CIN Research Design Raises Questions From All Three Commenters

The proposed design of research into the critical information needs (CIN) raised concerns among all three commenters on the CIN work on new and old media alike. A dozen nonprofits including the umbrella organization Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, NAB and five communications academics from Howard University raised different issues with the research design. Comments on a May public notice from the FCC Office of Communications Business Opportunities were posted Tuesday and Wednesday in docket 12-30 (http://bit.ly/14IvBuD). The possible barriers-to-entry studies OCBO asked about, which would cost about $1 million (CD May 29 p2), could be used for making decisions about media ownership rules and some said would be required under the Adarand Supreme Court precedent if the commission ever targets relief to women, minority and/or other groups.

NAB worried about government encroachment by queries about newsgathering methods and other questions to be asked of those regulated by the FCC (http://bit.ly/13b1cyO). “The Research Design authors may not fully appreciate that the Commission faces certain constraints” and isn’t “primarily a research institution,” said NAB. “Rather, it directly regulates some of the speakers to be analyzed in the CIN Study. That raises some constitutional concerns.” Social Solutions International came up with the research design as part of an FCC contract, according to OCBO (http://bit.ly/154HWGO) and documents previously released to Warren Communications News. An SSI executive had no comment.

The FCC should be “modest” about government’s ability to fix any communication problems the research design authors may hope to find by examining “local ‘media ecologies,'” said NAB. “Effective human communication, whether involving critical information or not, is a considerably more layered activity than the simple consumption of a broadcast, a news article, or a webpage.” There’s no “compelling need” for a qualitative analysis of media providers where government-sponsored researchers would question journalists in six markets about “their news judgements and editorial decision-making,” said the association. Content analysis and a consumer survey would be better, it said. The design could have the agency “tread into the constitutionally sensitive area of newsgathering and reporting when the agency itself has taken pains for decades to avoid doing so,” said NAB.

The Leadership Conference and its allies don’t think a separate Minority Media and Telecommunications Council study on the impact of broadcast/newspaper cross ownership on minority owned stations corrects “any deficiency in the record” of the ownership proceeding, they said (http://bit.ly/18DmD4u). Other groups made similar comments on the MMTC study earlier this week (CD July 24 p8). For the CIN research, the FCC should consult with agencies including the Justice and Transportation departments with “significant expertise in robust, constitutionally-sensitive data collection,” said the conference, members (http://bit.ly/16a70eL) including the Communications Workers of America and National Hispanic Media Coalition and allies like NAACP. “This research framework could be useful not only to the FCC, but also to other agencies and researchers who recognize the importance of understanding critical information needs.”

Expanding the sampling of radio stations beyond those originating news is “critical” given the format of most urban radio stations and lack of diversity in news radio, said 11 groups and the conference. They advised taking “particular care” with how to categorize some websites “to discern between posts covering new content versus re-posted content (such as, for example, a tweet reposting a broadcaster’s own news story). If much of the content sampled is not original, it may result in an overrepresentation of critical information.” It’s “essential” that the studies get “adequate funds” and are ready in time for the 2014 quadrennial review, because without it the changes proposed in ongoing review due in 2010 under the Telecom Act “cannot move ahead,” said the groups.

The CIN needs to take an “ethnographic approach,” said the five affiliated with Howard University and led by Professor Carolyn Byerly, who has sought to get more information about stations online and in this filing sought to get radio stations’ paper public files on the Internet. The research should include involvement by “community leaders and organizations in African American, Latino/Hispanic, Asian and varied recent immigrant groups,” said the academics. “We emphasize the importance of qualitatively working through the structures of the communities in question, rather than imposing a sterile, abstract random sample method onto communities with diverse racial and ethnic populations."

It’s “inevitable” that a CIN study might include media unregulated by the commission as well as traditional media, Byerly said when we asked about others’ concerns about the agency overstepping. “People get their information from many places now” including online media, she added, citing social media and smartphones. Such a “variety of technologies ... has to be studied,” said the professor of communications, whose group includes other communications academics, some of whom also have law degrees. The comments included the request for radio stations to post their public files online not because it’s directly related to the CIN studies per se, but “to be strategic,” she said. “Citizens have fewer and fewer ways to be actively involved” in monitoring radio and TV stations’ operations, said Byerly: That makes it harder to file petitions to deny FCC license renewals.