Powell: Secret Report? Never Heard of It.
Posted September 15th, 2006 by Jen Howard
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This just in from AP: Former Federal Communications Commission Chairman Michael Powell says he never saw a study that suggested greater concentration of media ownership would hurt local TV news coverage.
Powell, now a consultant, said through his assistant Judy Mann that “he never saw the report, he never heard of the report until yesterday and he certainly never ordered anything destroyed or stopped.”
But the ex-FCC lawyer who exposed the scandal is sticking to his story. Adam Candeub, now a law professor at Michigan State, tells AP that senior managers ordered that “every last piece” of the report be destroyed. “The whole project was just stopped — end of discussion,” he said.
Barbara Boxer has demanded answers from Chairman Kevin Martin (pictured above) about the buried 2004 FCC study on local news. The report was given to her by an anonymous whistle-blower, who worked at the FCC during the time of the study.
She grilled Martin about it at a Senate hearing on Tuesday. Now we’ve got the tape.
In a letter responding to Senator Boxer, Martin admitted that the buried study is relevant to the localism and media ownership proceedings.
On Thursday Free Press, Consumers Union, Media Access Project and the Consumer Federation of America sent a formal letter to the FCC urging Martin to: “immediately seek an independent investigation, through the Office of the Inspector General, to determine the circumstances under which the public was denied access to this important, taxpayer-funded research.”
Members of the StopBigMedia.com Coalition are outraged that the FCC destroyed evidence of the damage done by media giants — and they want answers. Read their reactions:
Josh Silver, Free Press:
“The FCC can no longer pretend Big Media does a better job of serving local communities. As millions of have told the FCC time and again, they want more local news and a diversity of voices on the public airwaves. Maybe now they’ll finally start listening.”
Jonathan Rintels, Center for Creative Voices:
“This is a body blow to the FCC and its renewed drive, under Martin, to try again to loosen those crucial ownership limits that promote local news coverage.”
Harold Feld, Media Access Project:
“The public deserves to know the truth about whether Martin’s predecessor tried to destroy valuable evidence about the most critical question facing the FCC then or now.”
Pete Tridish, Prometheus Radio Project:
“This study alerts us to the possibility that further ownership consolidation could lead to the substitution of non-local news for local content. A remote, corporate owned media can undermine our participation in a democracy.”
Beth McConnell, PennPIRG Education Fund:
“First, the FCC ignored public support for local media. Then, the agency ignored its own research showing local media ownership is in the public interest. Now, the FCC has the opportunity to change course and reject the weakening of media ownership limits.”
[...] The whistleblower who made this report public, a former FCC lawyer, claims that “senior managers at the agency ordered that ‘every last piece’ of the report be destroyed. ‘The whole project was just stopped, end of discussion.” Not sure who those “senior managers” are. Some sites are claiming that the order to destroy was given by former FCC head Michael Powell (son of Colin Powell). This would make sense, as he created the localism task force, but I haven’t seen any evidence yet that Powell gave the kill command (Powell even hearing about the report). Powell has stepped down, and is being replaced by another pro-”free media market” commissioner, Kevin Martin. At his renomination hearings, Senator Barbara Boxer smacked him around a bit with news about this report, if you feel like watching the video. Martin has solemnly promised to find out what happened regarding the report, and says “it is unclear why this report was never released to the public.” Actually, it’s really, really clear. [...]
September 15th, 2006 at 2:30 pm