The U.S. government ought to examine the public outreach that...
The U.S. government ought to examine the public outreach that was made for the Nov. 9 nationwide test of the Emergency Alert System (EAS), an FCC panel said. The Consumer Advisory Committee recommended to the commission that the agency and…
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the Federal Emergency Management Agency, which triggered the first-ever U.S.-wide EAS test, examine the “effectiveness” of outreach. Such a review also should examine communications with people who can’t hear well or can’t see well or who have “dual sensory loss disabilities,” the committee said. It also asked the FCC to start a review of what sort of information was available during the test to people with hearing disabilities. The audio of the test couldn’t be heard on some pay-TV stations and broadcast stations (CD Nov 14 p8). “There were a number of issues uncovered with regard to cable and satellite alerts,” wrote broadcast lawyers on the Pillsbury Winthrop law firm’s blog. Individual radio and TV stations in Oregon “and a number of other locations apparently” didn’t get the test, or had “excessive background audio noise in the test message,” attorneys Scott Flick and Paul Cicelski wrote Friday. Some TV stations received the test’s “video but no audio,” they added (http://xrl.us/bmimij). But “initial reports seem to indicate that the alert was heard in the vast majority of locations, and that the next area to focus on is ensuring that the content of the alert itself is clear and understandable to the public."