It’s Official … The Clock Is Ticking
More than a month after announcing its plans to revisit the nation’s media ownership rules, the FCC finally made it official last night.
The agency opened a new docket for 60 days of public comment, followed by a 60-day reply period. That means the first round of comments is due Sept. 22, and the second round will end on Nov. 21, a few weeks after the midterm elections. We’ve made it easy to file your comments here.
In the “Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking,” the FCC calls for “comment on how we should address the issues remanded by the court” in the 2004 decision in Prometheus v. FCC – which tossed out the agency’s last attempt to gut media ownership rules and hand over more control to giant media corporations.
The issues at stake are the local ownership caps and the longstanding ban on newspaper-broadcast cross-ownership. But the commission also specifically asks for feedback on “proposals to foster minority ownership.”
FCC Chairman Kevin Martin has pledged to actually include the public in the rulemaking process this time – though the official documents are woefully short on details about when or where his promised “half a dozen” public hearings might take place.
While the FCC is dragging its feet, nearly 30,000 people already filed comments opposing weaker rules after Martin announced his plans in June. (Rest assured that all of those filings will be counted on the record.) And we’ll soon announce a schedule of public hearings being put together across the country by members of the StopBigMedia.com Coalition.
If you haven’t yet made your voice heard, now is the time.
