MEDIA COUNCIL RECOMMENDS TEAMING UP WITH GOVT. IN EMERGENCIES
The Media Security & Reliability Council (MSRC), formed in the aftermath of Sept. 11, voted overwhelmingly to adopt a series of “best practice” recommendations to ensure that timely and accurate emergency information was transmitted to the public in the event of a disaster like the terrorist attacks (CD June 10 p8). Among the recommendations is one that the media should form a public/private partnership with the govt. on federal, state and local levels. How that partnership would look and what shape it would take has yet to be decided.
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The recommendations adopted late Wed. were general proposals to the FCC, with specific details expected to be presented at the next meeting of the full 41-member committee scheduled for Nov. 6. FCC Chmn. Powell created MSRC to advise the agency on how best to ensure that the public stay informed in an emergency.
The council recommended a single federal entity be responsible for warnings to the public, while local and state govts. coordinated with the media to create emergency communications procedures. Local media should form emergency jurisdiction/market cooperatives to assure coordinated delivery of emergency messages, the council said, and the Emergency Alert System (EAS) should be tested periodically, upgraded as necessary and maintained at local, state and national levels. The adopted recommendations had been presented by the council’s Public Communications & Safety working group in May.
MSRC recommended that research into the development of alternative, redundant and supplemental means of communicating emergency information to the public be accelerated. Another recommendation was that the local media cooperatives share the best practices they came developed.
The council also adopted proposals from its working group on Communication Infrastructure Security, Access & Restoration, among them that national media companies reassess their vulnerabilities and take measures to prevent loss of service and to expedite recovery in a disaster. News media should consider agreements to allow flexibility in local use and retransmission of content in govt.-declared emergencies, the council said, and local media should conduct vulnerability assessments and have disaster recovery plans that were periodically reviewed, updated and practiced. Another recommendation was that local media assess their collective vulnerabilities and develop cooperative agreements and plans to ensure some media remained in service under extreme conditions. The council said the govt. should coordinate the creation of a Media Common Alert Protocol to deliver emergency messages through digital networks.