Leaders from the civil rights community are calling on Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin Martin to postpone tomorrow's scheduled FCC vote to lift the longstanding ban on newspaper-broadcast cross-ownership until the issue of the lack of minority ownership is addressed.
The signatories to the joint letter sent today to Chairman Martin include the National Hispanic Media Coalition, League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), Rainbow PUSH Coalition, Black Leadership Forum and the National Association of Hispanic Journalists.
In the letter, the groups write: "We are troubled that you would push for a Dec. 18 vote when you acknowledged during the Dec. 13 Senate Commerce Committee oversight hearing that consolidation has harmed minority ownership. Yet your very plan would place minority ownership in greater jeopardy. Given the mounting evidence and criticism of the commission's failure to address and examine the crisis in minority ownership, you are now attempting to adopt regulations tomorrow purportedly to increase the number of minority owners without adequate data and any thorough study on the issue. For example, you have failed to put out a proposal that defines a socially and economically disadvantaged business (SDB). We are also extremely concerned that the definition of a SDB will be too broad, further endangering minority ownership."
The letter follows news that Chairman Martin continues to push for a vote to relax media ownership rules on Dec. 18 without regard to Congress' wishes. The FCC is reviewing longstanding regulations that prohibit a company from owning both a newspaper and a television or radio station in the same market.
The full text of the letter is included below:
December 17, 2007
The Honorable Kevin J. Martin
Chairman
Federal Communications Commission
445 12th Street, SW
Washington, DC 20554
Dear Chairman Martin,
We are writing to urge you to postpone your vote scheduled for tomorrow to lift the newspaper-broadcast cross-ownership rules until you first address the issue of minority ownership. We find it troubling that the FCC would relax this rule when recent research has shown that lifting the ban would place the future of minority ownership in greater jeopardy. Furthermore, an interim Government Accountability Office (GAO) report, released today by Congressman Ed Markey (D-Mass.), confirms that the FCC has no reliable data on minority and female ownership.
Last month, more than 20 civil rights organizations called on the commission to first address the crisis in minority ownership before considering new rules. We expressed our concerns that the commission has not conducted an accurate census on the state of minority ownership and has not studied the impact of consolidation on minority owners. Since we sent you our letter, the nonprofit group Free Press released a report that found that people of color own just 3 percent of all full-power TV stations and that the number of minority-owned stations declined 8.5 percent this past year.
In addition, the GAO letter released this morning on its pending media ownership study further confirms our concerns about the state of minority ownership. The letter states: "While there are no reliable government data on ownership by women and minorities, ownership of broadcast stations by these groups appears limited." The letter also points out that the FCC's data collection process, through Form 323, suffers from three weaknesses, including: "(1) exemptions from filing for certain types of broadcast stations, such as noncommercial stations; (2) inadequate data quality procedures; and (3) problems with data storage and retrieval."
This finding follows a report, authored by the Congressional Research Service (CRS) and released Dec. 5, that outlined the failure of the commission to conduct an accurate count of minority-owned stations. The report stated flatly, "databases on minority and female ownership of broadcast and telecommunications properties are incomplete and inaccurate, and statistical analysis based on those data would not be reliable."
We are troubled that you would push for a Dec. 18 vote when you acknowledged during the Dec. 13 Senate Commerce Committee oversight hearing that consolidation has harmed minority ownership. Yet your very plan would place minority ownership in greater jeopardy. Given the mounting evidence and criticism of the commission's failure to address and examine the crisis in minority ownership, you are now attempting to adopt regulations tomorrow purportedly to increase the number of minority owners without adequate data and any thorough study on the issue. For example, you have failed to put out a proposal that defines a socially and economically disadvantaged business (SDB). We are also extremely concerned that the definition of a SDB will be too broad, further endangering minority ownership.
We call on the FCC to postpone voting on ownership rules until the crisis in minority ownership is first addressed, through the creation of a task force and a Further Notice of Proposed Rule Making. The issue of minority and female broadcast ownership is too important to be continuously ignored, yet if you proceed with your package of votes tomorrow, you will have once again demonstrated the commission's willful disregard of this issue.
Sincerely,
Rev. Jesse L. Jackson Sr. Founder and President, Rainbow PUSH Coalition
Alex Nogales, President and CEO, National Hispanic Media Coalition
Brent Wilkes, Executive Director, League of United Latin American Citizens
Ivan Roman, Executive Director, National Association of Hispanic Journalists
Gary Flowers, Executive Director and CEO, Black Leadership Forum
cc:
FCC Commissioner Michael J. Copps
FCC Commissioner Jonathan S. Adelstein
FCC Commissioner Deborah Taylor Tate
FCC Commissioner Robert M. McDowell