Public Interest Groups Appeal Media Ownership Recon Order in 3rd Circuit

review, in a filing Thursday according to court documents (in Pacer) Since the appeal was filed before the rule’s effective date, Prometheus Radio Project and the Media Mobilizing Project may have plans to seek a stay of the rules, blogged Wilkinson Barker broadcast attorney David Oxenford. The order on reconsideration “once again fails to satisfy” the 3rd Circuit’s previous order that the FCC gather and analyze data about the impact of its rules on ownership diversity and retains a revenue based definition of an eligible entity, the petition for review said. The order draws opposite conclusions from the 2014 quadrennial review order on almost every issue despite being based on the same record, the petition said. ”To do this, the Commission ignores evidence in the record, misinterprets evidence, and fails to consider important aspects of the record.” The incubator program proposed in the recon order (see 1801180064) is “inconsistent with the findings dismissing the connection between ownership rules and diversity in the rest of the order,” and isn’t concrete enough to represent action on diversity, the groups said. The provisions that do away with ownership rules don’t consider the impact of doing so on ownership diversity, and so are arbitrary and capricious, they said. The 3rd Circuit should overturn the recon order and reinstate the provisions it eliminated in entirety, the groups said.