RCFP: Government Commissions Weigh Media’s Options

Article originally published in The News Media & the Law, a publication of the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press, Winter 2010 (Vol. 34, No. 1), page 23.

By Nadia Tamez-Robledo

Amongst the news organizations, journalism schools and media foundations engaged in back-and-forth dialogue about how to save the news industry, two government bodies — the Federal Trade Commission and the Federal Communications Commission — have recently injected themselves squarely in the middle of the debate.

The FTC in December held a two-day conference on emerging business models that could help journalism survive in the Internet age. The FCC in January launched its Future of Media project that will prepare a report on how journalism can best thrive in the digital marketplace.

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, aware of the concerns government involvement in the press might raise, was quick to point out that the commission developed the project at the media’s behest.  “We’re at a pivotal moment in the history of media and communications, because of game-changing new technologies as well as the economic downturn,” Genachowski said in a release when the project was announced in October. “Highly respected entities have called on the FCC to assess these issues . . . while recognizing the government must be scrupulous in abiding by the First Amendment and never dictating or controlling the content of the news.”

The call to action came last October in reports issued by the Knight Commission on Information Needs of Communities in a Democracy and Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. The Knight report asked the government to “direct media policy toward innovation, competition, and support for business models that provide marketplace incentives for quality journalism.” The Columbia report, authored by communications professor Michael Schudson and former executive editor of The Washington Post Leonard Downie, Jr., urged the FCC to divert money from its telephone surcharge, which generates $7 billion per year, to “finance a Fund for Local News that would make grants for advances in local news reporting and innovative ways to support it.”

Read more at The News Media & the Law.