FCC Content Survey Is MIA

More than six weeks after the Federal Communications Commission announced a broad probe of political speech that raised serious First Amendment concerns, the city where the program was scheduled to begin has yet to hear from the Feds, according to The Daily Caller.

On November 1, the FCC announced that it would begin a pilot of its “Critical Information Needs” (CIN) survey in the Columbia, South Carolina media market.

The CIN survey — which would include invasive questioning about how stories get selected, whether management ever spikes pieces, and other areas that the government has traditionally left to the judgment of the private sector — has generated strong opposition.

The survey is ostensibly aimed at assessing barriers to entry in multiple “media ecologies” around the country, with a “special emphasis on vulnerable/disadvantaged populations,” according to a methodology of the study [pdf] published by Silver Spring, Maryland-based Social Solutions International, which is conducting the probe.

Media observers and House Republicans have pushed back against the FCC’s plan to demand a remarkably wide range of information on demographics, point of view, news topic selection, management style and other factors in news organizations both in and out of the FCC’s traditional purview. The airwaves regulator would subject news producers in all media — including print and online media not subject to FCC regulation — to interrogation about their work and content.

Read More Now