FCC Chief Orders Probe of Unreleased Media Reports

Federal Communications Commission Chairman Kevin J. Martin has asked the agency’s inspector general to investigate why two draft reports on television and radio ownership never saw the light of day until now.

Martin said he sought the review after Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) asked whether the agency suppressed the reports, dated 2003 and 2004.

Martin, approved for another five-year term Tuesday by the Senate Commerce Committee, said he and his staff had not seen the reports. “I want to assure you that I, too, am concerned about what happened to these two draft reports,” Martin said in a letter sent to Boxer late Monday.

One draft working paper, dated 2004, suggests that locally owned TV stations produce more coverage of local issues, Boxer said. In 2003, the FCC began looking into the local content offered by media outlets but never concluded the proceeding.

The FCC chairman at the time, Michael Powell, and his top aides have denied any knowledge of the study.

The other draft report, titled “Review of the Radio Industry” and dated 2003, examines consolidation in radio. Boxer said it showed that the number of station owners had declined.

“This is the second report in a week that I have received that appears to have been shelved by officials within the FCC, and I am growing more and more concerned at these developments,” Boxer said in a letter to Martin.

The FCC in 2003 voted to ease limits on ownership of television stations and lifted a ban preventing a company from owning a newspaper and a television or radio station in the same market.

But the new rules were put on hold in 2004 after an appeals court said the FCC failed to sufficiently justify them. The FCC took up the issue again this year.