Ted Hearn

Federal Incommunicado Commission
August 8, 2007

On Tuesday morning, shortly after one of the few Federal Communications Commission meetings to start on time, a reporter sought out FCC member Deborah Taylor Tate as she calmly headed for the exit door.

“May I ask you a question?” the reporter said.

After panning the ceiling with her eyes, Republican Tate snapped, “No.” She laughed, turned on her heel and fled the nearly empty meeting room. If there were such a thing as conduct unbecoming of a federal official, Tate might now be doing time in the FCC’s Gettysburg, Pa., field office monitoring carrier-to-noise ratios.

Tate’s frigid response, though, was hardly a surprise. Since joining the FCC in January 2006, she has held exactly one press conference. But even that depends on the your definition of a press conference. Her one gathering with reporters, coming a few weeks into her tenure, consisted of juice and cookies and absolutely no news, unless you think a discussion of her teenage daughter’s vacation romp in the Bahamas was news. One reporter got up and left.

Tate simply won’t meet with reporters collectively or individually. Trying to get to the bottom of her please-don’t-bother-me smugness would run anyone smack into a tautological bind: How can you find the cause of Tate’s mediaphobia if she won’t talk to the media?

She isn’t alone. None of the five FCC commissioners, three Republicans and two Democrats, is especially press friendly.

FCC chairman Kevin Martin, also a Republican, also is not a big believer in communications. Since taking the reins from Michael Powell in March 2005, Martin has held exactly two press conferences at FCC headquarters, the first one not coming until a year into his new job atop the 2,000-person bureaucracy.

After a slow start himself, Powell grew more comfortable with the media and eventually called in reporters on an almost monthly basis. Powell got so good at these sessions they were almost like watching Babe Ruth take batting practice.

A press conference is when a federal official meets with reporters on the record for at least 30 minutes without coaching or interruption by staff.

Martin’s staff insists that his numerous press gatherings after FCC monthly meetings and after his appearances on Capitol Hill and at industry conventions should count as press conferences, even if they just run a few minutes and even if reporters can't hear the soft-spoken Martin over the din of other voices bouncing off the cavernous marble hallways in the House and Senate.

Some of them doubtless should count, because of Martin’s inherent news-making capability. But a lot of them shouldn’t unless you want to buy into Martin’s fuzzy math. Here’s why: Catching up with Martin following an FCC meeting, for instance, is always problematic because it’s impossible to know when the meeting is going to begin.

Take the agency’s April 25 meeting, which, like all FCC meetings, can be seen over the Internet. A reporter was unavoidably detained in Florida that Wednesday morning. The Webcast was up and running but no meeting was on the screen. The reporter took an afternoon flight to D.C. By the time he got home in the early evening, the FCC meeting still had not begun.

In the Internet age, not too many reporters have all day to loiter at FCC headquarters to accommodate Martin’s lack of time-management skills. When Martin does agree to take questioning, his press handlers routinely cut it off after about seven or eight minutes, which is insufficient time to understand where he is taking an agency that needs to raise at least $10 billion in the 700 MHz auction next year; and an agency which could have a national disaster on its hands, if it doesn’t manage well the cutoff of analog TV in February 2009 as mandated by federal law.

Martin’s refusal to meet with FCC beat reporters regularly for extensive examination of his policies and his reliance on drive-by press scrums are deliberate. For many years, the FCC used to publish a calendar of events which, among others things, listed the whereabouts of FCC officials and senior staff over the next four to six weeks.

When Martin took over, the calendar of events was abolished, making it a guessing game where Martin has committed to speak.

More recently, Martin has eliminated the long-standing practice of publishing the date of each monthly meeting one-year in advance. The FCC’s July 31 meeting was announced on July 24 and its Aug. 7 meeting was announced on Aug. 3, a Friday. Anyone who needed to prepare for the meeting had exactly one business day to do so. Is there a self-respecting lawyer in the United States of Due Process who would call that good government?

(click here for part two)

Posted by Ted Hearn on August 8, 2007 | Comments (2)