After more than a year of investigation, the Federal Communications Commission is set to release its report on the Future of Media this week. While there have been a number of “future of news” reports over the last few years, this one has potential to help reshape the media policy landscape that shapes everything we watch, read and hear. For too long, technology has outpaced media policy and the public interest is being left behind. Steve Coll, the president of the New America Foundation, said it best when he wrote earlier this year, “We badly require new policies and new thinking in Washington because the media policy regime we have inherited is out of date and inadequate for the times in which we live.” 

The FCC’s Future of Media inquiry was announced with much fanfare last year, and marked one of the first times the agency has undertaken such a bold and expansive examination. As the FCC prepares to release their report this week, and we see if the product lives up to its promise, it is worth revisiting what public interest organizations and thousands of citizens told the FCC over the past year. 

More than 30 media reform and journalism organizations submitted joint comments, and another 9,000 citizens submitted their own responses to the FCC last spring. In response to the FCC’s Future of Media project, we suggest a number of FCC actions that would help preserve or enhance the production and availability of news and information for local communities. Below is a summary of our recommendations to the Commission.

• Maintain local media ownership limits, and prevent any contractual circumvention of the FCC’s media ownership rules. 
• Protect the open nature of the Internet  
• Increase transparency and accountability of local media through reformation of the sponsorship identification rules, and implementation of enhanced reporting requirements and online public file requirements for local broadcasters 
• Act on a still extant Petition for Inquiry into the use of misinformation and hate speech in media 
• Conduct additional information collection and analyses on broadband  and media ownership data 
• Support policies that encourage provision of and access to public and government access channels 

Beyond the FCC’s jurisdiction there are a range of important media policies that shape our media system locally and nationally. Thus, we also discuss broader policy shifts that could support a healthy information ecosystem, including: 

• The government's role in supporting public and noncommercial media outlets and infrastructure, including new funding models for public media  
• Incentives to encourage private sector production of media 
• Ways to enhance public engagement with information 
• Encouraging anchor institutions, such as schools, universities, and libraries, to support community information flows and provide media training 
• The importance of media literacy training in preparing citizens to use media in democratic life.  

When the FCC releases their report later this week, these recommendations should serve as a yard stick to measure the FCC’s own findings and recommendations. We’ll distill what promises to be an enormous report for you here, so check back for more in the coming week.