Wheeler Defends FCC TV News Study

FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler today defended an agency-backed planned investigation of the news judgments of broadcasters and others, telling federal lawmakers that the information is needed to help the agency fulfill its obligation to help women, minorities, “small business and other identified groups” get into the media business.

“In order to make that kind of a judgment [about lowering entry barriers] you have to have facts,” said Wheeler, during a hearing before the House Communications and Technology Subcommittee. “In order to have facts, you do studies.”

During the hearing, Rep. Greg Walden (R-Ore.), the subcommittee’s chairman, said the planned study — which is targeting media outlets in Columbia, S.C., at least in its initial phase — is asking news media personnel for a variety of information about their news judgments, demographics and  how they decide what stories to cover.

“As somebody with a journalism degree, I do get a little chill up my spine thinking about the government asking how these decisions are made,” Walden said during the hearing. “Are these the kinds of questions a government entity should be asking of the news media? These seem like really internal journalistic issues.”

Said Wheeler, testifying in his first congressional oversight hearing as the FCC’s chairman: “This is not an effort to influence the media.”

House Republicans—led by House Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Fred Upton (R-Mich.)—asked Wheeler in a letter Tuesday to pull the plug on the study, which the lawmakers allege violates the First Amendment.

“It is wrong, it is unconstitutional, and we urge you to put a stop to his most recent attempt to engage the FCC as the ‘news police,’ ” the letter said.

The study, which is to be conducted by Social Solutions International Inc., a Silver Spring, Md.-based consulting firm. SSI has been awarded an FCC contract for $336,000 to do the Columbia, S.C., field study, an FCC source told TVNewsCheck. The FCC source also said SSI had “started the work.”

The FCC previously awarded SSI $130,000 for developing a research design for the “critical information needs” study that was released in April 2013 and set the stage for the field study.

In its research design, SSI proposed to conduct a “qualitative analysis of local media services providing for CINs (critical information needs) via in-depth interviewing, with particular emphasis on ownership characteristics, employment data, demographics of decision makers and barriers to entry.”

In an earlier phase of the FCC inquiry, the agency gave the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communications and Journalism $70,000 in April 2012 to review the research literature on “critical information needs of the American public and the barriers to participation in the communications industry that might limit the extent to which critical needs are met.”

The Annenberg study identified a series of critical informatin needs, including news about emergencies, educational opportunities and politics.

Susanna Nemes, SSI’s president and CEO, declined comment, referring inquiries to the FCC.

The FCC had no comment on the request of the GOP lawmakers, a spokesman said. “We are reviewing the letter,” he said.

SSI’s website (see here, www.socialsolutions.biz) identifies the firm as a “research and evaluation firm dedicated to the creation of positive change for underserved populations.”

The website says the firm is “Hispanic and woman owned.” Among the firm’s clients, according to the website, is the US Air Force for a “mental health distance learning support contract.”

Despite the concerns of the GOP lawmakers about the news probe, the study does have the support of at least some in the public interest community.

“This is very rigorous academic research,” said Cheryl Leanza, policy adviser to the watchdog United Church of Christ Office of Communication.

“Who wouldn’t want to understand how people are getting their information needs met?” Leanza said. “Why wouldn’t we want to know that?”

“The media ecology studies are about collecting the best data so the commission can make the best policies possible, as required by statute and the courts,” said former FCC Commissioner Michael Copps, who is now special adviser to the Media and Democracy Reform Initiative at the watchdog group Common Cause. “The study’s opponents are deploying a misinformation campaign to drive a nail into the dying body of the public interest,” Copps added, in a statement. “The methods are sound. There should be no controversy whatsoever. The time for these long-delayed studies has come.”