Jounalism
is to right the truth, to defend the weak against the strong, to fight for justice,
...and to bring a healing perspective to bear on the
terrible hates and fears of mankind, in the hope that someday
it navigates us toward a time when we enjoy the diversity of the fruit in the garden; and not so willing to kill each other over them.
--I.F.Stone, 1937
Hoover Studio of Public Interest, Convenience and Necessity
Until recently the principles of media's constitutional existence is to always serve the public interest, convenience and necessity.
Standards to safeguard a public from broadcasts promoting dis-information or allowing advertisers to prey false claims upon
a trusting public. Standards to keep speech free in the information age, and as we move farther into this new age we must take
care not to completely abandon our Communications Standards as they host the antidote for propaganda too often spun as "no-spin" journalism.
I'll speak: you decide -Irony tends to believe only what has first been officially denied.
The landscape of media is going from newsprint to sound-bytes and our
media assumes the American attention span of 18 seconds; seemingly
unaware of the impact such a trend may have on decision making. BIG
Media is overtaking local media and homogenizing discussion along
with regional flavors. These changes are occurring rapidly; so we
best pay attention or lose out on all aspects of media access rights
or what we now call NET-NEUTRALITY: all information treated equally.
A tremendous momentum paradigm shift is building that has been due to
occur for some time now. That said: Welcome Community Radio to Iowa's
fantastic imagination as as we know what to do with it. It is a
pleasure to report of so many Bright spots on the horizon. Civic
Access Media Service is organizing through community producers at
Channel-18 PATV Iowa City. CAMS wants to create a Statewide
Cable-Satellite Public Affairs Network for Iowans- sharing
programming with other Access Stations and POD-Cast
I pass along to you today that Iowans in all regions are becoming ambitious about their media.
SCTV Iowa City (Senior Center Television) is moving deeper into
technologies-Video Streaming and Pod-Casting... We have New Bohemians
in Cedar Rapids. There are media groups forming around applications
in Dubuque, Davenport, Muscatine and Des Moines. It is happening all
together- forming from a variety of completely new ways of thinking
and linking a Community Public Radio Network of thinking across our
state. OUR thinking: IowaFM complete with the ethereal space to hear
ourselves think. Call-In radio bubbling from our communities like
wellsprings all over the state: EACH voice clear enough to cover
their Low-Power or Full-Power area until we cover Iowa wall to
wall... ALL the other voices from the top; we know them still, IowaFM
is all about value-added media bubbling up and spreading like
rhizomes across 99 counties. A shift that has been due to occur is
now happening and we may soon be able to once again hear ourselves
THINK: on the radio. This is actually an exciting time to be joining
community media projects. Ursula Ruddenburg from Ames is working with
radioforpeople.org, and if you are in earshot and want to become
involved with starting a station: she is coordinating IowaFM Network
and wants to hear from YOU at radioforpeople.org there are cards with
websites at the back of the room. There is Common Frequency to thank
and the Mid-West Media Applicants, help yourself.
IowaFm's bias is that the most interesting and creative radio in America
is invariably heard in hamlets across this land on the left hand side of
the FM dial [87/92 Mhz] for public use. Coggon will be 88.7
So I thought I would talk a few minutes today about a journalism since
we mark Hoover Studios in August 2007, A time we all know, Big Media
journalism and a journalism that New Bohemia/IowaFM project want to
help. Hoover Studios supports Iowans to create for themselves
locally: A Community Media Journalism of Citizens; retirees,
students, laborers, and non-profits, who may operate with budgets
that have to put signs in the yards to get a word out edgewise. New
Bohemia wants to help Iowans create Community shows, Talk shows,
Health shows, Ag shows, Call-In shows, and build an Information
Services Lab with 3 studios and a mobile unit. You got to like these
guys: they think big. And Sustainably! Michael Richards is a founder
of this 501c3 and all contributions are tax deductible
Why Hoover, Why Now
The landscape of what we know to be communications will be rapidly
changing over the next few years and local journalism will have to
seek new ways of information gathering. IowaFM opens Hoover Studios
to become a network training ground for a Regional Citizen Public
Broadcast Media Service to rise from4 current Full-Power
FCC-applications offering Rural Radio coverage and subsequent
Low-Power feeder stations in surrounding cities.
Edward Bernays, the so-called father of public relations, wrote about an
invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country.
He was referring to journalism, the media.
That was in Woodrow Wilson's presidency a100 years ago, at the very
beginning of corporate journalism. It is a history few journalist
talk about or think about, and it began with the arrival of corporate
advertising. As the new corporations began taking over the press,
something called "professional journalism" was invented. To
attract big advertisers, the new corporate press had to appear
respectable, pillars of the establishment—objective, impartial,
balanced. The first schools of journalism were set up, and a
mythology of liberal neutrality was spun around the professional
journalist. The right to freedom of expression was associated with
the new media and with the great corporations that lead our public
opinion. For what the public did not consider was- to be
professional, journalists had to ensure that news and opinion were
dominated by official sources, And THAT is extremely true today more
than ever been before. Go through any paper on any day, and check the
sources. Of the main political stories—foreign and domestic—you'll
find they're dominated by government and other established interests.
Because THAT is the essence of our professional journalism.
I am not suggesting that independent journalism is, was or ever will be
excluded, but it is more likely that IF an Independent Journalistic
Piece is found in any given periodical; it is the honorable
exception.
Let's consider the queer-role Judith Miller played in the run-up to the
Iraq invasion. Yes, her work became a scandal, but only after it
validated and promoted an invasion based on deceitful economic
ambitions: and is perhaps the very best reason why we need to create
a 5th estate: of citizen journalism. Miller's parroting of official
sources and vested interests came right off the Vice-Presidents desk
[with a spoof of cloak and dagger] and her parrot-esque "journalism"
is not all that different from the work of many famous reporters we
hear each day: on the networks and NPR as in fact; consolidation
grows more common with each and every day.
On August 24 last year the New York Times declared in an editorial:
What the Times didn't say was that if that paper and the rest of the media
exposed the truth, a million people would be alive today. In every
university, at every station, in every news room, teachers of
journalism, editors, and owners need to ask themselves about the part
they played and still play in the bloodshed for oil in our name.
Consider now how powerful this invisible government has grown in the
last 25 years. In 1983 the principle global media was owned by 50
corporations, most of them American. In 2002 this had fallen to just
9 corporations. Today it is probably about 5. Rupert Murdoch expects
that after a NY/Presidential race there will likely be just three
global media giants, and his company will be sitting on top- making
it increasingly difficult and unlikely you will hear localism on your
dial. We hope that you will consider joining us for a Preamble
Discussion in West Branch Iowa on a summer day to reflect upon the impact
and significance of the Radio Conferences of the 1920's by (then U.S.
Commerce Secretary) Herbert Hoover and to plan a series of BANDWIDTH
Conferences to rekindle the Standards that defined the Media and the
4th estate
Mid-West Media Bandwidth Conferences hope to bring communities clarity
concerning the ever-changing landscape of our Non-Commercial and
Commercial media---
Brett Gordon-----Telecommunications Commissioner June 8, 2007
Happy Birthday, FCC?
June 19, 2009
As the Federal Communications Commission celebrates the 75th anniversary
of its formation Friday, Minority Media and Telecommunications Council
President and Executive Director David Honig and Everett C. Parker,
founder of the Office of Communication of the United Church of Christ,
aren’t exactly sending flowers. Instead, they’ve sent an unvarnished
yet affectionate look back on the commission’s first 75 years in the
form of this exclusive op-ed for Broadcastingcable.com.
THE FCC AT 75: FOR DIVERSITY, A HISTORY OF SHAME, A FUTURE OF HOPE
Everett C. Parker and David Honig
June 19, 2009
On this day 75 years ago the Federal Communications Commission was
born. Today we celebrate the FCC’s birthday by recounting the history
of America’s most influential institutions–the mass media and
telecommunications–in tying together the multicultural, multilingual
and multiracial jambalaya we call America in the Digital Age.
Today’s FCC can take pride in many achievements. Technologically our
media and telecom services are the world’s standard. The Internet is
ubiquitous and is transforming society at a breathtaking pace. And one
week ago today, after 22 years of painstaking work, the nation
transitioned to digital television.
But something is missing. Amidst the celebratory milestones, one
achievement stands glaringly unfulfilled: through FCC policies,
broadcasting and telecommunications ownership do not remotely reflect
the rich diversity of our nation.
What is the complete history of the FCC, this little known agency
that oversees one-sixth of our economy, that holds custody of the very
First of the constitution’s amendments, in whose administrative heart
lies the promise of democracy itself?
Before the agency celebrates its modest achievements in advancing
diversity, it should honestly acknowledge its history of ratifying and
validating segregation and failing to cure the continuing effects of
segregation.
It is a story of shame and disgrace. Throughout its first 40 years,
the FCC routinely denied license applications of minority and Jewish
would-be broadcasters. For most of that time, consumers were due no
process and had no standing. Diversity was an alien concept.
In those days a weekly newspaper required about the same capital
investment and expertise as did a radio station. Then why, for decades,
did minorities own and operate hundreds of newspapers but no radio
stations?
The answer is that the FCC was a classic discriminatory gatekeeper
and people of color were not welcome. For 40 years the FCC gave
non-minorities a monumental competitive advantage and head start in
acquiring lucrative publicly owned spectrum. And it overregulated
minorities out of any hope of becoming broadcast executives or
licensees. Through costly comparative hearings, inordinate financial
and “broadcast experience” showings, and delays in considering dozens
of minority ownership proposals, the Commission awarded almost all of
the trillions of dollars in asset value embedded within the radio
frequency spectrum to industries that are as homogeneous as a country
club picnic.
In 1978 there was a glimmer of hope. The FCC’s Tax Certificate
Policy, which deferred capital gains taxes on sales of stations to
minorities, quintupled the number of minority owned broadcast stations.
But after Congress repealed the policy in 1995, neither Congress nor
the FCC adopted any programs to replace it.
To be sure, in 1996 Congress did instruct the FCC to eliminate
market entry barriers and to disseminate licenses among a wide variety
of businesses–including those owned by minorities and women. Yet in
response the FCC has taken almost no significant steps to promote
ownership diversity.
Thus it is no accident that 75 years after the FCC’s birth, when
more than one out of three Americans is a person of color, there are
almost no minority owned telecom carriers, there are only two remaining
minority owned cable franchisees, minority television ownership stands
at 3% and dropping fast, and minority radio ownership is stagnant at
7.8%.
What about equal employment opportunity? Thanks to the pioneering
efforts of the Office of Communication of the United Church of Christ,
the FCC adopted broadcast, cable and common carrier EEO rules in the
1970s–then almost always proceeded not to enforce them. What little
enforcement the FCC undertook in the 1990s died in 2001, leading to a
purge of almost all minorities from English language radio journalism.
What about discrimination in advertising–the notorious “no urban
dictates” and “no Spanish dictates” many advertisers use to keep their
messages off Black and Spanish radio and thus out of the hearing of
most African and Hispanic shoppers? In 2007, after 23 years of delay
and a cost of $200 million a year in foregone revenue to minority
broadcasters, the FCC finally banned advertising discrimination. Yet
the FCC still hasn’t appointed a compliance officer to enforce this
vital rule.
Today the greatest challenge facing the FCC is its mandate to send
Congress a National Broadband Plan by February. As it confronts this
task, the FCC faces a raft of damning statistics, released two days ago
by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, showing that only 46% of
African Americans, and 35% of families with under $20,000 in household
income, had adopted the Internet in their homes–compared to 63% of all
Americans.
To appreciate how essential it is that the FCC close this digital
divide, consider how broadband can transform the most basic elements of
a complete life. With health screening being done online, how can
anyone without broadband really know how to protect her family’s
physical well being? With employment applications online, how can
anyone without broadband find the best job, or telecommute to that job?
And with elections now dominated by the Internet, how can anyone
without broadband participate effectively in democracy?
The media, telecom and
broadband diversity are worthy of the same
attention we devote to education, civic discourse, entertainment,
cultural expression, trade, and economic growth and opportunity. In our
economy, the industries over which the FCC holds sway drive all of
these issues. When the FCC opened its doors 75 years ago, American
society was wedded to the farm and the factory. Today the FCC presides
over a digital society whose economic, social, cultural, trade and
democratic fundamentals depend on access to the media and adoption of
broadband.
If the FCC truly wants to advance diversity, it has all of the
necessary tools at its disposal: a moral and legal mandate, momentum
springing from the DTV transition, a wealth of data, and dozens of
innovative proposals from MMTC to advance diversity. But if the FCC
fails to lead when it comes to diversity, it invites obsolescence.
People of color are slated to become the nation’s majority by the year
2042. How will the next generation view the Commission’s role and
relevance to their lives?
We are “lifers” in the FCC World, having devoted our lives to media
and telecom policy. We deeply respect the Federal Communications
Commission, and we defend its institutional honor even when it does the
wrong thing. As true friends, we always aspire to help it do the right
thing.
Fortunately, the FCC is in good hands now. And therefore, on this
19th day of June 2009, we wish the FCC’s new and farsighted stewards of
the public interest the happiest of birthdays. And we pray for many
more birthdays to come as the new FCC takes up the mantle of diversity
and inclusion for all Americans in the Technologies of Freedom. Above
all, by its Centennial - June 19, 2034 - we hope the FCC will deliver
to the American people the greatest birthday present: universal
first-class digital citizenship.
