Starks, Clarke Seek New FCC Action to Restart Broadcasters' EEO Data Collection
Broadcasters' diversity hiring practices drew polar opposite reactions on the two sides of the Capitol Monday, with senior House Communications Subcommittee member Rep. Yvette Clarke, D-N.Y., joining FCC Commissioner Geoffrey Starks in pressing the FCC to revive its collection of equal employment opportunity workforce diversity data using Form 395-B. On the Senate side, Commerce Committee ranking member Ted Cruz, R-Texas, is objecting to CPB rules for member stations’ diverse workforce policies.
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“I believe it's time for the FCC to take the next step toward restoring [the EEO] mandate for broadcasters,” Clarke told reporters Monday afternoon. She said she’s renewing the request she made in 2019 with now-Senate Appropriations Financial Service Subcommittee Chairman Chris Van Hollen, D-Md., that urged the FCC under Chairman Ajit Pai to reinstate the data collection (see 1906110075). In 2021, the FCC unanimously approved a Further NPRM seeking comment on restarting the practice (see 2107260059).
Starks told reporters collecting broadcast workforce diversity data, "which we are statutorily required to do, will help the agency and Congress better understand” the landscape. “The record” the FCC refreshed via the 2021 FNPRM “is in” and “I am going to be working with my colleagues very quickly” to move forward once he circulates a proposed order, he said: “I'll stay to the four corners of what we're doing here, which is making sure that” the “full diversity of communities … is represented in the workforce."
Starks feels “very strongly that this is the correct path forward,” but “I don’t suppose to know where my colleagues are going to land” on the coming proposal. “I look forward to talking to” Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel and the other three commissioners about the issue, he said. Starks will “work with my colleagues” to decide whether the FCC publicly releases the collected data. Clarke favors making it public. “It's important for us to know, as a sort of benchmark,” although “we can't speculate on what the data will say,” she said. “However, we know ultimately, that the goal is to make sure that it is reflective of our civil society. And this will give us [a] benchmark of where we are in 2023, into 2024 [and] what's possible, what's doable, in terms of the talent that's out there.”
“There's no doubt that” the EEO data “is important as a reflection of who we are as a civil society,” Clarke said. “It's good to hold people accountable for reflecting the public at large” and it would “be really interesting to know where we are in 2023” in that respect given collection of such information “has been in limbo for over two decades.” Congress “is monitoring this new proceeding with lots of interest,” she said: “Doing so is an essential step toward providing the commission with a path toward compliance with” current law.
Cruz asked CPB CEO Patricia Harrison to respond by Dec. 22 to his concerns about its diversity hiring rules. CPB “has misconstrued” the Public Broadcasting Act’s “mandate to fund different types of television and radio stations [to] restrict its community service grants (CSGs) [to] stations that strive to be ‘diverse’ by considering traits like race and ethnicity in hiring and workforce development,” Cruz said in a letter to Harrison released Monday. Those CSG rules “originated with an Obama-era review of television grants [that] said public media should ‘ensure that the composition of boards and staff, especially senior management, be at least as diverse as the communities they serve.’”
Those “requirements remained in place as of” earlier this year, but the CPB board “decided to relax the eligibility criteria for television and radio CSGs [and] would instead require a ‘community representation statement,’” Cruz said. The board “made the rules vaguer to avoid legal challenges. But CPB remains committed to ensuring that traits like race and gender factor into stations’ hiring” decisions. “Assuming CPB’s characterization of the new ‘community representation’ requirement is accurate, it faces the same problem as the old ‘diversity’ requirement: it undermines the very pluralism and individuality it’s supposed to protect,” he said. “CPB must strike a balance of encouraging objectivity in programs it funds without exercising editorial control or infringing on stations’ creative independence. But the way the CSG diversity amendment was debated … suggests that CPB already knows which side it’s on.”
“CPB has received” Cruz’s “letter and we will respond to it as requested,” a spokesperson emailed.