FCC Orders Reporting of Multilingual EAS Efforts

The commission will require state EAS plans to include descriptions of how EAS participants such as broadcasters and cable carriers make EAS alert content available to non-English speakers. Under the order, EAS participants will have to provide that information to State Emergency Communications Committees upon request, so the SECCs can submit it as part of the State EAS Plan, the order said. “We mandate no specific compliance method, but rather wish to provide the broadest flexibility to state and local governments and EAS Participants to describe any steps that have been taken to provide multilingual EAS Alerts for their respective communities,” the order said. The requirement can be fulfilled “by indicating that no steps have been taken,” the order said. MMTC and UCC didn't comment.

The order doesn't go as far as was requested by the Katrina petition filers, who asked the commission to withdraw a draft order with proposals similar to the final order. The commission should “adopt directives that more effectively protect individuals who are not conversant in English,” MMTC said in a filing in December. Proposals from the petitioners included support for multilingual radio programming during an emergency, and FCC incentives for broadcasters that voluntarily offer multilingual EAS alerts.

Implementing the petitioners' more aggressive proposals “would be difficult if not impossible to do within the existing EAS architecture,” the order said. “We find that the reporting requirements adopted in this item will, by other means, provide information that may facilitate the dissemination of multilingual local, state and national emergency information via the EAS,” the order said.

“Alert originators” are “best positioned” to make multilingual alerts viable, the order said. NAB had argued that EAS participants like broadcasters aren't well situated to translate EAS alerts. “The broadcasters highlighted various risks concerning technology, accuracy and liability that raise obstacles to translating EAS alerts at the EAS Participant-level, as opposed to passing through multilingual EAS alerts,” NAB said in a February filing. “Communities and states are best positioned to understand the language diversity and needs across their jurisdictions,” the order said. The FCC also said “alternative mechanisms and technologies for providing multilingual alerting” are likely to become more widely deployed as time passes.

The order has a “non-existent” cost-benefit analysis and could lead to stricter regulations down the road, O'Rielly said in his statement on the order, explaining his partial dissent. Though O'Rielly praised the order's flexibility in allowing its requirement to be fulfilled by reporting that no action is being taken, he said he wouldn't support the information collected being used as a justification for future regulation. “I am unlikely to support any actions down the road that use EAS participants’ legitimate disclosures that they are not implementing multilingual alerts as the sole basis for costly, burdensome rules,” he said. “Cost-benefit information is needed to inform Commissioners as to the validity of particular rules as they consider and vote an item, not after the fact,” O'Rielly said. “I vehemently disagree with this cost-benefit analysis -- or, more appropriately, lack thereof contained within -- and the Commission’s continued refusal to bother with such work until after burdens are already imposed.”