Why Would the Federal Communications Commission Ask Newsrooms About Their Story Selection Process?

For the last 10 days, FCC-watchers have been abuzz about the
commission’s upcoming attempt to “identify and understand the
critical information needs of the American public.” Anxieties about
the study have been afoot
for a while, but the recent furor began on February 10, when
Ajit Pai, a Republican commissioner at the agency, published an

op-ed attacking the idea in The Wall Street Journal.
Warning that the effort was the “first step down” the “dangerous
path” of “newsroom policing,” Pai made his case against the
study:

With its “Multi-Market Study of
Critical Information Needs,” or CIN, the agency plans to send
researchers to grill reporters, editors and station owners about
how they decide which stories to run. A field test in Columbia,
S.C., is scheduled to begin this spring.

The purpose of the CIN, according to the FCC, is to ferret out
information from television and radio broadcasters about “the
process by which stories are selected” and how often stations cover
“critical information needs,” along with “perceived station bias”
and “perceived responsiveness to underserved populations.”

How does the FCC plan to dig up all that information? First, the
agency selected eight categories of “critical information” such as
the “environment” and “economic opportunities,” that it believes
local newscasters should cover. It plans to ask station managers,
news directors, journalists, television anchors and on-air
reporters to tell the government about their “news philosophy” and
how the station ensures that the community gets critical
information.

The FCC also wants to wade into office politics. One question for
reporters is: “Have you ever suggested coverage of what you
consider a story with critical information for your customers that
was rejected by management?” Follow-up questions ask for specifics
about how editorial discretion is exercised, as well as the
reasoning behind the decisions.

Pai’s piece doesn’t mention it, but the commission also plans to
look at newspaper and Internet content, areas that are outside the
FCC’s regulatory dominion.

The agency quickly started dropping hints that it would be
changing course. On February 12, Adweek
reported that the CIN “may now be on hold,” adding: “At the
very least, the controversial sections of the study will be
revisited under new chairman Tom Wheeler and incorporated into a
new draft.” This evidently was too vague to be reassuring, as
worries about the plan have only
intensified since then.

The most bizarre thing about all this may be the disconnect
between the study’s content and the reason the FCC says it’s doing
it. The commission is supposed to report
to Congress on “regulations prescribed to eliminate market
entry barriers for entrepreneurs and other small businesses” and
“proposals to eliminate statutory barriers to market entry by those
entities.” Somehow that requirement led to the CIN. Now, if the
study shows that existing stations are ignoring important news, I
suppose I can see how that would help make the case for
allowing more stations on the air. But it’s hard to see how a probe
of the media’s story selection practices is going to identify any
actual barriers to creating those new stations. If you read the
commission’s research plan—I’ve embedded a copy at the end of this
post—you’ll find some pro forma references to finding “potential
barriers to entry” but not much in the way of explaining how the
questions Pai cited are going to do that.

The good news is that I don’t see overt signs of a different
regulatory agenda in the plan’s pages. The thing is written in the
tone of someone who wants to understand what stories are being
covered and where people turn for news, not someone with a preset
remedy for the problems she might uncover. If this were a proposal
at a department of sociology instead of a federal agency, it would
be unobjectionable, even welcome.

But because it’s a federal agency—worse yet, an agency that
decides whether the stations it’s studying will have their
broadcast licenses renewed—we have a case here of regulators
probing people’s speech and then being in a position to use its
findings against them. What’s most worrisome about this
research plan may be the way its authors never pause to consider
whether it’s appropriate for the FCC to be asking about such things
in the first place. (The closest it comes is when it notes that
some of its questions might be seen as “sensitive.” But it treats
that as a barrier to getting sources to open up, not a reason to
reconsider the project.) Nor is there any awareness of the idea
that the government shouldn’t be in the role of deciding what news
is important. (Presumably we all agree that we need to know about,
say, upcoming weather emergencies. But when you start asking
reporters about the stories their editors spiked, you’re bound to
enter dicier territory.) Evidently, the Federal Communications
Commission is so accustomed to seeing itself in the information
management business that it takes these things for granted.

But then, why shouldn’t it? It’s been regulating speech for
decades now. Start worrying about this stuff, and you might
start asking whether the First Amendment, properly understood,
actually allows the FCC to issue licenses based on what people say
or don’t say on the air. And that isn’t a conversation the
commission will ever be eager to have.

The research plan is embedded below.