The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights

Statement of Wade Henderson on Diversity in News Reporting

Speech by Wade Henderson at the National Press Club on March 15, 2002
Why Diversity and Competition in News Reporting Matters: The Case for Retention of the FCC Newspaper/Broadcast Ownership Rule

Good Morning, I am Wade Henderson, Executive Director of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights (LCCR).

The LCCR is our nation's oldest, largest, and most diverse coalition of organizations committed to the protection of civil and human rights in the United States.

At the outset, I should mention that while some of the Leadership Conference's member organizations officially support the retention of the ownership rule, the Leadership Conference, as a coalition, does not have a formal position on this specific rule.

However, I would like to make some brief comments on media diversity and localism ? two critically important issues to the civil rights community.

As many of you know, the civil rights community has long recognized the important role the media plays in creating a more equitable and just society.

And some of the civil rights community's earliest efforts in this area resulted from the failure of local media to accurately represent their community.

Take for example, Jackson, Mississippi in 1964, a time and place where:

· Local stations did not allow blacks to advertise.
· Local stations did not give blacks the opportunity to respond to the views expressed by representatives of the White Citizens Council.
(The Citizens' Council was organized by prominent business and political leaders in the Deep South to resist the enforcement of the Supreme Court's Brown decision ordering an end to school segregation.)
· Local stations did not show any broadcasts of local or national civil rights demonstrations.

It was Dr. King who a year earlier, (writing from the Birmingham jail) noted:

"Injustice must be exposed, with all the tension its exposure creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured."
In Jackson, however, this was not the case; injustice was not being aired.
Working with the local NAACP chapter in Jackson, the United Church of Christ appealed to the Federal Communications Commission for relief -- to no avail.

The FCC sided with the local stations so the church and the NAACP took the FCC to federal court, and won.
Though the civil rights community, particularly the United Church of Christ and the NAACP led the charge, the victor was democracy.
Though the skirmish was over arcane rules of standing and license renewals, the battle was for control over the public arena.
The citizens of Jackson, Mississippi, black and white, could finally see the full ugliness of white racism and brutality. They could see, through the power and immediacy of television, the fire-hose sprays and the charging police dogs and the angry crowds. They could hear the eloquence of Dr. King and Fannie Lou Hamer."
The recent activities of the civil rights community to ensure media diversity trace their roots to these historic efforts.

Not only does the media play a powerful role in shaping the public's views on civil rights issues, but the media impacts civic participation as well. For example, recent research suggests that:

· Minority owned and managed stations include considerably more minority content and pay greater attention to the concerns of the local community; and
· Minorities are more likely to vote if they have access to minority media.

Today, those of us engaged in these debates face challenges on at least three major fronts:

First, in the current hostile judicial and congressional climate, many of our hard-fought victories are being overturned in the courts or repealed by Congress and/or the FCC. For example, the recent judicial disfavor of affirmative action policies suggests that the FCC traditional means of promoting diversity through EEO policies may not work in this political climate.

Second, the 1996 Telecommunications Reforms Act has led to a dramatic increase in media consolidation and an unfortunate reduction in ownership diversity.
Recent reports indicate that the elimination of local news may be one of the unfortunate results of this consolidation. For example, recently local communities in Tennessee, Virginia, and a major market in St. Louis all eliminated local news programming.

This is a serious cause for concern because local media coverage reflects local interests, local concerns, and local needs.

Third, with the recent technological advances, we are now operating in a fundamentally re-shaped communications environment -- one that adds a level of complexity to these policy debates.

In this day and age, the task for the civil rights community (and the larger media policy community) in meeting these challenges, it seems to me, is three-fold.

First and foremost, we must determine what traditional policy methods of ensuring diversity and competition are still appropriate in this new communications environment and we must fight for them. We must organize and fight against the steady erosion of policies that support a media structure that serves to bolster democratic institutions.

Second, we as a community must determine what new strategies for promoting media diversity need to be pursued in light of the political climate and the convergence of old and new media.

For example, the Internet is -- and will increasingly be -- relevant to the functioning of media in our society.

We need to formulate a new policy framework that recognizes the impact of the Internet on the media landscape.

Central to this policy framework is a body of research that helps us better understand the impact media consolidations have on diversity and localism.

Finally, we need to be thinking outside the box as well. The Internet offers new ways of thinking about the enabling environment for development of free and independent media.

The public interest community needs to consider coming together to develop sustainable ways to leverage these new communication advances to ensure a strong voice for our entire community in this new communications environment.

CONCLUSION:
In conclusion, these issues are becoming increasingly important ? and the media landscape never diverse with regards to content or employment, is showing very unsteady progress, and in some cases no progress at all.

New and old media, left to its own devices, will not improve content or employment diversity. The tension between the drastic increase in concentration of ownership, and the long-time FCC goals of diversity of ownership, need to be examined.

In 2000-01, a coalition of media and civil rights groups pressured broadcasters into setting goals for employment and content diversity, but these goals are as yet unmet. The increasing attention to and research on these issues will continue to create pressure on media companies to reform their practices, but their responses to pressure to date have been more assurances than actual change

What is clear is that as old media converge with and perhaps dominate new communications mediums, the challenge for the civil rights will be to develop new strategies to assure that the setbacks and shortcomings of traditional media in providing media diversity does not diminish the promise of the new media to do so.

The civil rights community ? and the Leadership Conference in particular ? looks forward to working with others in the public interest community to address the lack of diversity in traditional media and simultaneously develop the promise of new media and communications technologies.