A chill in the air

Journalists and media law experts this week are examining the Federal Communication Commission’s “guidance” that late-night and daytime talk shows carried on local stations are required to offer equal time to all political candidates vying for the same office.

Inside Radio explains the advisory. 

Among the main questions is how (and whether) the policy will be enforced. In his Reliable Sources newsletter, CNN’s Brian Stelter said his colleague Liam Reilly spoke with a source at the FCC who said “nothing has changed” and that “once again here, the threat is the point.”

Similarly, Andrew Jay Schwartzman, a longtime public interest lawyer, told The New York Times’ Jim Rutenberg that the FCC appeared to be trying to induce a chilling effect.

But he also suggested that conservative talk radio might similarly be affected — will the FCC go after them too?

As Deadline’s Ted Johnson wrote: “That is potentially significant, given the proliferation of talk shows featuring personalities like Hugh Hewitt and Sean Hannity, interviewing various political figures including those for elective office.”

News In Focus
Headlines, resources and events aligned with API’s four areas of focus.

Civic Discourse & Democracy

>> Judge blocks government from searching data seized from Post reporter (The Washington Post)

A federal judge said government officials may not review electronic devices seized from Washington Post reporter Hannah Natanson while litigation is ongoing. U.S. Magistrate Judge William B. Porter issued his ruling after The Post demanded in a court filing that federal law enforcement officials return the devices — a phone, two laptops, a recorder, a portable hard drive and a Garmin watch.

—

Culture & Inclusion

>> ‘My hands were really shaky’: high-school journalist documents ICE raids (The Guardian)

The presence of ICE agents in Minneapolis schools has increasingly affected young people, writes Rachel Leingang, including student journalist Lila Dominguez, who has written about the raids and called for ICE agents to leave the city.

—

Community Engagement & Trust

>> California is suffering truth decay. Sacramento should do something about it (Los Angeles Times) 

Lamenting the collapse of a deal in which Google would invest in local journalism in California, Mark Z. Barabak argues that the state is facing an information vacuum he describes as “truth decay.” The result is a daily diet of “news” that he says is “being sourced from partisans, propagandists and self-interested promoters who falsely style themselves as prophets of the unvarnished truth.”

—

Revenue & Resilience

>> AI data centers should help finance independent local journalism (Tech Policy Press) 

Some AI companies are offering tangible benefits to communities where they set up data centers. Funding for independent community journalists should be on the list of beneficiaries, writes Steven Waldman, the president of Rebuild Local News. He lays out ways that such arrangements could be structured so that the AI companies could not manipulate the coverage.

—

What else you need to know

📩 Mediaite starts a newsletter to summarize media newsletters (The New York Times)

💲How Vox is using Patreon to grow reader revenue and interaction (Press Gazette)

🤖 Report: Action, Ease & Personalization: AI chatbot news experiences (Center for News, Technology & Innovation)

📈 Even amid setbacks, public funding for local news is expanding at the state level (Poynter)

—

Weekend reads

+ My journey from foreign correspondent to Uber driver in Trump’s America (Steve Scherer on Substack)

+ A new vocabulary for journalism’s growing problem with expertise (Reuters Institute)

+ Climate stories are everywhere (The Nation)

+ U.S. media in the crosshairs (Nieman Reports)