Broadcast

摘要

The Minority Media and Telecommunications Council will “shortly” release additional informationnabout the respondents to its cross-ownership study to answer criticisms by public interest group FreenPress, said MMTC President David Honig in an email to us Thursday. He responded to a Free Press FCCnfiling (CD June 28 p15) attacking the study for not adequately describing its sample or providing quantitativenevidence on cross-ownership. Free Press is “profoundly misreading” the study, Honig told us. “Asnwe explained when we filed the study with the Commission, the study is not intended to be dispositive.nRather, it is a piece of evidence to be weighed together with other evidence." The small number of crossownershipnmarkets makes a fully empirical study “impossible,” Honig said. He disputed Free Press’snclaim that the MMTC study doesn’t satisfy the 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals’ Prometheus II rulingnthat the commission must base ownership rule changes on hard data. “What courts do expect is that agenciesnrest their judgments on the best evidence available, even if the evidence is unavoidably imperfect,”nsaid Honig. He didn’t give a date for the release of the additional information on the subjects of the study,nand said the data would be “consistent with the confidentiality we promised our respondents.”