Critical Infomation Needs

Following a firestorm of media attention regarding the FCC’s efforts to examine newsroom decision making as part of a Critical Information Needs Study, the FCC  announced a week ago that it would modify the study to eliminate the questions directed at newsroom decisions. But that didn’t calm the furor. Late Friday, the FCC sought to put an end to this certainly unwelcome attention. It released a terse statement, the entirety of which is: “The FCC will not move forward with the Critical Information Needs study. The commission will reassess the best way to fulfil [sic] its obligation to Congress to identify barriers to entry into the communications marketplace faced by entrepreneurs and other small businesses.”