"It's just research"

"IT'S JUST RESEARCH"
[SOURCE: Lasar's Letter on the FCC, AUTHOR: Matthew Lasar]
An interview with Michigan State University College of Law Professor Adam Candeub. He was not interviewed in the FCC Inspector General's investigation into suppressed research on media ownership. Candeub worked with the authors of a study of TV news. He saw as they "kept on drafting and re-drafting, making change after change in response to management's ever-shifting criticism. What was odd was that the critique they received from management became much more caviling and bizarre as time went on. Eventually it became clear that the FCC would never release the study, and the authors were told to keep the wraps on it. And that was that." The IG concluded that personality differences between these authors and management led the authors to experience criticisms of the report as inaccurate and pretextual. Concerning the Draft 2003 Radio Report, the second report accused of being repressed, the IG notes that the then Media Bureau Chief Ken Ferree declared in an e-mail message that the report should not go further because he "[was] not inclined to release this one unless the story can be told in a much more positive way. This is not the time to be stirring the 'radio consolidation' pot . . . All in all this is a really bad time to release something like this." The IG interprets this quote essentially as an attempt to shift priorities to immediate issues that management felt it needed staff to focus on. Candeub responds, "What is most disturbing about the IG's report is its willingness to credit Ferree's and management's claims that they did not stifle the TV report for political reasons—when there is indisputable evidence that Ferree stifled the radio report for political reasons."
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