Lack of FCC Authority No Reason to Tighten Media Review, Waldman Says

The FCC Future of Media report shouldn’t be narrowed because of First Amendment restrictions or the commission’s lack of jurisdiction over subjects involved, the head of the effort said. Steve Waldman told skeptical fellow members on a panel Friday organized by the Free State Foundation that he shares concern about free speech. “It’s enough of an issue that you'll be sensitive to it” in putting together the study, he said. Former Republican Commissioner Deborah Tate and ex-Media Bureau Chief Donna Gregg, who worked under Kevin Martin, expressed worries that the project is overstepping the FCC’s authority and may lead to regulation.

That won’t necessarily happen, Waldman said. “What we're working on right now is a report, not a rulemaking. Looking at the health of newspapers doesn’t suggest that the government will regulate newspapers, which it’s not allowed to do and should not be allowed to do.” Whether “the government should get involved in media is the wrong question,” because it already is in many ways from must-carry rules for cable carriage of TV stations to spectrum policies, Waldman said. The question is how the government should act, he said.

"It would probably be governmental malpractice if we did not assess the new media landscape,” Waldman said. “Such a review should consider not only adding new policies but also potentially removing policies that would be burdensome. … Talk about public policy in this field is not inherently the same as discussing subsidies.” There’s “light” coordination between the Future of Media project and the FTC’s work on media, he said. “They should complement each other.” It’s unlikely that the release of the Future of Media report will be “perfectly synchronized” with the FCC vote on the quadrennial media ownership review order, he said. If Waldman goes first, the report will be “in an advisory form,” he said. “We'll look at one part of the elephant, the part that relates to local news and information, which is something they always look at.”

"Somehow government tends to start with an innocuous report and it seems to creep into possible regulatory [action] and even more enforcement,” Tate said. The “public interest proponents, at least some of those I've read in the docket, assume that their objectives” are “what we should adopt,” she said. “There are so many dockets that are always open at so many of these 42 questions” raised by the report’s public notice, Tate added. Gregg said she worries that the project is on a “collision course” with the First Amendment. “I view the sheer breadth and scope of the inquiry with some concern,” since “in many respects it seems outside the FCC’s jurisdiction and in many respects outside its expertise,” she added. “My view of the history of the FCC is it tends not to do its best job when it’s operating outside its wheelhouse.”