Journalism

The Federal Communications Commission eliminated the broadcast main studio rule. The Order retains the requirement that stations maintain a local or toll-free telephone number to ensure consumers have ready access to their local stations.

The main studio rule, adopted nearly 80 years ago, currently requires each AM radio, FM radio, and television broadcast station to have a main studio located in or near its local community. The rule was implemented to facilitate input from community members and the station’s participation in community activities. The Commission recognizes that today the public can access information via broadcasters’ online public file, and stations and community members can interact directly through alternative means such as e-mail, social media, and the telephone. Given this, the Commission found that requiring broadcasters to maintain a main studio is outdated and unnecessarily burdensome. Elimination of the main studio rule should produce substantial cost-saving benefits for broadcasters that can be directed toward such things as programming, equipment upgrades, newsgathering, and other services that benefit consumers. It will also make it easier for broadcasters to prevent stations in small towns from going dark and to launch new stations in rural areas.

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai said he has not talked to the White House about his response to the President's tweets about challenging broadcast licenses. President Donald Trump, unhappy with an NBC News story be branded fake and fiction, had tweeted that someone ought to challenge the licenses and they should be revoked, "if necessary."

Chairman Pai was asked repeatedly about the issue in a press conference following the FCC meeting Oct 24. Asked if the President or White House had reached out to him on the license challenge issue, Pai said no. The chairman was asked about why it took him so long to respond to the President's tweets. Chairman Pai countered that he responded the first time he was asked, which response had been to reiterate that he supports the First Amendment, that the FCC is an independent agency, and to say that the FCC can't pull a license over the content of a newscast, no matter who asked it to. Chairman Pai said that his independence as a regulator was clear and suggested that the focus on his response was politically motivated. "I understand that those who oppose my agenda would like me to be distracted by the controversy of the day," he said.

The chairman would not say whether he thought the President's threats had had a chilling effect on the First Amendment, sticking with a regulator's answer that he was going to apply the facts and the law and make the appropriate decision. The FCC can actually pull a license over content in specific circumstances, but those don't include what news stories are covered or how they are covered.

As more and more people get at least some of their news from social platforms, this study showcases perspectives on what the increasingly distributed environment looks like in day-to-day media lives. Drawing from thirteen focus groups conducted in four cities across the United States, we sample voices of residents who reflect on their news habits, the influence of algorithms, local news, brands, privacy concerns, and what all this means for journalistic business models.

While our overall study complicates any notion of a singular audience with singular wants, it offered insights from varied perspectives that may be of value for both publishers and platforms:

• Publishers and platforms interested in rebuilding and maintaining relationships of trust with audiences should invest in media literacy that includes a) skills for verifying brands, b) algorithm literacy, and c) privacy literacy. Effectively tackling these areas will require a shift in attitude and strategy for platform companies—reluctant companies should note the risk of losing users alienated by the opacity of their operations. However, it must be noted that algorithmic transparency is required before algorithmic literacy can be achieved.
• Platforms should note that strategies to prolong engagement by exposing users to perspectives only with which they agree may backfire as some people turn away from platforms due to perceived echo chambers.
• Additional research is needed to monitor existing efforts to increase the visibility of local news on social platforms, though there is likely a need for platform companies to do more in addressing this critical element of the news ecosystem.
• Platforms and other stakeholders committed to verification should take note of public skepticism regarding quick fixes to the challenge of fake news and the nuance required to not only address “imposter content” and “fabricated content,” but also the absence or presence of partisan content.
• Publishers should approach business models such as native advertising and sponsored links with caution given their potential to jeopardize relationships of trust with readers. However, additional research and a dedicated study of audience attitudes toward journalistic business models would be valuable.

White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders doesn’t like the media’s tone these days. “I’ve never been attacked more, questioned more. I was called a liar by a major network in an official statement, I’ve been called outrageous things on air, and it goes unquestioned, no pushback,” said Sanders. “I do think that there is a greater sense of hostility that I’ve seen in this administration than in previous, and I think that you see that reflected in the numbers, in the coverage,” said Sanders, who cited a study showing that 93 percent of the coverage was negative and 7 percent positive.

Indeed, studies have shown overwhelmingly negative coverage of President Donald Trump in the mainstream media. “If you compare that to the first nine months of the the Obama administration, it was 40-60, so for people to pretend like there isn’t a greater sense of hostility toward this administration, I think, would be to ignore real facts.”

[Commentary] Many Democrats have decried this Federal Communications Commission decision benefiting Sinclair, a conservative broadcaster with ties to Breitbart News. And while some conservatives are cheering the deal, the implications of FCC actions are troubling for most. The nonsensical decision to reinstitute the UHF discount will also open the door for NBC, CBS, ABC and Fox to buy local TV stations reaching more than 70 percent of US homes. Anyone who understands how these big media companies operate can see the danger. By owning local stations, the New York-based media networks could dictate local news coverage. With the planned elimination of the local studio rule, they will have a green light to do so.

Before approving the Sinclair merger, the FCC has a duty to engage in a comprehensive and open media-ownership proceeding — one that seeks public comment and input from Congress. Anything less raises questions about impartiality and jeopardizes the integrity of the commission. Eliminating ownership rules that have served us well for more than 30 years is a momentous change. The American people must play a role in that decision.

[Christopher Ruddy is chief executive of Newsmax Media.]

[Commentary] In Nov it will be 50 years since the Public Broadcasting Act, steeped in the Great Society idealism of President Lyndon Johnson’s administration, became law. The act turned programming like “Sesame Street,” “Reading Rainbow” and “Mr. Rogers Neighborhood” into true public goods. Now, on the silver anniversary of the act, it’s completely plausible that the Trump Administration might celebrate by making good on their threats to defund as much of the public broadcasting apparatus as they can.

While it’s unlikely NPR and PBS want this to happen, they have been preparing for a future without government money for a long time. The biggest stations have figured out how to bring in money without sacrificing quality. Still, the shift away from public money in public broadcasting has caused significant collateral damage: Public media, maybe unintentionally, now strives to serve an elite audience instead of an expansive and inclusive vision of the “public.” The hope is that more affluent audiences can be counted on to add to their closet full of pledge drive tote bags when the time comes. This is the same audience commercial news organizations look for so they can buy things advertisers sell. These target consumers have more news than they need. Perversely, that means even the most thought-provoking public media is used more for entertainment that anything else.

I worry if we continue to ignore the information needs of news consumers representing a wide swath of economic and demographic realities, we will deserve any loss of relevance we experience.

[Sarah Alvarez is the founder of Outlier Media, a data journalism service delivering high value information to low income news consumers in Detroit via SMS.]

You can’t trust the media, according to President Donald Trump — unless the media happens to tell you that many people don’t trust the media. In that case, you can trust that the media is reporting trustworthy information about the public’s distrust of the media.

President Trump claimed in a tweet Oct 22 that almost half of Americans believe major news outlets fabricate reports about him. He didn’t cite his source, perhaps because it was Politico, which he has consistently called unreliable. "It is finally sinking through. 46% OF PEOPLE BELIEVE MAJOR NATIONAL NEWS ORGS FABRICATE STORIES ABOUT ME. FAKE NEWS, even worse! Lost cred," the President tweeted.

Facebook is testing a major change that would shift non-promoted posts out of its news feed, a move that could be catastrophic for publishers relying on the social network for their audience. A new system being trialled in six countries including Slovakia, Serbia and Sri Lanka sees almost all non-promoted posts shifted over to a secondary feed, leaving the main feed focused entirely on original content from friends, and advertisements.

The change has seen users’ engagement with Facebook pages drop precipitously, by 60% to 80% . If replicated more broadly, such a change would destroy many smaller publishers, as well as larger ones with an outsized reliance on social media referrals for visitors.

The Interactive Advertising Bureau will testify that it supports efforts to strengthen disclosure requirements for online ads that expressly advocate for particular candidates. But the group will also warn lawmakers that tightening those rules won't necessarily affect the spread of "fake news" online. "Enhancing the existing framework by clarifying the responsibility of publishers, platforms, and advertisers in making available these disclosures to the public would create greater legal certainty across the industry and provide valuable information," IAB CEO and President Randall Rothenberg plans to tell Congress in a prepared statement. "But the 'fake news' and 'fake ads' at the center of the current storm did not engage in such overt candidate support. So they were not, and based on current Supreme Court jurisprudence will not, be regulated under the Federal Election Campaign Act."

Rothenberg will testify Oct 24 before the House Oversight subcommittee on information technology, which is slated to hold a hearing about online political ads. David Chavern, CEO of News Media Alliance, will also testify Tuesday, as well as representatives from the Center for Competitive Politics, and the Brennan Center for Justice, among others.

The story of Alice Rogoff and the Alaska Dispatch News is a cautionary tale that shows the limits of what a wealthy owner is willing, or able, to do for a struggling newspaper in the digital era. In the three years that Rogoff owned the paper, its value declined ninety-seven per cent. Of course, Rogoff’s debacle is emblematic of a much bigger financial crisis in American journalism. Even with the arrival of a handful of rich backers—Bezos, at the Post; the Sandler family, at ProPublica; and Laurene Powell Jobs, at The Atlantic—the broader industry has failed to find a viable digital-news model as traditional forms of revenue—advertising and subscriptions—continue to evaporate like rain in the Sahara.

Creating indispensible journalism—whether at the local or national level—is not without cost. It does not want to be free. If people aren’t willing to pay for it, like they pay for the Internet or cell-phone service, then it will surely disappear, sometimes right before your eyes.