Another suppressed FCC study. Just how many are there?

How about one final study? Of the FCC?

Josh Silver at Huffington:

Here we go again.

Another Federal Communications Commission study on the negative impacts of media consolidation came to light Monday after being buried at the agency for at least two years -- the second suppressed FCC ownership study to surface in as many weeks.

It's clear that FCC's top brass are willing to deep-six any research that contradicts the media industry's pro-consolidation claims.

In fine bureaucratic fashion, neither former Chairman Michael Powell nor current Chairman Kevin Martin has accepted responsibility for the alleged cover-up. In the minds of both of them, it's better we all forget about it so the FCC can return to its work of handing out billions of dollars in monopoly privileges to massive media firms.

The recently spiked study, a "Review of the Radio Industry" conducted by the FCC Media Bureau, found that the Telecommunications Act of 1996 had led to a drastic decline in the number of radio station owners -- even as the actual number of commercial stations in the United States had increased.

A copy of the study is available at http://www.stopbigmedia.com/files/radio_ownership.pdf
Although the study would have been the fifth of its kind since the 1996 Act -- which lifted national radio ownership caps -- it was never released, and no subsequent studies on the topic have been conducted. It only became public after a copy was leaked to the office of Sen. Barbara Boxer.

Last week, Jonathan Rintels reported here that Boxer also uncovered a buried federal study that showed media consolidation is harmful to local news reporting. The 2004 report found that locally owned stations produced - on average -- five minutes more local news coverage in a half-hour newscast than their consolidated competitors.

Upon seeing the results, senior managers at the FCC ordered that "every last piece" of that study be destroyed, according to the Associated Press.

Continued here