US court keeps stay on media rules

[hightime]

WASHINGTON, June 24 (Reuters) - A U.S. appeals court refused on Thursday to allow loosened federal media rules on media ownership to take effect, dealing a blow to large media companies like News Corp. that are hoping to expand.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit said the new rules would not take effect until the Federal Communications Commission better explained how it came up with them.

"The Commission has not sufficiently justified its particular chosen numerical limits for local television ownership, local radio ownership, and cross-ownership of media within local markets," the court's 218-page opinion said.

The FCC last year lifted a ban on a company owning both a newspaper and television stations or radio outlets in a single market. It also agreed in many cases to allow a company to own two television stations in a single market.

http://cnn.netscape.cnn.com/ns/news/story.jsp?id=2004062414300002229075&dt=20040624143000&w=RTR&coview=

[Robbien]

1. It would be good if they now stopped everyone who exceeds

the FCC limits. Didn't Powell set the new higher limits at the levels the media giants already own.

[depakid]

2. Basically the 3rd Circuit held that the new rules were irrational!

and that many of the modifications the FCC was trying to make were not supported by "a reasoned analysis," and so remanded the rules back to the Commission.

There's a classic footnote in the opinion (very condescending for formal legal writing):

"Our dissenting colleague asserts several times (indeed it is a principal theme) that we somehow substitute our own policy judgment for that of the Commission. Our response is simple. It is impossible to substitute our policy judgment for that of the Commission when we have no view on its policies save that it act with reason."

In essence, the court is saying that Micheal Powell full of shit.

It's also interesting that the court found that the FCC gave too much weight to the internet in its local diversity index calculations.

"According to the record, most sources of local news on the Internet are the websites for newspapers and broadcast television stations. See, e.g., UCC Comments at 33 (62% of Internet users get local news from newspaper websites, 39% visit television station websites). And the examples the Commission does cite—the Drudge Report and Salon.com—have a national, not local, news focus."

The court had this to say about Drudge in a footnote:

"Moreover, the Drudge Report is an “aggregator” of news stories from other news outlets’ websites and, as such, is not itself normally a “source” of news, national or local."

Guess that applies to DU as well. We're "aggregators." B-)

If anyone's interested, the opinion is very readable and it's actually a very good primer on broadcast regulation:

http://www.ca3.uscourts.gov/staymotion/033388p.pdf

If the pdf won't open, you may have to change a preference setting:

http://www.ca3.uscourts.gov/pdfproblems.htm

[Robbien]

3. Thanks depakote_kid

Every article on this ruling is full of double negatives which make it hard to figure out what is really happening here. Your comments make the issue clear.

Now hopefully it is just as clear to Powell.

[NMDemDist2]

4. I was so pleased when I heard this news on Ed Schultz' show

hopefully Colin Jr will screw around now long enough for Kerry to replace his sorry self