[Osx-nutters] Lawyer Says FCC Ordered Study Destroyed

[Kevin Callahan]

Lawyer Says FCC Ordered Study Destroyed
By: Nicole Belle @ 5:53 PM - PDT  
Associated Press via Houston Chronicle:

The Federal Communications Commission ordered its staff to destroy  
all copies of a draft study that suggested greater concentration of  
media ownership would hurt local TV news coverage, a former lawyer at  
the agency says. [..]

Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif. received a copy of the report  
"indirectly from someone within the FCC who believed the information  
should be made public," according to Boxer spokeswoman Natalie Ravitz.

Adam Candeub, now a law professor at Michigan State University, said  
senior managers at the agency ordered that "every last piece" of the  
report be destroyed. "The whole project was just stopped _ end of  
discussion," he said. Candeub was a lawyer in the FCC’s Media Bureau  
at the time the report was written and communicated frequently with  
its authors, he said. Read on…

So Former Chairman Michael Powell commissions a study to prove that  
allowing corporations to own multiple stations in regions doesn’t  
actually hurt the public’s interest in quality or quantity of local  
news information and the study shows the exact opposite: local media  
ownership DOES give the consumer greater and more relevant local news.

What’s a Bush appointee to do?

Bury the report in a drawer and order all the work product to be  
destroyed–destroyed, not shoved in a vault, not filed in some  
"mislabeled" folder to be shuffled in some bureaucratic hell.  Then  
go ahead and approve more corporation ownership of local stations,  
thereby working against the public interest of which they are  
charged.  Current Chairman Kevin Martin claims he was unaware of the  
report in his letter to Barbara Boxer.

FAIR has more and an action item to call for an investigation.


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