Choosing between the necessity and public interest standards in FCC review of media ownership rules.

Michigan Law Review, October, 2007 by DiCola, Peter

Section 202(h) of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, as amended, directs the Federal Communications Commission ("FCC") to review its media ownership rules every four years. But the statute contains an ambiguity regarding the standard of review that the FCC must apply during such proceedings. To retain a particular media ownership regulation, must the FCC merely show that the regulation advances one of the FCC's three public-interest goals for media: competition, diversity, and localism--applying a "public interest" standard? Or must the FCC meet the higher burden of demonstrating that the regulation is also indispensable for maintaining competition, diversity, or localism at some threshold level--applying a "necessity" standard? The answer to this procedural question...

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