Primary investigator:

Danilo Yanich, Local TV News Media Project, University of Delaware

Partnering Organization:

Consumer Federation of America

Emergency Grant: $30,000

This project provides critical analysis of a study funded by the FCC as part of its media ownership proceedings. Specifically, it examines a controversial approach to measuring bias in local news in relation to media concentration used in a central set of claims in FCC Media Ownership Study No. 6, "The Effects of Cross-Ownership on the Local Content and Political Slant of Local Television News," (Milyo, 2007). The hypothesis is that these findings are the product of a change in FCC data coding methods, and that an analysis using earlier FCC coding practices will produce different results. Using an alternate coding scheme that more effectively addresses/defines "local" content, Dr. Yanich finds that cross-ownership negatively affects the amount of total news and the amount of local news in the television markets that formed the database for that research.

This work was made possible by aggressive CFA lobbying of the FCC for access to the raw programming content underlying the FCC study—a unique opportunity that leverages a major data purchase by the FCC. In this context, the project contributes to the broader access-to-data goals of the SSRC Necessary Knowledge program by advancing the principle that FCC policy must be made with publicly-available data. The timeliness and urgency of this study is a function not only of the narrow window of opportunity to address the ownership proceeding, but also of the need to capitalize on FCC acknowledgement of the principle that access to data is an important condition of public accountability. Having won this ‘right’ in this case, this study becomes an important signal to the FCC about the capacity of the public interest community to make access matter.

Read the full report: "Cross Ownership, Markets & Content on Local TV News" (Yanich, 2009)