The entire right-wing mediasphere flexed its powerful muscles last week against its only regulator, the Federal Communications Commission.
It started when the new Republican FCC Commissioner, Ajit Pai, ignored traditional inter-agency channels and went straight to the Rupert Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal to accuse his colleagues of “meddling with the news.”
That was all it took.
Pai’s beef? That the FCC would be conducting a “Multi-Market Study of Critical Information Needs” (CIN) to question radio and TV reporters and editors about how they determine which stories to run and which not to run. The study would also ask ask about “perceived station bias” and “perceived responsiveness to underserved populations.”
As I reported at The BRAD BLOG way back in 2011, “The FCC is tasked with making sure the broadcast media — via the limited broadcast spectrum which is owned by we, the people — serves the public interest. Every four years, as required by the 1996 Telecommunications Act, the FCC must revisit the issue of public interest in media ownership.” Despite the right wing hyperventilation over the nefariousness of the CIN study, it’s simply part of the FCC’s statutory mandate, as explained here.
What’s most interesting, however, is that Pai enlisted the very same right wing Pied Pipers who have long taken control of and, indeed, dominate the very airwaves we ALL own, and which most of us agree need more diversity and public oversight — in hopes of intimidating the new Democratic FCC Chair Tom Wheeler into providing less diversity and public oversight.
That bit of upside-down policy jujitsu was, ironically enough, enabled by the tremendous power of broadcasting over our publicly-owned airwaves.
Following the siren call of Pai’s piping, both Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck dutifully took to those airwaves coast-to-coast to work their 30 million or so radio listeners into a frenzy to prevent the FCC from following the agency’s decades-long mandate for determining whether local broadcast news organizations are serving the “public interest” or whether they are merely producing news stories mandated by their corporate owners.
Pai’s ploy appears to have worked…
After a Republican inquiry [PDF] led by Rep. Fred Upton (R-MI), chair of the U.S. House Energy and Commerce Committee, Wheeler responded that “The Commission has no intention of regulating political or other speech of journalists or broadcasters.” He then announced the FCC, in light of the uproar, would revise its study entirely.
Wheeler’s agreement to back off came, no doubt, in response to the calls and emails from the “outraged” citizenry worked into the type of lather that only 30 million disinformed Talk Radio listeners can bring to bear. (In the past, similarly disinformed anti-government right-wingers have unleashed violence and death threats.)
But there’s a silver lining in this tale. Perhaps for the first time, Wheeler truly understands that the right-wing of this nation is dominating our nation’s radio airwaves, and that only he, as chief regulator, stands between the corporate cabal that commandeered public communications and the rest of us who deserve to have similar access to our own airwaves.
As I have been reporting for years, due to the 1996 Telecommunications Act, the FCC is powerless to change media ownership laws that allow one corporation to own as many radio stations nationwide as they can buy. Only Congress can change this corrosive law which, by virtue of monopolizing the national conversation, has polarized our nation.
But the FCC can and must enforce rules which, even though they are at the margins, are meant to protect the rest of us from the same kind of onslaught Wheeler has just experienced. The FCC must learn whether news offered over our public airwaves in a given community reflects the community’s needs or only the parent company’s corporate line. It must similarly prevent radio stations from using OUR airwaves to promote candidates of only ONE political party.
My non-profit project Media Action Center’s case requesting the FCC enforce comparable time rules will hit Tom Wheeler’s desk any day now. We are also asking that the FCC deny Right Wing Radio’s argument that they may exclusively support Republican Party candidates over our public airwaves because, as they are now claiming in hopes of skirting both the spirit and intent of the law, Right Wing Talk Radio is “bonafide news”. You can assist this effort to return Alice back from Wonderland by signing our petition to “Tell the FCC: Talk Radio is NOT Bonafide News!”
I’d love to get the word out about our case and our petition over our public airwaves. It would be nice to work the citizenry into a lather over the truth, for a change, rather than over pretend outrages fomented by corporatist charlatans. But, alas, non-Rightwingers no longer have access to the public airwaves of our nation.
For the first time, I suspect — or at least hope — that Tom Wheeler finally realizes why this is so important.
Sue Wilson is a media activist, director of Public Interest Pictures’ Broadcast Blues, and a 22 year veteran of broadcast journalism. Her numerous awards include Emmy, AP, RTNDA, and PRNDI for work at CBS, PBS, FOX, and NPR. She is the editor of the media criticism blog, Sue Wilson Reports and founder of the Media Action Center.
I hope that succeeds, Brad. It just takes one candle to light up a dark room.
….or set fire to the dark machinations of the aristocracy…with candlepower!!
I would be interested in learning the answer to this……from your article… That the FCC would be conducting a “Multi-Market Study of Critical Information Needs” (CIN) to question radio and TV reporters and editors about how they determine which stories to run and which not to run.///////////////
yesterday the guardian reported the nsa has helped their british counter parts spy on private video chats and captured naked pics of Americans which were then run thru some nsa program….creepy huh?
and yet only chris hayes picked up the story and did a very short comment on it
my question is, does a memo go out to ignore something that damaging to the government or do all reporters just “know” the msm rules?
thanks for a good article sue
Karen, you are asking the right questions. Let me try to answer this in a followup piece in BradBlog, ok?
What a debacle. The FCC mea culpa is here:
—-
February 21, 2014
SETTING THE RECORD STRAIGHT ABOUT THE DRAFT STUDY
Washington, D.C.
– FCC Spokesperson Shannon Gilson issued the following statement today:
“By law, the FCC must report to Congress every three years on the barriers that may prevent entrepreneurs and small business from competing in the media marketplace, and pursue policies to
eliminate those barriers. To fulfill that obligation in a meaningful way, the FCC’s Office of Communications Business Opportunities consulted with academic researchers in 2012 and selected a
contractor to design a study which would inform the FCC’s report to Congress.
Last summer, the proposed study was put out for public comment and one pilot to test the study design in a single marketplace – Columbia, S.C. – was planned.
“However, in the course of FCC review and public comment, concerns were raised that some of the questions may not have been appropriate. Chairman Wheeler agreed that survey questions in the study directed toward media outlet managers, news directors, and reporters overstepped the bounds of what is required. Last week, Chairman Wheeler informed lawmakers that that Commission has no intention of regulating political or other speech of journalists or broadcasters and would be modifying the draft study.
Yesterday, the Chairman directed that those questions be removed entirely.
“To be clear, media owners and journalists will no longer be asked to participate in the Columbia, S.C. pilot study. The pilot will not be undertaken until a new study design is final. Any subsequent market studies conducted by the FCC, if determined necessary, will not seek participation from or include questions for media owners, news directors or reporters.
“Any suggestion that the FCC intends to regulate the speech of news media or plans to put monitors in America’s newsrooms is false. The FCC looks forward to fulfilling its obligation to Congress to report on barriers to entry into the communications marketplace, and is currently revising its proposed study to achieve that goal.”
To read Chairman Wheeler’s response to the CIN study: http://fcc.us/1p2fSOS
— FCC —
NEWSFLASH: Consolidation has created the barriers to new entrants in the industry. Are they so daft that they don’t realize all the mega-mergers that Congress actively lobbies for is why the playing field is not level?
These commissioners can’t even see the most basic causes for the difficulty of entrepreneurs and small business? SHEESH.
Next, what does editorial decision making over what stories to cover have to do with that?
To me, this smells like a huge, wasteful, bureaucratic bridge to nowhere, set up in 2012, costing millions to be sure, and intentionally designed to be so wrong-headed that it was sure to be rescinded. Thus, the FCC looks like they are trying to do something for the people, actually serve the industry, and leave consumers with absolutely no recourse when local programming becomes pure propaganda coordinating with specific campaigns.
The FCC should flex it’s muscle and explain the crucial difference to the industry and public that their “meddling” in newsrooms need not exert any particular influence of it’s own, rather serve to provide the public tools to call out and curtail abuses.
In the case of on-air electioneering, broadcast bias, conflicts-of-interest, blurring of paid programming and show content, and the hijacking of the public interest to benefit corporate ownership, the airwaves are in horrible shape.
To say the government has no place in these debates is ironic, because it is precisely the corporate control of the government, including the FCC, that is interfering with the regulation and enforcement of broadcast laws. The FCC simply wipes away any complaints, favoring industry in every single case, abdicating it’s responsibilities.
It’s patently obvious recent history of revolving door appointments demonstrates this perfectly, with FCC commissioners parachuting right into plum jobs in the same corporations they (failed to) regulate.