J-School Deans Want FCC To Require More Local Reporting By Broadcasters

By: E&P Staff In a rare request from journalists for more government regulation of their business, the deans of eight major journalism schools are asking the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to require television and radio stations to provide local news reporting.

Writing in a New York Times op-ed piece published Saturday, the deans argue that the FCC's steady movement towards deregulating broadcasting "seems to have had the effect of reducing the resources available for original broadcast reporting, especially about public affairs."

"The F.C.C. ought to treat a broadcast licensee's commitment of resources to original local reporting on public affairs as a key factor in its decisions about regulatory issues," the deans said. "Companies should be required to make a persuasive case that they will increase their commitment to local reporting if they get what they want - whether they aspire to own broadcast properties and newspapers in the same market; or, thanks to the onset of digital television, to turn every channel they control into several channels; or to expand their national market share in broadcasting or cable television."

The authors of the op-ed piece are Roderick P. Hart, dean of the University of Texas journalism school; Alex S. Jones, director of Harvard's Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy; Thomas Kunkel, dean of the University of Maryland journalism school; Nicholas Lemann, dean of the Columbia Journalism School; John Levine, dean of the Northwestern journalism school; Dean Mills, dean of the University of Missouri journalism school; David M. Rubin, dean of the Syracuse school of public communications; and Ernest Wilson, dean of the University of Southern California school of communication.

The FCC's recent vote to permit daily newspapers in the nation's 20 biggest markets to own one TV station or one radio station does not address the problem of disappearing broadcast news, the deans say.

"But local television and radio stations should be doing their own news gathering, rather than merely serving as support systems for news gathering by newspapers," they wrote. "Besides, if (FCC Chairman Kevin) Martin were really so passionate about news gathering, he wouldn't have restricted the FCC's action to media properties in big cities. Don't small-town news organizations need help, too?"

"As deans of journalism schools, we are devoting our working lives to the proposition that honest, aggressive, well-trained reporters and editors will be a powerful force for good in society," the deans wrote. "In broadcasting -- still a heavily regulated industry and one in which some of the best news for journalism in recent decades has come through public-policy interventions like the creation of public radio and public television -- we do not believe that the market can be absolutely trusted to provide the local news gathering that the American system needs to function at its best."