Kaplan offers testimony on media ownership rules before FCC

Associate dean Martin Kaplan warned a panel of Federal Communication Commission members about "the disappearance of local voices and local issues from local news" during a town hall meeting in Los Angeles on August 31. The meeting, organized by the National Latino Media Council, invited public testimony on new rules under consideration by the FCC on media ownership. USC Annenberg's Norman Lear Center runs the Local News Archive which is the largest "source of evidence of what the nation's broadcasters do, and don't, to fulfill the public interest obligations they promise when they get their licenses." After analyzing coverage on local news stations across the country, Kaplan calls the findings "depressing" as station owners "shun substantive public affairs coverage in favor of crime, scandal, accidental injury, happy-talk, network entertainment cross-promotion, plus a virtually inexhaustible supply of minutes sold in exchange for billions of dollars of paid political ads."
Read the testimony
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