The movement for government transparency has taken huge strides in the last two years. More and more government data -- everything from police reports to budget spreadsheets -- is being made available for journalists and citizens to inspect and report on. The need for such transparency speaks for itself: a government that is funded by and dedicated to the service of the people should be accountable to the people for what it is doing to serve them.

What we need now, more than ever, is a similar movement for media transparency. A good place to start is with the most popular and dominant news and entertainment medium: broadcast television. Like government, broadcast station owners are the direct beneficiaries of public largesse. They operate with free government grants to use swaths of a scarce and publicly owned resource-broadcast spectrum the collective value of which is estimated in the tens of billions of dollars, according to some estimates. Also like government, broadcasters are expected to use this taxpayer giveaway to serve the needs of their local communities where they're licensed.

Given the extraordinary value of the public's upfront payment to broadcasters, one would expect a high level transparency and oversight over how broadcasters are upholding their side of the bargain. Yet since the early 1980s the FCC has abandoned many of the core tools it once used to collect data about the state of our media and how broadcasters are serving local communities. Unfortunately, by eliminating access to these transparency tools, the FCC made it more difficult for citizens and broadcasters to have a meaningful dialog about the quantity and quality of local service that communities need and deserve.

Over the years, there have been attempts to restore the transparency and public participation that was crippled nearly thirty years ago. One attempt, known as "Enhanced Disclosure," was adopted by a bipartisan FCC vote in 2007, but was never implemented. Unfortunately, a recent FCC staff report on the future of media suggested closing the door on that effort. 

But when a door closes, a window opens. Indeed, that very same FCC report provides a window of opportunity to strengthen the FCC's ability to collect data and empower local citizens to advocate for better media in their communities. While the report recommended doing away with the already approved Enhanced Disclosure form, it also argued that "disclosure be made a pillar of FCC policy." In the weeks since the report was published, public interest groups have been developing a new proposal to bring greater transparency to how broadcasters are serving the public interest.

Late last week the Public Interest Public Airwaves Coalition wrote to Federal Communications Commission Chair Julius Genachowski urging him to take action to put in place new tools for media transparency. The coalition has created a sample online form as a model for how broadcasters could easily submit vital data on their programming, including: Local News; Local Civic/Governmental Affairs; Local Electoral Affairs; and Closed Captioning/Emergency Accessibility Complaints. Because coverage of local electoral issues is critical to an informed citizenry, broadcasters should also be required to disclose all local electoral affairs programming aired during the peak campaign periods.

The chair of the FCC has famously claimed that he wants to run a "data-driven" agency. After years of stripping itself of the tools needed to collect meaningful data about the state of our media, it is time for the FCC to move swiftly on this issue.