FCC Defends Authority to Modify Ownership Rules

RADIO ONLINE | Wednesday, July 21, 2010 | 3:34pm CT

The FCC has filed a brief with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit that defends the Commission's authority to modify media ownership rules. The FCC's 2008 loosening the newspaper/broadcast cross-ownership ban in large markets is the basis for the challenge, even though the modifications no longer the views of the FCC's majority.

"While the rules being challenged were adopted before I became Chairman, I support our General Counsel in arguing that the order was within the discretion of the Commission and the brief's general defense of the Commission's authority to make decisions based on the information before it at the time," said FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski.

He continued, "Congress required the Commission to review media ownership rules on a quadrennial basis and the agency is in the middle of the 2010 ownership review. The review requires us to look at any changed facts in the marketplace based on a record which the Commission is now assembling, while ensuring that our rules promote the lasting public interest goals of competition, localism, and diversity."

Commisioner Michael J. Copps added, "It is difficult for me to believe that our new FCC, with its new majority, is in court today basically accepting the validity of the pro-consolidation decision of a previous Commission. We have had 18 months to reconsider the awful vote that loosened our newspaper/broadcast cross-ownership rules, but the best we can do, judging from today's brief, is to kick the media ownership can farther down the road."