Prometheus Radio’s Brandy Doyle celebrates FCC’s media consolidation rules rewrite

On April 30, 2007, Brandy Doyle was a freelance journalist in Tampa that was encouraged to give testimony at a series of federal hearings about media ownership and consolidation.

Standing in line for hours with hundreds of others at the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center — hoping to give testimony to the Federal Communications Commission — among the many things on her mind, Doyle was wondering whether or not she was going to be fired for what she had to say.

“I was speaking out against my newsroom,” she says. The way news happens, she says, is that in-depth coverage doesn’t fit with the business model. She was never given the chance to cover communities the way she felt that deserved to be covered. “I’d never been asked to write a second draft,” she says.

Though she made headlines, she wasn’t fired. But it was, unbeknownst to her, the first day on the job for Prometheus Radio, a West Philadelphia-based nonprofit advocacy group that speaks out against media monopoly in large markets like Philadelphia and actively helps small organizations and individuals set up low-power radio stations across the country. Be sure to see our coverage of Prometheus and one local low-power station here, for more details.

Last week, the organization scored a second major recent victory in its battle.

Philadelphia’s U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit decided in favor of the group in its Prometheus vs. FCC suit, deciding that the regulator’s rules that allow one company to own a newspaper and a broadcast property in the same market need to be rewritten. “The court decided that the FCC failed to give the public adequate participation in shaping the rules,” Doyle says. “You have the right to a diverse media.”

Though there’s no companies in Philadelphia that have both a print and broadcast property — though, there are related concerns from some about Comcast’s new role as content provider and service provider — thus was the case in Tampa, where Doyle was introduced to Prometheus.

But the decision hit home for her on both personal and professional levels, now that she represents Prometheus as Policy Director, one of eight full-time employees.

We spoke to Doyle about the organization’s recent victory and what’s next, after the jump.

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