Today, the New York Times reported that the FCC is following it’d due diligence by fining broadcasters without properly kept public inspections files, by delivering justice to the Columbia University radio station seven years late. NYT‘s Ben Sisario reported “WKCR, the radio station of Columbia University, has been fined $10,000 by the Federal Communications Commission over a lapse in its record-keeping from 1998 to 2005.”
The Times also sourced David Oxenford, a lawyer familiar with this area. “There are some big station owners who get hit with these fines,” he said, “but by and large, the bulk of these are small stations that have small staffs, and this obligation just gets overlooked.”
Last Friday, Honolulu’s Civil Beat took the public file inspection to task with this report, where the intrepid reporters visited stations and obtained the files. They’re ‘intrepid’ because getting these files isn’t always so simple, as some Cleveland-area college students recently found out. While the FCC recently mandated broadcasters in the top 50 markets to make the public files data available online, Honolulu is just outside of the top 50. CB reporters share sympathies with ProPublica‘s similar effort on the issue called ‘Free the Files.’ Daniel Victor and Justin Elliot are covering this issue, and have recently noted that formatting problems won’t allow the public file data to be easily searchable.
It seems like the FCC is headed in the right direction on this, but at the moment they’re a just a few steps behind the times.