PNRC Executive Director Richard Karpel met last month with Federal Communications Commission (FCC) officials to urge the agency to abandon its proposal to eliminate rules requiring broadcasters to publish notices in local newspapers when they file license applications with the Commission. National Newspaper Association (NNA) general counsel Tonda Rush joined him at the meeting.
The FCC proposal, which was filed in October 2017, is open-ended. Potential outcomes range from elimination of all public notice requirements — the preference of the broadcasters’ association — to maintenance of the existing rules. However, dismissive comments expressed by FCC Chairman Ajit Pai and a fellow commissioner don’t bode well for their prospects.
PNRC filed comments opposing the proposal late last year.
In its ex parte meeting last month, PNRC argued the FCC has framed the issue improperly as a choice between newspapers or the internet. Most newspapers also publish notices on their websites and since those sites are usually visited by many local readers, eliminating newspaper notice would reduce the effectiveness of internet notice as well, Karpel contended.
PNRC also argued that newspapers are inherently superior to the internet as a delivery system for public notice as a result of the difference in how people process information on each medium. Karpel noted several recent examples where citizens discovered important notices due to the serendipitous process of reading a newspaper. He contrasted those examples with cases in which controversial environmental notices were unseen because there was no local audience for the webpages where they were published.
NNA focused on the vital importance of newspapers in rural areas and the central role newspaper notice still plays in the small towns where many broadcast license applications are filed. Rush also noted the digital divide that persists in rural America, as well as the evidentiary issues still plaguing electronic notice.
PNRC concluded the meeting by noting the remarkable amount of legal and financial firepower the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB) has devoted to overturning the current rules requiring its members to provide notice of their applications in local newspapers. In addition to its original comment arguing for the elimination of newspaper notice, NAB representatives have convened at least five ex parte meetings with FCC staff and filed several supplemental comments since the proposal was issued. Karpel speculated the association had already spent more money on the effort than their members would have collectively spent for the next five years of newspaper ads under the current rules. If, as the broadcasters argue, newspaper notice is ineffective, why is it so important to them to end it, he asked.
His conclusion: The broadcasters want to keep their business hidden and newspaper notice still threatens that preference. But the purpose of FCC’s public notice rules are to inform the public, Karpel noted, and to give citizens an opportunity to participate in the process of allocating the public airwaves in their communities. And FCC’s primary responsibility is to the public, not the broadcasters it regulates, he said.
PNRC subsequently filed ex parte comments summarizing its oral presentation, as FCC rules require.