Local media requirement is a decades-old issue on the FCC, going back to the days of a finite spectrum limiting the number of people (content sources) who could broadcast in an area. If one of those limited broadcasters was purchased by a national organization, it could result in only national-level news being reported. Enough such purchases, and only national corporations control the news, nobody knows what’s going on at the local level, which is a bad thing. It was part of the FCC’s “public interest” mission when the public airways were being used. In exchange for a portion of the spectrum, broadcasters agreed to certain public interest provisions.
I don’t think this translates well into the Internet age though. The number of content sources is effectively unlimited. Any idiot with a smartphone and a YouTube account can effectively be a local reporter who can afford to broadcast to an audience as big as the large national news sources (but this is true only with net neutrality). It looks like they’ve realized that since the study only suggests things to encourage more local reporting, doesn’t mandate anything.
I know, “It’s a slippery slope, they only suggest now, but those Marxists will be mandating it later!!!!” Remember, they have been mandating it for decades. No slippery slope, we’ve been at the bottom of it for years on this issue.
I’m well aware of the long-time FCC interest in broadcast “news,” both radio and tv. “News” is/was considered to be part of the “public interest” requirement for a licensee.
However that traditional FCC mission has absolutely, tetotally (a Dan Ratherism) nothing to do with what journalism schools should or should not teach, tax policy regarding news-gathering, steering of government advertising money, or how many reporters a newspaper chooses to hire.
None, Nada, zip, bupkis.
What this is, is one more attempt by a government agency to insert itself into the big fat middle of something that it has no business at all trying to influence - what is and isn’t news and how it is reported.
This is the Stamp Act.
This is Pope Leo X’s Exsurge Domine, his attempt to silence Martin Luther in 1520.
This is the Licensing of the Press Act of 1662.
This is Josephus Daniel’s attempt to nationalize radio after WW1.
This is “Bloody Mary” Tudor’s burning at the stake of heretics who wrote books she didn’t like.
It is what tyranny has tried to do since the dawn of mankind, and always will - control the distribution of information.