A professor working with a coalition consisting of over three dozen organizations says that the FCC decided to collect comprehensive stats pertaining to equal employment opportunity way back in 2004, and argued that it’s high time the Commission start doing it.
The group fired off a letter in support of an earlier filing on the topic from the National Hispanic Media Coalition.
“The FCC’s aspiration to be an agency that is open, transparent, and driven by data, is significantly undermined by its continued failure to implement its 2004 decision to collect statistics needed by the FCC and the public to assess whether minorities and women are being afforded equal employment opportunities in the media,” said NHMC representative Professor Angela Campbell, director of Georgetown Law’s Institute for Public Representation.
The coalition said, “Members of the public could gain access to this data by visiting the station and looking at the public file or by going to FCC headquarters. The FCC used this data to compile annual ‘trend reports’ tracking the aggregate percentage of people of color and women employed in each job category.”
“EEO data is an indispensable tool that people in local communities can use to hold their media organizations accountable,” stated Angelo Falcon, Executive Director of the National Institute for Latino Policy.
Organizations signing on to the letter include: Access Humboldt; AfterDark CATV PRO; Alliance for Community Media; Alliance for Women in Media; Asian American Justice Center; Benton Foundation; Center for Media Justice; Chicago Media Action; Committee for Hispanic Children and Families, Inc.; Common Cause; Communications Workers of America; Dr. Clara E. Rodriguez, Professor, Fordham University, Department of Sociology & Anthropology; Free Press; Future of Music Coalition; Hispanic Association of Colleges and Universities (HACU); Hispanic National Bar Association; Industry Ears; Media Access Project; Media Alliance; Media and Democracy Coalition; Media Working Group; Minority Media and Telecommunications Council; National Association of Hispanic Federal Executives; National Association of Hispanic Journalists; National Association of Hispanic Publications; National Association of Latino Independent Producers (NALIP); National Conference of Puerto Rican Women, Inc. (NACOPRW); New America Foundation, Open Technology Initiative; National Hispana Leadership Institute (NHLI); National Hispanic Media Coalition (NHMC); National Institute of Latino Policy (NiLP); Office of Communication, United Church of Christ, Inc.; Public Knowledge; Reclaim the Media; SueWilsonReports; The Transmission Project; United States Hispanic Leadership Institute; UNITY: Journalists of Color; and Women in Media & News (WIMN).
