NAB Slams Public Interest Groups for Violating 'Chutzpah Doctrine'
The public interest groups pushing back against an FCC proposal to eliminate a requirement that broadcasters keep a hard copy correspondence file accessible to the public previously advocated in 2012 for requiring stations to put their other files online, NAB…
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said in a letter posted in docket 16-161 Thursday. This violates the “chutzpah doctrine,” NAB said. “As Free Press stated so succinctly in 2012, ‘Public information should be public. In the 21st Century that means online -- not buried in broadcast station filing cabinets.’” The opposition filings to the current FCC proposal have argued that doing away with the correspondence file will disadvantage low-income consumers and people of color, who are less likely to have internet access (see 1608230061). “If Common Cause, Free Press and the others opposing elimination of correspondence files had concerns about access for the poor and people of color, they should have raised that argument years ago when they successfully, and without any self-doubt, pushed for an online public file,” NAB said. Broadcasters are "the ones trying to have things both ways" by claiming simultaneously that keeping correspondence file is a burden and that no one shows up to look at them, Free Press Policy Director Matt Wood told us.