June 2008

www.citizensmediarights.org

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Preamble
A free and vibrant media, full of diverse and competing voices, is the lifeblood of America's democracy and culture, as well as an engine of growth for its economy. Yet, in recent years, massive and unprecedented corporate consolidation has dangerously contracted the number of voices in our nation's media. While some argue we live in an age of unprecedented diversity in media, the reality is that the vast majority of America's news and entertainment is now commercially-produced, delivered, and controlled by a handful of giant media conglomerates seeking to minimize competition and maximize corporate profits rather than maximize competition and promote the public interest. According to the Supreme Court, the First Amendment protects the American public's right to "an uninhibited marketplace of ideas in which truth will prevail" and "suitable access to social, political, esthetic, moral and other ideas and experiences." Moreover, it is "the right of the viewers and listeners, not the right of the broadcasters, which is paramount."

But too often, our nation's policymakers favor media conglomerates' commercial interests over the public's Constitutional rights, placing America's democracy, culture, and economy at risk. Instead, guided by the principles that follow, policymakers must ensure that the Constitutional rights of present and future generations to freely express themselves in the media, and to access the free expression of others, using the technologies of today and tomorrow, are always "paramount."

We ask you to join the broad coalition of consumer, public interest, media reform, labor and other groups representing millions of Americans in proposing the following Bill of Citizens' Media Rights.

Media That Provide "An Uninhibited Marketplace of Ideas"

The American public has a right to:

• Journalism that fully informs the public, is independent of the government and acts as its watchdog, and protects journalists who dissent from their employers.
• Newspapers, television and radio stations, cable and satellite systems, and broadcast and cable networks operated by multiple, diverse, and independent owners that compete vigorously and employ a diverse workforce.
• Radio and television programming produced by independent creators that is original, challenging, controversial, and diverse.
• Programming, stories, and speech produced by communities and citizens.
• Internet service provided by multiple, independent providers who compete vigorously and offer access to the entire Internet over a broadband connection, with freedom to attach within the home any device to the net connection and run any application.
• Public broadcasting insulated from political and commercial interests that is well-funded and especially serves communities underserved by privately-owned broadcasters.
• Regulatory policies emphasizing media education and citizen empowerment, not government censorship, as the best ways to avoid unwanted content.

Media That Use The Public's Airwaves To Serve The Public Interest

The American public has a right to:

• Electoral and civic, children’s, educational, independently produced, local and community programming, as well as programming that serves Americans with disabilities and underserved communities.
• Media that reflect the presence and voices of people of color, women, labor, immigrants, Americans with disabilities, and other communities often underrepresented.
• Maximum access and opportunity to use the public airwaves and spectrum.
• Meaningful participation in government media policy, including disclosure of the ways broadcasters comply with their public interest obligations, ascertain their community’s needs, and create programming to serve those needs.

Media That Reflect And Respond To Their Local Communities

The American public has a right to:

• Television and radio stations that are locally owned and operated, reflective of and responsible to the diverse communities they serve, and able to respond quickly to local emergencies.
• Well-funded local public access channels and community radio, including low-power FM radio stations.
• Universal, affordable Internet access for news, education, and government information, so that all citizens can better participate in our democracy and culture.
• Frequent, rigorous license and franchise renewal processes for local broadcasters and cable operators that meaningfully include the public.

Conclusion

These principles are not meant to be all-inclusive. Rather, they illustrate an American media structure that is the American public’s present and future right under the Constitution of the United States.

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At the dawn of the digital television age, federal policymakers have a fresh opportunity to create meaningful public interest obligations for broadcasters. To date, broadcasters have argued that self-regulation and voluntary actions would be more than sufficient for them to meet these goals ¨ but time has shown its not enough.

We deserve to know how broadcasters will serve our day-to-day television needs and to know as much about the TV that comes into our living rooms as the food that comes into our kitchens.

To achieve these goals, parents, voters, community leaders, activists, and concerned citizens need to pick up the television policy remote. It takes writing letters, picking up the phone, and letting policymakers know that you want reality-based public interest obligations that can help make a difference in your lives. Public engagement in the debates can change the tune coming from policymakers in Washington.

Twelve Ways to Get Involved

1. Become an informed advocate by reading and signing onto the Bill of Media Rights (www.citizensmediarights.org).
2. 2Get involved through leading organizations that enable you to learn more about the issues and take action as appropriate:
   • Public Interest, Public Airwaves Coalition (www.pipac.info)
   • Common Cause (www.commoncause.org)
   • Free Press (www.freepress.net)
   • HearUsNow.org (www.hearusnow.org)
3. Keep up to date on emerging policy developments by subscribing to Benton Foundation Communications-related Headlines, a free online daily news summary.
4. Tell the FCC you want them to set concrete and measurable minimum public interest standards for broadcasters.
5. Find out how your broadcasters are serving your children; make sure they know you care – and let the FCC know if they don’t.
6. Take advantage of the V-Chip, program listings, and web sites to enrich the programming your children are viewing.
7. Tell your local broadcasters you want more coverage of local, civic, and electoral affairs.
8. Tell your local broadcasters you want more diverse, locally produced, and independent programming.
9. Tell the FCC you want it to protect media diversity as it revises media ownership rules.
10. Tell your local broadcasters you want to know how they are meeting your needs.
11. Tell the FCC you want broadcasters to disclose the ways they comply with their public interest obligations, ascertain their community’s needs, and create programming that serves those needs.
12. Contact the resources below and on the next page to stay informed and get the tools you need for taking action in your community.

Resources on Tap

Alliance for Better Campaigns
www.bettercampaigns.org
The Alliance is a public interest group that seeks to improve elections by promoting campaigns in which the most useful information reaches the greatest number of citizens in the most engaging ways. It believes that broadcasters can and must use the publicly owned airwaves to revitalize our democracy. The Alliance is now part of the Campaign Legal Center.

Alliance for Community Media
www.alliancecm.org
Representing over 1,000 Public, Educational and Governmental (PEG) access organizations and community media centers throughout the country, ACM is committed to assuring everyone’s access to electronic media. The Alliance advances this goal through public education, a progressive legislative and regulatory agenda, coalition building, and grassroots organizing.

Benton Foundation
www.benton.org
The mission of the Benton Foundation is to articulate a public interest vision for the digital age and to demonstrate the value of communications for solving social problems. It offers Communications-related Headlines, a free daily online news summary service that covers industry developments, policy debates, and other communications-related news events.

Campaign Legal Center
www.campaignlegalcenter.org
The Campaign Legal Center is a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that works in the areas of campaign finance, communications, and government ethics.

Center for Creative Voices in Media
www.creativevoices.us/
The Center for Creative Voices in Media is dedicated to preserving in America’s media the original, independent, and diverse creative voices that enrich our nation’s culture and safeguard its democracy.

Center for Digital Democracy
www.democraticmedia.org
The Center for Digital Democracy is committed to preserving the openness and diversity of the Internet in the broadband era, and to realizing the full potential of digital communications through the development and encouragement of noncommercial, public interest programming.

Center for International Media Action
www.mediaactioncenter.org
CIMA is a nonprofit organization created to strengthen connections among grassroots organizers, public interest advocates, activists, and researchers focused on media policy and social justice. It offers a directory of hundreds of organizations that took action to stop FCC deregulation of media ownership.

Center for Public Integrity
www.publicintegrity.org
The Center for Public Integrity is a nonprofit, nonpartisan organization that conducts investigative research and reporting on public policy issues in the United States and around the world.

Chicago Media Action
www.chicagomediaaction.org
CMA is an activist group dedicated to analyzing and broadening Chicago’s mainstream media and to building Chicago’s independent media.

Children Now
www.childrennow.org
Children Now is an independent, nonpartisan research and action organization dedicated to assuring that children grow up in economically secure families, where parents can go to work confident that their children are supported by quality health coverage, a positive media environment, a good early education, and safe, enriching activities to do after school.

Common Cause
www.commoncause.org
Common Cause is a nonpartisan, nonprofit advocacy organization founded as a vehicle for citizens to make their voices heard in the political process, to hold their elected leaders accountable to the public interest, and to ensure that the media meets its obligations to serve the public. Its Media and Democracy Program is working to ensure that the media meets its obligations to serve the public by promoting diversity, accessibility, and accountability among media corporations and the government agencies that regulate the media.

Consumer Federation of America
www.consumerfed.org
CFA provides consumers a voice in decisions that affect their lives, including work on pro-consumer policy issues and disseminating information on consumer issues to the public and the media, as well as to policymakers and other public interest advocates.

Consumers Union
www.consumersunion.org
CU, publisher of Consumer Reports, is an independent, nonprofit testing and information organization serving only consumers. CU is a comprehensive source for unbiased advice about products and services, personal finance, health and nutrition, and other consumer concerns. CU has produced a new web site, HearUsNow.org, to inform and activate consumers on media, communications, and technology issues.

Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting
www.fair.org
FAIR is a national media watch group working to invigorate the First Amendment by advocating for greater diversity in the press and by scrutinizing media practices that marginalize public interest, minority, and dissenting viewpoints.

Federal Communications Commission
www.fcc.gov
The FCC is an independent United States government agency, directly responsible to Congress. The FCC is charged with regulating interstate and international communications by radio, television, wire, satellite, and cable. The FCC’s jurisdiction covers the 50 states, the District of Columbia, and U.S. possessions.

Free Press
www.freepress.net
Free Press is a national nonpartisan organization working to increase informed public participation in crucial media policy debates, and to generate policies that will produce a more competitive and public interest-oriented media system with a strong nonprofit and noncommercial sector. Its site has a host of information and activist tools.

HearUsNow.org
www.hearusnow.org
A project of Consumers Union, HearUsNow.org empowers consumers to fight for better and more affordable telephone, cable and Internet services or equipment by focusing on major media, technology and communications issues and emphasizing local stories. The site helps explain these increasingly complex issues and the connections between the issues, underscores what’s at stake, and offers ways to make improvements.

Institute for Public Representation at Georgetown University
www.law.georgetown.edu/clinics/ipr
IPR is a public interest law firm and clinical education program. IPR attorneys act as counsel for groups and individuals who are unable to obtain effective legal representation on matters that have a significant impact on issues of broad public importance including communications law, environmental law, civil rights, and general public interest matters. They have worked with Media Access Project to prevent the FCC’s media ownership rules from being enforced.

Kaiser Family Foundation
www.kff.org
The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation is a nonprofit, private operating foundation focusing on the major health care issues facing the nation. It acts as an independent voice and source of facts and analysis for policymakers, the media, the health care community, and the general public.

Leadership Conference on Civil Rights
www.civilrights.org
LCCR, a civil rights coalition of over 180 national organizations, has coordinated the national legislative campaign on behalf of every major civil rights law since 1957. Among its priorities is advancing media diversity.

Media Access Project
www.mediaaccess.org
MAP is a thirty-year-old nonprofit public interest telecommunications law firm that promotes the public’s First Amendment right to hear and be heard on the electronic media of today and tomorrow. MAP’s attorneys successfully asked the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit to throw out the FCC’s media ownership rules on behalf of its client, the Philadelphia-based Prometheus Radio Project.

Media Alliance
www.media-alliance.org
Media Alliance is a 28-year-old media resource and advocacy center for media workers, nonprofit organizations, and social justice activists. Their mission is excellence, ethics, diversity, and accountability in all aspects of the media in the interests of peace, justice, and social responsibility.

MediaChannel
www.mediachannel.org
MediaChannel.org is a nonprofit, public interest web site dedicated to global media issues. MediaChannel offers news, reports, and commentary from an international network of media issues organizations and publications, as well as original features from contributors and staff.

Media Tank
www.mediatank.org
Media Tank promotes media literacy, policy education, and a vibrant local media culture through community workshops, lectures, screenings, forums, national organizing and speaking engagements, and resource materials.

Minority Media and Telecommunications Council
www.mmtconline.org
MMTC is a national nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting and preserving equal opportunity and civil rights in the mass media and telecommunications industries.

National Alliance for Media Arts and Culture
www.namac.org
NAMAC is a national association of nonprofit organizations and individuals committed to furthering the media arts: film, video, audio, and digital.

National Association of Broadcasters
www.nab.org
The NAB is a trade association that promotes and protects local broadcast radio and television stations’ interests in Washington and around the world. NAB is the broadcaster’s voice before Congress, federal agencies, and the courts.

National Institute on Media and the Family
www.mediafamily.org
The National Institute on Media and the Family examines the impact of electronic media on families and works to help parents and communities watch what kids watch.

New America Foundation
www.newamerica.net
The New America Foundation is an independent, nonpartisan, nonprofit public policy institute that brings promising new voices and new ideas to the fore of the nation’s public discourse through research, writing, and conferences.

Newspaper Guild/Communications Workers of America (CWA)
www.newsguild.org
The Guild/CWA is primarily a media union whose 34,000 members are diverse in their occupations, but who share the view that the best working conditions are achieved by people who have a say in their workplace, including working conditions, standards of journalism, and ethics of the industry.

Office of Communication of the United Church of Christ
www.ucc.org/ocinc
As an outgrowth of the United Church of Christ’s historic commitment to civil rights, OC, Inc. was incorporated in 1959 to advocate on behalf of those who had been historically excluded from the media, especially people of color and women.

Parents Television Council
www.parentstv.org
The Parents Television Council is a national grassroots organization that works to ensure that children are not constantly assaulted by sex, violence, and profanity on television and in other media.

Prometheus Radio Project
www.prometheusradio.org
The Prometheus Radio Project is not-for-profit association dedicated to the democratization of the airwaves through the proliferation of non-commercial, community based, micropower radio stations.

Public Interest, Public Airwaves Coalition
www.pipac.info
The PIPA Coalition is an alliance of public policy groups, media activists, and grassroots organizers that are active in the ongoing fight against media consolidation and deregulation. It offers a grassroots toolkit for a nationwide campaign to encourage local citizens to hold their communities’ broadcasters to a higher standard of public service, particularly when it comes to election coverage.

Reclaim the Media
www.reclaimthemedia.org
Reclaim the Media is a coalition of independent journalists, media activists, and community organizers in the Pacific Northwest, promoting press freedom and community media access as prerequisites for a functioning democracy.

Making TV More Valuable

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The FCC determined while reviewing media ownership rules that all voices in the vast media world of TV, radio, newspapers, cable, satellite, and newspapers do not speak with the same volume. Broadcast TV is not just another voice in the crowd – it is dominant. Recognizing this role, public interest obligations are important to broadcasters both as good corporate citizens and good business.

Making Good Corporate Citizens
During the Reagan Administration, the then-chairman of the FCC declared that television "is just another appliance…a toaster with pictures."1 But if television were a mere toaster, then perhaps our country's most time-honored broadcast values of competition, diversity, localism, and democracy might all be toast.

Television is not just an appliance. Because of the speed and immediacy of television, broadcasters perform a public forum function with immense power to influence public opinion and affect elections. TV is a window onto our world and a mirror of our society. It is our society's primary source of information. And local TV news is used even more than national news by citizens. What we see and hear helps inform what we think and believe. Research shows that television points out not only what issues people should think about, but also what to think about those issues – something no toaster has ever achieved.

The question today is how to create the opportunity for television to do better. America has the best broadcasting system in the world because of – not in spite of – the regulatory scheme established by our nation's communications laws, which promote diversity of program and viewpoints.2

Making Good Business Sense
As broadcasters say, they are in the business of competing for the most eyeballs – the most viewers. Competition is growing for those eyeballs. The Internet, computers, Blackberrys, Gameboys, and a host of other gadgets are competing with the TV as the central device in a person's life. So wouldn't it make sense that broadcasters would want to reach the greatest number of viewers with content that is not peripheral but central to their lives? Ironically, that is what public interest obligations encourage broadcasters to achieve – reach a greater diversity of viewers and become more central in their lives. Broadcasting is a business, in fact a very profitable business. Quality news, information, and an informed public can be a cornerstone for a thriving economy – and a valuable broadcast business.

In return for serving the public, broadcasters enjoy a variety of government-ensured benefits including3:

• Free, exclusive use of a valuable but scarce public spectrum – including many billions of dollars worth of additional spectrum to convert to digital.
• Legal protection against anyone else who seeks to compete in their market or broadcast over their licensed frequencies.
• Federal preemption of local zoning and environmental regulations in order to make sure that stations' transmission towers can be erected and send signals to viewers.
• Free carriage of programming on local cable systems for which other programmers pay millions.

These are rights that newspapers and cable operators don't get. In exchange, broadcasters have special obligations that newspapers and cable operators don't have, like serving the public interest.

As long-time commercial broadcaster James "Jim" F. Goodmon, President and CEO of Capitol Broadcasting, puts it, "The broadcast company is fulfilling a contract between itself as the user of a public asset and the public body that owns the asset. As with all contracts, both parties to the agreement need to know exactly the responsibilities that they have to each other. With minimum standards spelled out, there is no question. As a broadcaster, I would like to know what is expected of me in serving the public interest. Required minimum standards and a voluntary code provide the benefit of certainty to broadcasters. I like to know what the rules are."4

Making TV More Valuable
Rather than embracing their public obligations, too often broadcasters argue that they already serve the public interest. In fact one broadcaster-sponsored study found that in 2003 local broadcasters contributed a supposed $9.6 billion worth of community service – made up largely of public service announcements ($7.3 billion) and station fundraisers for charitable causes ($2.1 billion).5 While being a good corporate citizen by raising money for charities is certainly commendable, it is not the same as airing programming that meets the needs of local communities – the responsibility broadcasters accept when they receive their free licenses to use the public's airwaves.

If broadcasting is continually seen as just a business like the toaster business, a short-sighted focus on narrow, profitable market segments may prevail. The result will be less and less programming that benefits the broadest segments of society. And TV could soon be seen as just a big box filled with yesterday's technology.

When broadcasters embrace their roles as journalists and protectors and proponents of the public interest, we benefit far beyond what TV stations can recover in advertising – people are engaged as citizens; government power is checked; waste and fraud are exposed; and we can value our televisions as much as broadcasters value our well-being.

Emergency Services & Disability Access

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As regulators consider how broadcasters can meet community needs in a digital future, its helpful to look at how implemented public obligations can succeed, and how they already play a role in our daily lives.

The State of Television in Emergencies
Public interest obligations play a critical role, in fact a life-saving role, in the lives of Americans and the safety of our nation. In part because these obligations require broadcasters to serve local community needs, television today provides timely and effective emergency warnings that save lives, reduce property losses, and speed economic recovery.

Local stations report threatening weather, cover live unfolding events, and deliver the Emergency Alert System (EAS) to living rooms across the country.1 Images of television reporters braving storms have become almost comical clichés, but for people in communities facing both natural and man-made emergencies, broadcast outlets often serve as the main link to the information and instructions they need to ride out the situation safely.

Fortunately, broadcasters have always taken seriously their fundamental public interest responsibility to warn viewers about impending natural disasters and to keep them informed about disaster-related events. In order to better protect children in an emergency, broadcasters are also now implementing the AMBER Plan in which they use the EAS to alert the public of serious child abduction cases.2

But the world has changed since 9/11 and our homeland security needs have changed with it. The Emergency Alert System, as FCC Chairman Powell has said, "has fallen into disarray and needs major reform."3 Even during the 9/11 attacks, the EAS was not activated.4

The Transition to Digital and EAS
Digital broadcast technology provides many new and innovative ways to transmit warnings to people at risk, including ways to warn individuals who have hearing and vision disabilities, and even to pinpoint specific households or neighborhoods at risk. Digital TV sets could even be programmed to automatically turn on and deliver warning messages in at-risk areas. According to the U.S. Geological Survey’s Working Group on Natural Disaster Information Systems, most of these innovations will require minimal use of the spectrum available to digital broadcasters.5 To determine the most effective means to transmit important information, broadcasters and appropriate emergency communications specialists and manufacturers should be working together to craft a new EAS for the digital age.

Proposed Solutions for EAS
The FCC has before it the beginnings of a plan to revamp the EAS and fix defects exposed by the 9/11 terrorist attacks and recent local disasters.6 The Commission now has an opportunity to transform the Emergency Alert System from a Cold War relic into a digital-age defense against terrorist attacks and other catastrophes. The goals of an improved EAS would be to:

• Give the public better information about pending storms, toxic threats, and medical emergencies by relaying local alerts via an always-on digital version of today’s system.
• Deliver evacuation routes in a local disaster using interactive digital television links.
• Converge with other systems to deliver warnings and wake-up calls via the Internet, cell phones, or other wireless devices.
• Provide a warning system that works even when the TV is turned off – any device, anytime, anywhere.

The State of Television for the Disability Community
Another example of public interest obligations making a difference comes from the disability community. Federal law mandates that broadcast and cable programming be fully accessible through the provision of closed captioning – a transcription of the audio portion of a TV program.7

Between January 1, 2004, and December 31, 2005, television broadcast stations must provide at least an average of 1350 hours of captioned video programming and, as of January 1, 2006, and thereafter, 100 percent of the stations' new video programming must be provided with captions. In addition, television broadcast stations that are affiliated with any television network must pass through video description when the network provides it and the station has the technical capability necessary to do so.8 (Video description is the insertion of verbal descriptions about the setting and action in a program.) Here are a few examples of how these services are already making a difference in people's lives:

• For 28 million Americans who are deaf or hard of hearing, closed captions provide a critical link to news, information, education, and entertainment, enabling these individuals to be part of the civic and cultural mainstream of our society.9
• For individuals whose native language is not English, English captions are used to improve comprehension and fluency.10
• For children, studies have shown that captions have helped children learn to read and have improved literacy skills.11

For many others, closed captioning allows them to watch TV in restaurants, bars, fitness centers, or other public places where it is hard to listen. In July 2000, the FCC adopted rules to ensure that the visually impaired can more effectively benefit from television by requiring that a certain amount of programming contain video description. 12 However, just two years later, a federal court struck down the rules.13 Nonetheless, some broadcasters continue to provide video description in their programming – and more should do the same.

The Transition to Digital for the Disabled
The obligation to provide captioning access should and will continue into the digital era. Digital technology will open new avenues to enhance and expand captioning access.

• The ability to alter the size of captions will enable visually impaired viewers to see both captions and other text appearing on a television screen.
• Captioning on public service announcements, public affairs programming, and political programming can provide greater access to additional critical programming.
• Video description technology provides a way to let people who are blind or have low vision know what is happening on screen.

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