During a break I asked the chairman if he was still committed to trying to get a vote on media ownership by the last public meeting in December; he had no comment.
At the end of the hearing several reporters asked that question in various forms and mentioned the protest of several members of Congress, which we reported last week. Martin said media ownership is an emotional issue and anytime the commission does anything it runs the risk of a backlash from Congress. He still had no comment on the timing except to say he’s still discussing the topic with the other commissioners.
Democratic Commissioners Copps and Adelstein told reporters afterwards the turnout was low compared to other localism hearings and cited short notice for that.
Based on what they heard yesterday, Adelstein said, “It sounds from the answers we got there’s a lot of work to do.”
