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STATEMENT OF
CHAIRMAN JULIUS GENACHOWSKI
Re:  Standardized and Enhanced Disclosure Requirements for Television Broadcast Licensee 
Public Interest Obligations (MM Docket No. 00-168) and Extension of the Filing Requirement 
for Children’s Television Programming Report (FCC Form 398) (MM Docket No. 00-44)
For the past three years, the FCC has been working to harness the power of digital 
technologies to make public information more accessible to the public.  
As part of this effort to promote transparency, we’ve been transitioning filings and 
comments and recordkeeping from paper to the Internet – everything from common-carrier 
tariffs to broadcaster renewal and station modification applications.  We stream online all of our 
Commission meetings, hearings and workshops, and we’ve developed innovative and 
informative digital tools like the interactive National Broadband Map and Spectrum Dashboard.  
Consistent with this effort, the Commission’s Information Needs of Communities report 
recommended last year moving television broadcaster public files physical filing cabinets to 
virtual Internet access.  These files contain information, for example, about children’s 
programming, equal employment opportunities, and political advertising.  Public disclosure of 
this information is required by law and part of the public’s basic contract with broadcasters in 
exchange for use of the spectrum and other benefits. 
The INC report was authored by Steve Waldman, a highly respected former journalist 
and Internet entrepreneur, and it was widely praised for its thoughtfulness and fair-minded 
proposals for our changing world.  
The Order on which we’re voting today implements the INC report recommendation – so 
that the public file will be accessible not just to people who can trek to broadcasters’ studios, but 
to anyone with Internet access.
In filing supporting comments, the deans of leading journalism schools describe this as: 
“representing in a specific instance the overall spirit of the current FCC, which has not chosen to 
try to reinstitute strict regulation of broadcasting content, but, instead, has strongly promoted the 
use of the Internet to give citizens access to information.”
Editorial writers have called our proposal “an excellent idea”.  I call it common sense.
It fulfills the core intent of the public file rules: to provide the public access to the 
information in the “public file”.
It not only enhances transparency and informs the public; it also drives efficiency and 
cost-savings, since our Order would allow broadcasters to shift completely from paper to digital. 
But despite broad support for this proposal, it has been met with an evolving series of 
critiques from opponents of online disclosure. 
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First, we were told that the public file is already readily available; no need to change a 
thing.  But when FCC staff went to Baltimore to experience what the public experiences, they 
found that it took 61 hours to retrieve information from the public files at eight stations, and they 
were quoted copying costs of close to $1,700.  
The next argument was that moving public file information online would be technically 
infeasible.  That’s a hard argument to sustain when businesses are routinely digitizing their 
papers and systems, and indeed in other contexts urging the FCC to move to electronic filings.
Another objection was burden and cost.  But the record reveals the unsurprising fact that 
businesses, including broadcasters, are moving from paper to digital every day.  And our staff’s 
cost-benefit analysis demonstrates that the claimed costs and burdens were dramatically 
overstated.  
Indeed, while there will be very modest transition costs, once the transition is complete it 
will save money for broadcasters.  
Meanwhile, the broad public benefits of transparency and disclosure are substantial. 
Once it became clear that the proposed reforms would make public information much 
more accessible, that it can be done easily, and in a way that ultimately saves money, opponents 
of the proposal focused on the political file.  They asked that the Commission exclude the 
political file from the general obligation of online disclosure.
That does acknowledge that an important question here is not: why include political files 
in online disclosure, but rather: why adopt a special exemption from disclosure for political file?
Proponents of this special exception offered a few arguments for this.  First, that 
information about political spending should be handled exclusively by the FEC. But this is 
contrary to the plain language of the law.  
In the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002, Congress explicitly amended the 
Communications Act to require broadcasters to make the “political record … available for public 
inspection,” and the Act states that “the Commission” – the Federal Communications 
Commission – “shall prescribe appropriate rules and regulations” to implement the political 
record provision.  This was largely codified by rules the FCC already had in place. The FCC’s 
role here is clear, essential, and longstanding.
That brings us to the latest objection – that online disclosure would cause commercial 
harm. Opponents have argued that the rates broadcasters charge for political advertising are 
commercially sensitive and should, in effect, be censored from the public file as it appears 
online.  But, one, Congress explicitly requires broadcasters to disclose this information to the 
public; two, broadcasters already do; and three, competitors and customers already have access 
to this information and are already reviewing it where they have an economic incentive to do so. 
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The argumentation here perhaps is not a surprise.  After the Bipartisan Campaign Reform 
Act became law in 2002, the National Association of Broadcasters and others sued to invalidate 
the political file provisions.  They fought it to the Supreme Court, and they lost.  
The Supreme Court in that case explicitly rejected all of the largely similar arguments.  
On the burden and cost-benefit argument, for example, the Supreme Court described the annual 
costs of the political file provisions overall as “a few hundred dollars at most,” calling that “a 
microscopic amount compared to the many millions of dollars of revenue broadcasters receive 
from candidates who wish to advertise”.  
The Supreme Court also said the political file requirements “will help make the public 
aware of how much money candidates may be prepared to spend on broadcast messages.” 
Thus the Supreme Court has confirmed that an important purpose of the political file 
requirement was informing the public, not just candidates.
And in last year’s Citizen United case, the Supreme Court said that the Internet enhances 
the accountability benefits of disclosure requirements.
Others have looked at the arguments of opponents of online disclosure and found them 
wanting.  Bloomberg View analyzed the burden and jobs arguments and concluded that “neither 
is credible.”  The New Republic examined the position of the opponents of political file 
disclosure and concluded: “the arguments they offer are so flimsy they collapse on inspection.”
Late last Friday, a group of broadcasters submitted a proposal.  
They described it as a compromise.  But stakeholders who had argued for online 
disclosure did not support the new proposal.  
The key feature of that proposal, and others that were offered in recent days, was to 
censor from online access information that Congress explicitly required to be made public.   
Somewhat ironically, the proposal would also be significantly more burdensome on 
broadcasters than the plan that opponents had earlier said was too burdensome – because it 
would require both the maintenance of paper files and the submission of separate newly created 
information. 
Our staff carefully analyzed this proposal and other proposals made, and concluded that 
they were not workable.
Now, I recognize that some leaders in the broadcasting industry agree that moving files 
online makes sense, and I appreciate the efforts by some to forge a solution that could have broad 
support inside and outside the industry.  I particularly appreciate the efforts of a small group of 
broadcasters and their representatives who have been working on this valiantly since we started 
working on the INC report.  Similarly, members of the journalism and public interest 
communities have also worked hard to identify mechanisms to even better inform the public.   
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As technologies advance and markets evolve, I look forward to engaging with all 
stakeholders on ways to harness technology to ensure that the goals of the public file provisions 
of the Communications Act are met effectively and efficiently in the 21st century.
Today, we have before us a straightforward issue.
In 2002, Congress required that certain specified information be made available to the 
public, and it did so because of the public benefits that flow from transparency.  The statute 
specifically says all the information in the political file must be made “available for public 
inspection.” 
The question in front of us is whether, in the 21st Century, “available for public 
inspection” means stuck in office filing cabinets, or available online.
Or as one person put it:  “Who can be against mom, apple pie and the American way of 
transparency?”
I thank my colleagues for their input, and I thank Commission staff who have worked so
hard on this item.  In particular, I want to thank Sherrese Smith in my office, whose outstanding 
leadership, policy and legal skills, and energetic resolve were essential to today’s Order.  I’d also 
like to thank Bill Lake, Holly Saurer, and the Media Bureau staff who have done a tremendous 
job on this item.