Labor and public interest groups defend FCC's broadcast ownership rules promoting competition, diversity, and localism on air

Common Cause, NABET-CWA, Free Press, the Future of Music Coalition, the musicFIRST Coalition, and the United Church of Christ Office of Communication filed an amicus curiae brief defending the FCC’s broadcast ownership rules against an industry challenge in the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals.

The FCC’s media-ownership rules are designed to promote competition, viewpoint diversity, ownership diversity, and the delivery of local content by broadcast stations licensed to serve communities all across the United States. A series of deregulatory decisions the agency has made over the last two decades has significantly pared back these rules. The FCC undergoes a congressionally mandated review of these regulations every four years.

Prior legal challenges from both industry groups and public-interest organizations have played out in the Third Circuit Court of Appeals. This time, the broadcast industry brought its suit in a different circuit. Broadcasting conglomerates and the trade groups representing them argue that the Biden FCC should eliminate more of the few ownership limits that remain on the books.

“Locally owned broadcast television and radio stations and the jobs they create are critical to the well-being of our communities. Consolidation in the media industry and Wall Street's downsizing and stripping of local news operations for profits, along with the 'narrowcasting’ of information on the internet, has left Americans more isolated and divided than ever,” said NABET-CWA President Charlie Braico. “The FCC's ability to enforce local broadcast ownership rules is critical to preventing further harm.”

As the amicus brief explains, broadcast lobbyists suggest that their businesses should no longer be regulated because people already have access to the same kinds of content on the internet. The broadcasters’ assertion, the brief says, would “leave out of the picture the many Americans who do not fit their vision of a life lived completely online, consuming only national news and culture.” As the filing notes, millions of people in the United States still need to or choose to rely primarily on free broadcasting services for local news, cultural content, and emergency information that broadcast outlets distribute more reliably than internet sources.

“As always, the broadcast industry wants to have its cake and eat it too. Lawyers for giant media conglomerates argue that free and over-the-air local broadcasting remains a unique and special service, yet also insist that their industry should be completely unfettered from any common-sense ownership limits because of competition from internet sources. They can’t have it both ways,” said Free Press Vice President of Policy and General Counsel Matt Wood. “For broadcasting to remain a source of diverse and truly local content—serving populations that national and homogenized news sources so often ignore—the Federal Communications Commission must retain its rules preventing a single company from dominating the airwaves or owning quite literally every broadcast outlet in the same city.”

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Labor and public interest groups defend FCC's broadcast ownership rules promoting competition, diversity, and localism on air (CWA, Sep. 20, 2024)