Next FCC Foreign Media Outlet Report Due April 11th

By law, all “United States-based foreign media outlets” must submit to the Commission a report containing: 1) the name of such outlet; and 2) a description of the relationship of such outlet to the foreign principal of such outlet, including a description of the legal structure of such relationship and any funding that such outlet receives from such principal. The report must be filed every 6 months.

Note that the requirement applies to video programmers, other than news organizations, which are supported by foreign governments or foreign political parties or their agents.

The scope of the requirement if very narrow.  Relatively few entities file.  As noted communications attorney David Oxenford noted:

This reporting requirement should not be confused with the broader obligation of all broadcasters to determine if foreign governments or their agents have bought program time or issue advertising on broadcast stations, or the recently adopted rules about reporting broadcast ownership interests of foreign adversaries. 

Reports are to be filed with the FCC at ndaareport@fcc.gov. Those filing reports should format the reports as Adobe® Acrobat® (PDF) or Microsoft® Word documents and attach them to the e-mail.  The e-mail submitting the report should include a subject or caption referring to the NDAA disclosure requirement and the name of the outlet.

You can see the FCC’s Public Notice here.

An additional discussion of the issue in David Oxenford’s Broadcast Blog can be found here.