Senator Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) used FCC Chairman Kevin Martin's re-nomination hearing this morning to accuse the agency of suppressing a two-year-old agency study that she said finds that locally-owned TV stations produce more local news.

"I think there's work that has been done and it has been stifled," Boxer told Martin during questioning before the Senate Commerce Committee. "I don't know who stifled it."

Boxer said that she had obtained (and would submit into the hearing record) a "draft report" by FCC staff dated June 17, 2004 ­"Do Local Owner Do More Localism? Some Evidence from Local Broadcast News."

According to the study, Boxer said, locally owned stations produced five-and-a-half minutes more local news for each half-hour newscast, including more than three minutes of "on-location news."

She then quoted a portion of the study: "In the course of a year, this means locally-owned stations produce 33 more hours of regional news­news that is directly relevant and important to viewers."

"Now this is not a matter or national security, for God's sake," Boxer said. "This is important information about issues that are key to the people…. So, I don't understand who deep-sixed this thing. I'm going to get to the bottom of it and find out if any commissioners saw this."

Martin said that he had never seen the study, noting that he was not chairman at the time the study was dated.

Martin promised Boxer that he would read the study and make sure that it is incorporated into a long overdue localism study that Martin predecessor, Michael Powell, had initiated.

Boxer and other Democrats on the Commerce Committee oppose Martin's initiative to ease local ownership rules to permit greater media concentration.