House Committee Puts Heat on FCC Members : TV syndication: Democratic Rep. John D. Dingell of Michigan questions integrity of the commissioners in the heavily lobbied decision.

The Federal Communications Commission was sharply criticized Wednesday by a congressional committee for its handling of new rules that will permit the TV networks to enter the program syndication business.

Rep. John D. Dingell (D-Mich.), chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, charged that “discord and divisiveness” among the five FCC commissioners prevented them from drawing up a new set of “financial interest and syndication rules” that all the parties could find acceptable.

On Tuesday, a bitterly divided FCC narrowly passed new regulations allowing the networks to enter the highly profitable syndication market. But the new rules still fell short of the total repeal that the networks had sought.

Dingell’s comments came during a telecommunications and finance subcommittee hearing to review FCC funding for the next two years. All five FCC members were present.

He took the commissioners to task for everything from ignoring customary FCC procedures to adopting a new set of regulations that appeared to bear little relation to the record assembled in the 13-month-long proceeding.

But Dingell reserved his strongest criticism for the integrity of the commissioners, who he said may have been compromised by the army of lobbyists--including partisan politicians--that besieged the FCC since it reopened the fin/syn case last year.

“Quite frankly, I have never before witnessed an important decision such as this being handled in a similar fashion,” Dingell lectured the members before a packed hearing room.

“I am disturbed that our confidence in this commission may have been misplaced. . . . The residue from this proceeding has the potential to poison the decision-making process and subvert the statutory requirement that a decision be based on the record,” he said.

Dingell singled out for criticism Andrew Barrett and Ervin Duggan, two of the commissioners who sided with the majority to relax, but not repeal, the syndication rules. In particular, he questioned Barrett about his unavailability to discuss fin/syn alternatives with his fellow members in the week leading up to Tuesday’s controversial 3-2 vote.

“Other commissioners expressed frustration” about Barrett’s inaccessibility, Dingell said. Barrett then admitted that he had not been in his office for part of the week of April 2.

Dingell then turned up the heat by asking Barrett, who fashioned the new set of rules, why the regulations adopted by the FCC lacked footnotes or citations. Such an omission, he noted, could form the basis for an overturn on appeal.

Turning to Duggan, Dingell asked why he appeared to be the source of a news story detailing the proposed regulations before they became public knowledge. Duggan, who the day before had boasted that he welcomed Dingell’s expected query on the FCC vote, denied that he said anything of “substantive value” to the publication.

It was the reports about Barrett’s aloofness, however, that apparently prompted Dingell to request all members’ phone and appointment records for the week leading up to the vote.

During that time--called a “sunshine period”--FCC members are forbidden to have any contact with lobbyists or others who are a party to a rule-making procedure.

But one lobbyist involved in the fin/syn issue speculated that Dingell may be trying to discover if any FCC members had unauthorized communications with network or Hollywood representatives. “There were 40 squirming seats in that room,” he said, referring to the lobbyists attending the hearing.