Speech by FCC Commissioner Gloria Tristani. Title: Civil Rights in the Digital World. Topics: Internet universal service, low power FM, the e-rate, and FCC rules mandating hiring on the basis of race. Date: September 7, 2000. Source: Office of Commissioner Tristani.

Keynote Address
of Commissioner Gloria Tristani
Federal Communications Commission
before the
Leadership Conference on Civil Rights

September 7, 2000
Washington, DC

(as prepared for delivery)

“CIVIL RIGHTS IN THE DIGITAL WORLD”

Thank you for the warm welcome. Today I’d like to talk about what we do at the FCC and ways that civil rights groups can participate in our process. I’d like to highlight a few examples where outcomes have been impacted by the presence and work of civil rights and public interest advocates. I also want to emphasize that protection of civil rights in the digital era will be part access and use of technology, part awareness and advocacy, and will require an understanding of how embedded in the questions of technology some civil rights issues have become.

Telecommunications, radio and television, have always involved civil rights issues.

Civil rights advocates were instrumental in getting the FCC to adopt equal employment opportunity rules for women and minorities in the broadcast industry. The rules, which were in the books for over 30 years, helped increase minority employment from 9.1% to 20.2%. Unfortunately, in 1998 the D.C. Circuit Court found the rules unconstitutional because it believed – mistakenly – that the EEO rules required stations to make hiring decisions based on race. They did not. They only required that broadcasters make outreach efforts to minorities and women. We have since adopted new revised EEO rules that, I believe, will pass constitutional muster.

Civil rights advocates have also been actively involved in issues involving the portrayal or, more accurately, the non-portrayal of minorities in broadcast television. The true picture is that for too long minorities, such as African Americans and Hispanics, have been invisible on television and when visible, are portrayed as negative stereotypes.

And just last year, when the big networks announced their new Fall prime-time line-ups – minorities were virtually non-existent. I applaud the vigorous efforts of many groups, including the NAACP and La Raza with their blackouts and brownouts – and their efforts to impact this year’s prime-time line-up. While this year looks better, the struggle to have a TV media that reflects the diversity of America continues. And I urge you to continue your efforts and the struggle.

Despite the advances and retreats, a constant touchstone remains intact: all communications companies, broadcast, cable, and telephone are obligated under the Communications Act to operate in the public interest. This gives individual citizens a substantive right. It imposes a substantive duty upon the Commission.

While the face of the problem has changed, access and content availability issues remain at the center of the FCC’s role.

Consolidation among radio broadcasters following passage of the 1996 Telecommunications Act has resulted in ownership concentrations in both national and local markets unknown since the inception of broadcast radio.

The 1996 removal of national radio ownership caps has caused the number of radio station owners to substantially decrease while the total number of stations has actually increased. With recent merger activity in the radio marketplace, control of broadcast radio has become concentrated in even fewer and fewer hands. Today, just one entity owns almost 1000 radio stations.

So how can the FCC operate an effective federal policy that ensures access to the airwaves by diverse voices? We can only do this if we exercise our affirmative duty to take action to ensure the public’s best interest, while preserving the marketplace of ideas.

Broadcast consolidation means the shelves are stocked by too few hands. The loss of local content and local participation, and the rise of national play lists, syndicated programming and generic issues reporting arise from the loss of access to the airwaves by local residents. Loss of local control and limitations on community access may prove intractable in the not too distant future.

The public’s interest includes maintaining a diversity of voices. How can we do that? One small but significant step was the adoption this year of a new radio service, low power FM radio, or low power radio.

On January 20, we adopted rules authorizing this new radio service. Low power radio consists of two classes of FM radio stations with maximum power levels of 10 watts and 100 watts. 10 watt stations should reach an area with a radius of between one and two miles, the 100 watt stations should reach an area with a radius of approximately three and a half miles.

Low power radio will be exclusively noncommercial. In addition, current broadcast licensees or parties with interests in other media – cable or newspapers – will not be eligible for LPFM stations. Low power stations will be licensed exclusively to local entities for the first two years of license availability. Each licensee may operate only one station in any given community, however, eventually a licensee may operate up to ten stations nationwide.

Low Power radio promotes localism and diversity, not by limiting existing voices, but by adding new voices.

Low Power Radio is good news for civil rights in broadcast radio. Whether the groups are religious, educational, child-focused or represent unions or civil rights groups, everyone should be examining possibilities for obtaining low power radio licenses.

And we have already started the rollout of this service. The FCC has already accepted applications for two groups of states in May and August; and by May 2001 – eligible organizations in all states and territories will have had an opportunity to apply. In all, we’ve already received over 1,200 low power radio applications and we are still counting.

But what you need to know is that low power radio is a direct result of citizen advocacy at the FCC. It was because we heard from hundreds of Americans and countless groups – including churches, non-profits, community organizations and civil rights groups – that low power radio is close to becoming a reality.

Another significant civil rights issue at the FCC has been access to the Internet, and high-speed access at that.

Technology and information are changing the way Americans are born, reared, educated, employed, entertained, and ultimately how we spend our time when retired. Congress and President Clinton wisely recognized this and addressed it in the Telecommunications Act of 1996. In codifying the principles of “universal service” in Section 254, Congress not only recognized that it was paramount that all Americans should have access to telephone service, but went further, and determined that schools, libraries, and health-care providers should have access to the Internet and advanced telecommunication services. Congress also directed the FCC to ensure that advanced telecommunications capability is being deployed to all Americans in a reasonable and timely fashion. What Congress calls “advanced telecommunications,” we generally call “broadband.”

The FCC began implementation of Section 254 with the e-rate program – a program of discounts for telephone, Internet service and inside wiring for schools and libraries across America. To date, we have committed over $6 billion dollars and have funded the poorer and rural schools first. We did this because study after study demonstrated a digital divide exists. Wealthier Americans were connecting to the Internet at a greater rate than poorer Americans. And White Americans were connecting to the Internet at a much faster pace than African Americans and Hispanics. The e-rate is one way to ensure that all American children have access to the Internet, even if it is only in the classroom.

The e-rate eases the digital divide by providing greater discounts for poorer and rural schools. In 1999, 54% of the dollars were provided to economically disadvantaged students and libraries. You should also know that it was citizen advocates who ensured that the e-rate is the success story that it is. The program was under enormous political attack and it was citizen advocates – including educators, parents and civil rights advocates who ensured its vitality and survival.

While much work remains to be done to ensure that all Americans can access the Internet, the question now is not so much “do you have access to the Internet,” but, “how fast is your connection.” This question has led the FCC to identify a new digital divide between those with high vs. slow speed access.

Broadband refers to technology that allows users to access the Internet at speeds significantly higher than traditional narrowband allows. Typical broadband access speeds are fifty to several hundred times faster. Broadband access can be through wireless connections, cable modems, digital subscriber lines or, DSL, the telephone platform for broadband services.

The FCC’s most recent report to Congress on broadband rollout concluded certain populations are “particularly vulnerable to not receiving advanced services in a timely fashion.” While the report provided new and improved data, it did not sufficiently determine the exact at-risk status of these populations. In order to comply with our statutory mandate to “determine whether advanced telecommunications capability is being deployed to all Americans in a reasonable and timely fashion,” the FCC must have a more accurate picture of the deployment of advanced services.

The available data is troubling. It suggests that certain populations – those living in rural areas, the U.S. territories, inner cities, and tribal areas, as well as low-income consumers and minorities – are at heightened risk of not having access to advanced services if left to market forces alone. Rural consumers and those in Indian lands outside of population centers are particularly at risk for missing the broadband buildout.

This may not be just a question of inability to pay for the service, it may be a form of buildout redlining. Being rural and low-income, or inner city and minority may mean staying isolated and excluded from the economic advances occurring in areas of high buildout. This problem is exacerbated by other factors including the poor quality of existing cable plants in inner cities.

For rural communities, e-commerce and broadband capability can provide an unprecedented opportunity to overcome traditional geographic disadvantages. Small businesses in rural areas can use e-commerce to market and sell their products around the globe, while rural residents can shop the global marketplace from their own homes. Distance learning allows students in smaller communities to access teachers and a wealth of information that otherwise would not be available. And telemedicine offers rural citizens the chance to obtain remote diagnosis and even remote surgery that require high resolution, real-time video and data services without having to travel thousands of miles. Broadband technology makes all of this possible.

We cannot afford to become a society of information “haves” and “have-nots” in a world in which the ability to access and manipulate information is the currency of the day.

The FCC’s report to Congress indicates there are populations at risk of being left behind the high-speed bandwagon. Our responsibility to encourage deployment of advanced services is to all Americans, whether they live in the suburbs, the farms, the reservations, the inner cities, or outside the continental United States. We must take the necessary steps to ensure that the populations that we have identified as vulnerable and at risk, do not become digital have nots.

The civil rights and policy debate in the digital era is about who gets to speak and who will be heard over the airwaves, as well as the Internet. It is about information, who makes it, who sells it and who receives it and at what cost. It is about answering the following questions, which many of you have already asked,

• who will be allowed to use the public’s airwaves to speak to local and national audiences;
• who will reap the benefit of the government’s substantial investment in communications technologies;
• who will have timely access to information about the forces influencing our governmental processes; and
• who will benefit from the economic shifts caused by the fundamental changes in our economy?

And one final question,

• should the universal access to the telephone of the past century be extended to the technology of the digital century?

Groups like the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights are critical to answering these questions. I urge all civil rights and public interest advocates to engage us in the debate on communications policy. Washington needs and America deserves your input.

In preparing these remarks, I kept thinking about my grandfather, the late U.S. Senator Dennis Chavez of New Mexico. He taught me one of the most important tasks of a public servant is to give a voice to the voiceless. Voices are the first substance of civil rights. Voices that challenge stock answers, inappropriate stereotypes and voices that call for better solutions and better answers to questions. To paraphrase the Reverend Jesse Jackson, voices that protest do lead to progress. The FCC can’t do it without you. We need your voices.

Thank you.