Appeals Court Again Tells FCC to Get to Work on Broadcast Diversity and Localism
WASHINGTON — On Wednesday, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals in Philadelphia found that the Federal Communications Commission had “unreasonably delayed” action to promote broadcast diversity and to increase opportunities for ownership of local TV and radio stations by women and people of color.
The court was hearing arguments for the third time in the Prometheus Radio Project line of cases about the FCC’s long-stalled media ownership review. The judges ordered the agency to act promptly on its broadcast ownership diversity initiatives, deciding that the FCC must collect any additional data it needs to make final determinations about the state of the market and to propose remedies for the absence of diverse voices and viewpoints in it.
The court also struck down an FCC interpretation of its existing media ownership rules intended to crack down on abuse of Joint Sales Agreements. These types of contracts between broadcasters — along with similar so-called sharing arrangements — permit a single entity to operate and effectively control multiple stations within a given market in excess of local ownership limits. This monopolization occurs without any formal transfers of each controlled station to that single operator.
Free Press Policy Director Matt Wood made the following statement:
“It’s not often that we can say Free Press agrees with Commissioner Pai, but he’s right about a few things today. Certainly not about the merits of JSAs — the harms of which the public interest groups in today’s case and Free Press have documented for years. These agreements are all too often abused by local media monopolies. The resulting consolidation shuts down independent newsrooms, cuts down on journalism jobs and decreases local coverage and the number of viewpoints on the air.
“Commissioner Pai is also wrong in his foolish claim that the FCC is always acting outside the law these days. But in this instance the FCC has indeed been derelict in its duties to promote broadcast diversity, competition and localism in conjunction with the agency’s congressionally mandated quadrennial review. The result has been a decade or more of delay in the FCC’s mere comprehension of the problem — let alone its ability to take effective steps to combat it — as broadcast ownership levels for women and people of color languish at appallingly low levels. So there is a kernel of truth in Commissioner Pai’s statement that piecemeal attempts to solve this problem are bound to fail.
“The court’s procedural rejection of the JSA interpretation is distressing, to put it mildly, because it will allow further consolidation and homogenization of local news and programming. But while the FCC’s JSA interpretation was a net positive step, it was just a partial solution to much larger problems. The FCC needs to finish the comprehensive studies it has just started in this area, and then it needs to launch a comprehensive review of its ownership rules to meet the challenges diverse owners still face.”
