TV News Organizations Concerned About Potential FCC Video Description Rules

The National Association of Broadcasters and Fox News Channel are among those arguing that TV news should be exempt from video description rules the Federal Communications Commission is looking to establish.

As part of the Twenty-First Century Communications and Video Accessibility Act of 2010, which was passed by Congress and signed by President Obama, the FCC can establish a timetable and rules for video descriptions of programming. In a nutshell, TV programming would not only be required to have closed captioning for the deaf, but would have to provide a description of what is happening on-screen for the blind. The DTV transition makes this technology easier to implement. The problem with that rule as it relates to TV news is best explained by the National Association of Broadcasters in its FCC filing: “Unlike closed captioning, which is intended to repeat words spoken as precisely as possible, video description inherently carries a subjective element, and accordingly should not be required to add a non-journalist describer’s words into an editorial product.”