STATEMENT OF 
COMMISSIONER MICHAEL J. COPPS
Re: Standardized and Enhanced Disclosure Requirements for Television Broadcast 
Licensee Public Interest Obligations and Extension of the Filing Requirement for 
Children’s Television Programming Report (FCC Form 398), MB Docket Nos. 
00-168 and 00-44
One of the of the FCC-centric recommendations emanating from the Waldman 
Report on The Information Needs of Communities is to “Emphasize Online Disclosure as 
a Pillar of FCC Media Policy.”  So it is fitting that we have a disclosure item before us 
today.
The history of this proceeding goes back many, many years, but I will refrain 
from revisiting the full saga this morning, riveting though it is.  To make the long story 
very short, the FCC in 1981 ended its requirement for broadcasters to keep a program log 
and to ascertain what were the programming and issues interests of their communities of 
service.  The decision was premised upon a straight-forward, if rather narrow-minded, 
cost-benefit analysis.   Those were some of the nadir years for public interest premises at 
the Commission—and that’s putting it mildly. Rather, in an effort to deregulate at any 
cost, those Commissions made it ever more difficult for citizens not only to seek redress 
for poor station performance, but even to unearth the facts about what broadcasters were 
in fact doing.  Concerned citizens had to go to a lot more trouble just to see a station’s 
file, and even when they got to it, avenues of redress were closed off because so many of 
the public interest responsibilities of the stations had been eliminated by the FCC.  I 
believe it is the responsibility of this Commission to move forward on both these fronts: 
(1) to provide for fuller and more adequate disclosure, and (2) to breathe life and meaning
back into public interest responsibilities and guidelines.  I have been pushing for action 
on both these fronts since I arrived here ten years ago.  And, purely as an aside, there is 
still plenty of oxygen in my lungs that I will dedicate to breathing life into these critical 
issues going forward.
Many others have spoken up in favor of fuller disclosure and strengthened 
Commission oversight.  These include the public interest community, President Clinton 
and Vice President Gore’s Advisory Committee, Members of Congress, concerned 
broadcasters, and millions of citizens across the land.  We are not trying to bring back 
yesterday, but to forge reasonable Twenty-first century expectations for Twenty-first 
century broadcasting.  As Lyndon Johnson put it more eloquently, “Yesterday is not ours 
to recover, but tomorrow is ours to win or lose.”  So I hope that we can start down the 
road now of winning that tomorrow, late in the day though it is. 
The Further Notice we are embarking upon holds promise.  It proposes that 
television broadcasters move their public files online, to a site hosted by the FCC, which 
I hope will be searchable and aggregative and therefore offer real opportunity for 
comparative analysis and wide public understanding. Without that kind of searchability, 
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online disclosure would be small improvement over having the file kept in the broadcast 
station’s basement.
What we are moving online is in large measure the same information available in 
the current station files.  We urgently need to consider expanding the range of required 
reporting.  Too often the files are spare to the point of uselessness.  And, indeed, a Notice 
of Inquiry currently on circulation tees up such issues.  I hope that we complete this 
proceeding expeditiously so we can move on to common-sense rules responsive to the 
information needs of these communities.
 
There were some valid points made by broadcasters in regards to Form 355 and I 
have often remarked on the desirability of making some alterations to the Form and then 
getting on with the job.  I had hoped that would be a far less time-consuming process than 
the one we have actually endured over the last few years—yes, I said years.  
Instead we are for the most part starting over.  The substantive action we take 
today is to vacate the previous Report and Order instead of looking for ways to revise our 
earlier work and expedite its completion.  The Report and Order being vacated has been 
held in limbo for three years. I do hope we move beyond the NOI stage with dispatch, 
given this is a problem of the highest public interest priority.  We just don’t have more 
years to consider this, and I believe other Commission vehicles would have allowed us to 
travel a far quicker route.
Disclosure is sunlight and an important means to important ends. But I repeat 
what I said at the time of the release of the Waldman Report: Disclosure is a means to an 
end—not an end in itself. Making information accessible to the public, prerequisite that 
it is, serves the public interest only if there are consequences when the files disclose 
station shortfalls.  So we have to ask ourselves what the public is able to do with the 
disclosed information.  Bring a complaint?  Based on what?  Have a hearing designated?  
Have a more serious license renewal? It was interesting to me that in the conversation 
that resulted from Form 355 some broadcasters were willing to provide the information—
but only if it would be anonymous—and with assurances that their licenses would not be 
affected.  While many broadcasters work hard to serve the public, it would appear there 
are some who need to read the public interest bargain one more time. If disclosure brings 
to light behaviors that require redress, I’m for having redress on the books. 
I happily acknowledge the additional requirement to include pay-for-play and 
shared services as information that the broadcasters need to put online.  While I would be 
even more pleased if we made a decision that shared services are an end run around our 
media ownership rules, I do believe this information will nevertheless be revealing.  
Lastly, I note that we propose moving the stations’ existing political files online.  
This, too, will be revealing—but not as revealing as it could be. I believe citizens are 
entitled to more information about the political ads that bombard them at election time 
and, nowadays it seems, almost all the time.  The Supreme Court articulated in its 
Citizens United decision that transparency is a vital counter-balance to the perceived 
influence of corporations in the campaign process.  Opaque and misleading information 
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is not what democracy thrives on.  We are not well-served when those who are 
attempting to manipulate our political dialogue and determine election outcomes can 
disguise themselves and hide behind misleading names. If a group calling itself “Citizens 
for Purple Mountain Majesties” is in reality the mouthpiece of a special interest that is 
refusing to clean up a toxic dump or is pouring pollution into the Great Lakes, don’t 
citizens have a right—yes, I said “a right”—to know that?  Open government can only 
exist where people and groups trying to determine elections stand up and tell us who they 
are.  That’s not happening often enough.  The fissures in our democracy will continue to 
widen if anonymous money retains its unchecked influence in our elections.  So I would 
hope the Commission would find its way to using the authority it has to require fuller 
sponsorship identification of the interests bank-rolling so many of the ads we all watch all 
the time.   
When the roll is called I will vote to approve and move ahead with this item, 
hopeful that my colleagues will work with dispatch to advance wider disclosure 
proceedings in the months ahead.  I thank the Bureau for bringing up this item and I 
especially want to recognize the hard work that our public interest community did to 
emphasize both the importance and the urgency of public disclosure for the public 
interest.