclosure."