I got a voicemail out of the blue from the lead FCC attorney working on my Freedom of Information Act request into how the agency makes judgments on journalism. Hard to know what precipitated it, but it came a week to the day after the FCC dinged a Las Vegas TV station six figures for actively constructing fake news reports on car dealership closeout sales.
According to the message, the FCC’s made some progress on my request, and the hope is to have it completed by the end of March. That would be a little more than a year after I filed it, and there’s still no concrete information on the amount or scope of information uncovered to date.
Strangely, the attorney asked for another deadline extension, which makes little sense because the last one expired at the end of August. Regardless, receiving a sign of life is heartening, though a full and fair resolution is no certainty at this stage.