Broadcasters Support Eliminating Mid-Term EEO Filing; Diversity Groups Want More
No commenters filed in opposition to FCC media deregulation proposals in docket 18-23 to do away with the separate filing requirement for mid-term equal employment opportunity reports. Broadcasters like Nexstar cheered the FCC proposal on, but 33 diversity groups said the agency should tackle a lot more. Groups including Rainbow PUSH Coalition and the Multicultural Media, Telecom and Internet Council have urged the agency to complete a proceeding on overhauling EEO enforcement that dates back to 1998, the joint filing said. “At last the agency has reawakened the EEO docket from 14 years of somnolence.”
Sign up for a free preview to unlock the rest of this article
Timely, relevant coverage of court proceedings and agency rulings involving tariffs, classification, valuation, origin and antidumping and countervailing duties. Each day, Trade Law Daily subscribers receive a daily headline email, in-depth PDF edition and access to all relevant documents via our trade law source document library and website.
The draft mid-term EEO reports NPRM touched briefly on enforcement but mostly sought comment on eliminating a rule requiring broadcasters to file a mid-term report with the FCC in addition to their annual EEO report requirement. The item didn’t propose getting rid of mid-term reviews, just the separate filing currently associated with it. Some questions about EEO enforcement were added to the NPRM -- shortly before the February meeting where it was unanimously approved -- at the request of now-outgoing Commissioner Mignon Clyburn, according to comments at the time from her and Commissioner Mike O’Rielly (see 1802220045). Clyburn said enforcement questions were raised by Common Cause, one of the signers of the joint filing.
Meredith, NAB and Nexstar were united in support of eliminating the mid-term EEO reports and accompanying Form 397, since the same information is in stations’ online public file. “The establishment of the online public file has completely eradicated the need for the physical submission of the Form 397,” Nexstar said. Meredith “commends the Commission for recognizing the futility of the current Form 397 process,” the broadcaster said. The only piece of information in the current system that isn’t available in the online public file is whether a station “has the requisite number of employees to be subject” to the mid-term EEO filing requirement, NAB said. To fill that gap, stations could be required to “indicate whether they are subject to the mid-term review on their annual EEO public file reports,” the association said.
The diversity commenters focused on a sentence in the NPRM seeking comment on “the FCC’s track record on EEO enforcement and how the agency can make improvements.” The agency should first identify and then sanction entities that are relying on word of mouth and “cronyism” rather than “local community job boards, employment agencies or community groups” to find new employees, the joint filing said. Taking the steps in that order would make enforcement tougher to challenge on constitutional grounds, it said.
Along with more active enforcement, the diversity groups want the regulator to reform its EEO audit program, relocate EEO staff to the enforcement bureau and publish summary EEO statistics. “July 3, 2018 -- the 50th anniversary of the broadcast nondiscrimination rule -- the Commission [should] issue a Report and Order that proscribes the continued predominant use of the inherently discriminatory use of word-of-mouth recruitment from a homogeneous workplace," the filing said.