The Minority Media and Telecommunications Council will “shortly”...

The Minority Media and Telecommunications Council will “shortly” release additional information about the respondents to its cross-ownership study to answer criticisms by public interest group Free Press, said MMTC President David Honig in an email to us Thursday. He responded to a Free Press FCC filing (CD June 28 p15) attacking the study for not adequately describing its sample or providing quantitative evidence on cross-ownership. Free Press is “profoundly misreading” the study, Honig told us. “As we explained when we filed the study with the Commission, the study is not intended to be dispositive. Rather, it is a piece of evidence to be weighed together with other evidence.” The small number of cross-ownership markets makes a fully empirical study “impossible,” Honig said. He disputed Free Press’s claim that the MMTC study doesn’t satisfy the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals’ Prometheus II ruling that the commission must base ownership rule changes on hard data. “What courts do expect is that agencies rest their judgments on the best evidence available, even if the evidence is unavoidably imperfect,” said Honig. He didn’t give a date for the release of the additional information on the subjects of the study, and said the data would be “consistent with the confidentiality we promised our respondents."