Spurred by the recent announcement that current Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission will soon be stepping down, the United Church of Christ, OC Inc. joined a letter  with Common Cause and 46 other civil rights and public interest advocacy organizations last week, setting out for President Obama criteria for the next chair.   While recognizing the important achievements of Obama's last term, it concluded that the FCC still has, "much to do."   Highlighting the importance of media diversity and an open Internet, the letter outlined a number of media justice and communications rights issues President Obama endorsed as a Senator and presidential candidate and urged him to pursue those goals.    

As we noted early this year, the Federal Communications Commission heeded public pressure, and issued a proposal to reform predatory prison phone rates.  Early this week was the official beginning of the public comment period.  UCC OC Inc. and its allies filed at the FCC to oppose these unconscionable rates.

“Predatory prison phone rates are a moral issue,” said Earl Williams, chairs the board of the United Church of Christ Office of Communication, Inc. “We strongly urge the FCC to take rapid steps to lower the price of long-distance rates that can prevent children from calling their fathers, grandmothers from calling their grandsons and pastors from calling their congregants.”

UCC OC Inc. is collecting endorsements from religious organizations and clergy to oppose the practice, and will be organizing for a Father's Day action, reprising last year's successful effort.  Please add your name or organizational endorsement.  This letter will be filed next month at the FCC. 

Earlier this year, Rev. Sala Nolan-Gonzales testified at Rainbow/PUSH's hearing on the topic . She spoke from her long experience visiting prisons every day, talking about the small amount of money prisoners receive for the work they perform while incarcerated.   In addition, Rev. Nolan-Gonzales described the long-standing UCC effort in solidarity with Hawaiian men who are in federal prison at Saguaro, in Arizona, removed from their families and spiritual advisors by more than 4,000 miles. She closed her moving statement as follows:

95% of prisoners return to community. As community members, it is in our best interest to help them through this process so they return to us with some semblance of family and personal connections. If we cannot help them, at the very least, we should do no more harm. Current phone charges are destructive and cruel. They need to be regulated.   

The statement below can be attributed to Earl Williams, chair, and Cheryl A. Leanza, policy advisor, United Church of Christ, Office of Communication, Inc.:

Chairman Genachowski leaves behind him a string of accomplishments and a long to-do list for his successor.  We commend his early work to bring a comprehensive and long-overdue focus on bringing high-speed broadband Internet to all people, including low-income and underserved populations.  In contrast, we've been disappointed on the lack of focus on issues important to us and to the civil rights community.   While Internet access is important, it cannot address structural impediments to a diverse and accountable media.  It does not bring down the exorbitant rates that families pay to reach their loved ones in prison.  And as the FCC focuses now on persuading television stations to give up their spectrum so it can be used for new mobile devices, it appears that television ownership by women and people of color are suffering further decimation in the process. 

We urge the Administration to appoint a new Chair, and Acting Chair, who understands personally the broad diversity of this country and can quickly get to work on these issues. 

###

The United Church of Christ is a faith community rooted in justice. It established the Office of Communication, Inc. in 1959 as its ministry working to replace the media we have with the media we need to create a just society.   Learn more about UCC OC Inc. at www.uccmediajustice.org.

The Cleveland-based United Church of Christ has 5,700 local congregations across the United States. It was formed by the 1957 union of the Congregational Christian Churches and the Evangelical and Reformed Church.

Rev. Dr. Everett C. Parker, Father of the Media Reform Movement, Reaches 100 Years

Epic battles over the limits on the number of TV or radio stations one company can own…the fight for open Internet …the biggest fine in FCC history …the current fight against predatory prison phone rates…rules promoting transparency for political advertising…public participation in merger reviews, like AT&T’s attempted purchase of T-Mobile.

What do all of these events and decisions have in common?  None of them would have been possible without the efforts of a man who turns 100 this week—Rev. Dr. Everett C. Parker, founder of the media reform movement and founder of OC Inc.  Thanks to Parker’s  efforts,  members of the public can make their voices heard at the Federal Communications Commission, whether that means weighing in on the importance of media in our democracy or making sure people in prison are not exploited by telephone company gouging.

But that was not always the case. Back in 1959, Everett Parker was serving as communications director of the newly formed United Church of Christ when the Revs. Martin Luther King Jr. and Andrew Young asked the denomination for its support in the early days of the civil rights movement. King complained that southern television stations were editing the nightly news shows to remove all coverage of the civil rights movement, and asked the denomination to help.

With support from the national church, Parker traveled throughout the South, watched TV, recruited monitors and eventually challenged the broadcast license of WLBT-TV in Jackson, Mississippi. At first the FCC refused to acknowledge that individuals could challenge the awarding of broadcast licenses, but Parker and his supporters continued to pursue their fight.  In 1966, a federal court agreed that individuals had standing before the FCC and in 1969, the court ordered the FCC to strip WLBT-TV in Jackson, Mississippi, of its license. In 1980, the license was awarded to a minority-controlled group, the first time African Americans were put in charge of a powerful VHF station.  

Parker turns 100 years old today.  The work that the United Church of Christ’s Office of Communication, Inc. (OC Inc.) started under his leadership more than 50 years ago continues to be carried out, even as technologies evolve and the media landscape changes.  OC Inc. and the wider United Church of Christ continue to advocate for policies to promote diverse media voices and to protect the access of underserved people to telephone and Internet services. Parker’s legacy is also celebrated at the annual Everett C. Parker Ethics in Telecommunications Lecture, which recognizes persons who have pursued the ideals that characterized his work.

Read the United Church of Christ's tribute and former FCC Commissioner Michael Copps's tribute honoring Dr. Parker's centennial. He is featured in the Nation today.  Read more about Dr. Parker and the organization he founded.

Today, the Federal Communications Commission released today the long-awaited proposal to eliminate unjust long-distance prison phone rates. 

Cheryl Leanza, UCC OC Inc.'s policy advisor said, "By releasing this proposal, the FCC has started its journey to end the immoral system of gouging families of prisoners."  She added, "Next, family members and advocates around the country must make their voices heard loud and clear in Washington--and we hope that the final rule must be adopted with great speed.  We will likely see the companies and prison systems which benefit from this rule begin to fight back.  All people of faith must stand firm so that we can prevail."

UCC OC Inc. celebrated the day after Christmas by coordinating a filing with its civil rights and civil liberties allies to continue our joint campaign to increase the representation of women and people of color as media owners.  We filed jointly the day after Christmas at the Federal Communications Commission to demand that the FCC prioritize diversity in ownership over media consolidation. This filing builds on our prior efforts this fall.  UCC OC Inc. also submitted a detailed filing prepared by the Institute of Public Representation at Georgetown Law Center analyzing the changes in diverse media ownership over time and emphasizing the need to hold the line against consolidation.

Today we celebrate the more than decade-long fight to bring low power radio stations to the whole country as originally envisioned by then-Chairman Bill Kennard in 1998.  The United Church of Christ's media justice ministry has been one of the forefront supporters of this effort since that time, as part of our over-50 year old media justice work. 

 Much of the technical decision made today will mean that in most of the largest markets in the country, we will have some opportunities for these small non-commercial radio stations on the FM dial.   Cheryl Leanza, the policy advisor for UCC, OC Inc. said, "In every place that I have travelled around the country for the last 15 years talking about media justice, I see people's eyes light up when they imagine a local radio station filled with positive, local, unique programming that ordinary people control themselves.  I congratulate the Federal Communications Commission on taking the steps needed today to lay the groundwork for applications to be filed next year."

"Now is the time for anyone interested in either applying for a station, or perhaps more important, helping to support a local applicant, to study up and make connections in their own communities," continued Leanza, "UCC's media justice ministry will be reaching out to our churches early next year to be sure that our churches can connect with the Prometheus Radio Project's excellent network of applicants.  Churches might have extra space to loan or lease, programming, or church buildings upon which to place radio towers.  All of these will be important as we build a radio network for justice."

UCC OC Inc. is particularly gratified that the Commission has announced a clear timeframe for applicants to submit their filings, this date will make planning much easier for local non-profits and churches.  Leanza noted her disappointment that there wasn't a local programming obligation in the FCC decision, "many local clergy and religious individuals petitioned the FCC asking for a local programming requirement.  We are happy that applicants offering local programming will be preferred, but that preference is not the same as an obligation to offer some locally-created content."

The faith community as a whole has been extremely supportive of the expansion of low power radio throughout the extended effort it took to pass the Local Community Radio Act.  The UCC has a number of resources about the importance of low power radio, including its documentary The People's Voice, available on vimeo.  The UCC sponsored the Microradio Implementation Project in the early days of low power radio to support applicants.

### 

UCC OC Inc. is proud today to join with many other civil rights organizations to ask the Federal Communications Commission to put a stop to current proposals that would permit more media consolidation. While UCC OC Inc. is used to these fights--we've stopped the last two rounds of media consolidation proposed by the FCC--it is extremely disappointing to be offering the same critiques at this time as in past years. 

Last week the Federal Communications Commission released its first-ever comprehensive data about media ownership diversity.  For fourteen years the UCC has lead the charge asking the FCC to stand by its promises and take action to ensure our media is as diverse as the country it serves.  So last week should have felt like a victory--but unfortunately the data was released on the same day that the current FCC Chairman proposed to his colleagues to permit more media consolidation.

We should be clear -- the new data showed the same poor showing by women and people of color that we have always known about.  In the past outside groups like UCC's ally Free Press had attempted to create the data set the FCC had not.  Now we have the real, official, comprehensive government data and it shows that:

• For full power TV stations, women own 6.8 percent of the nation's television stations; Latinos control 2.9 percent, African-Americans .7 percent, Asian Americans .5 percent and American Indians .9 percent. 
•  For FM radio, women control 5.8 percent, Latinos control 2.7 percent, African-Americans 1.7 percent, Asian Americans .8 percent and American Indians .5 percent. 

Many studies (and pure common sense) explain that when the media is more consolidated, women owners and owners of color are more rare and less successful.  TV and radio stations owned by women and people of color are more likely to be independently owned, and independent stations have a hard time competing against conglomerates.  Diversity in ownership of any industry is an important value--but for the media it is even more important because the media shapes this country's political conversation and the way it views individuals and groups. 

Once media ownership rules are relaxed, the larger companies go on a buying spree.  They buy the smaller stations that they were prohibited from buying before.  These small stations run by women and people of color disappear from the marketplace leaving an already-concentrated marketplace even less representative than before.

Most aggravating, the FCC is proposing consolidation without giving anyone in the public a chance to analyze the new data.  And, the FCC might be going even further--might be concluding that ownership diversity is no longer relevant to promote a diverse marketplace of ideas.

We at UCC OC Inc. are hoping that cooler heads will prevail and the FCC will stop and deliberate further before pursuing additional concentration at the expense of media diversity.

Today the United Church of Christ's General Minister and President, Rev. Geoffrey Black, joined in solidarity with Federal Communications Commissioner Mignon Clyburn and our allies at the Center for Media Justice and the Media Action Grassroots Network at the Strong Families, Safe Communities rally.  The rally was part of the prison phone justice campaign to bring down the cost of telephone calls to prison.  Support this work by joining our campaign.  As they braved the chilly weather, the rally participants were pleased to learn that the Federal Communication Commission chairman moved the issue forward by starting the first phase of the regulatory process last night.  The UCC's General Minister and President said, “The exorbitant costs of prison phone calls take money out of the pockets of grandmothers, pastors and children to put it in the pockets of jailors.  We are here today to rally behind the Federal Communications Commission so that it will act to offer assistance to those families and people of faith who reach out to people in prison.”  UCC OC Inc.'s policy advisor Cheryl Leanza praised the Commission for starting the process today, “This is the first step for the Federal Communications Commission.  We are hopeful the other FCC Commissioners will vote this proposal, the FCC will gather the evidence it needs, and act swiftly to end the practice of predatory prison phone rates.”  Full remarks of Rev. Geoffrey Black.