The United Church of Christ's media justice ministry is very pleased to see long-time champion Representative Bobby Rush's new legislation addressing the predatory costs of communicating with incarcerated people, the Martha Wright Prison Phone Justice Act, H.R. 6389. Mr. Rush has been a leader on this issue since the 2000s. His new legislation immediately sets significantly improved rates for voice calls and clearly establishes federal jurisdiction to limit predatory rates for local, intra-state communications as well as fees of all kinds. It is future-proof, leaving no technological loopholes. It will enable the Federal Communications Commission to pick up where it left off and protect families, clergy, and loved ones from unjust and unreasonable rates. 

"Congratulations to Representative Rush. We urge the House Energy & Commerce Committee to quickly hold hearings and move to markup on this critical legislation," said Earl Williams, OC Inc.'s board chair. "This bill, along with Senator Duckworth's bi-partisan bill in the Senate, increases the hope of incarcerated people and their families that they will finally gain the same consumer protections as all people in the U.S."

Cheryl A. Leanza, OC Inc.'s policy advisor said, "In this time when so many families, clergy and friends are not permitted to visit their incarcerated loved ones during the COVID-19 epidemic, just and reasonable rates to communicate are more important than ever. Incarcerated people are facing crowded conditions and potentially insufficient health care. Without communication with the outside, it is impossible to monitor their safety."

UCC's media justice ministry is also currently encouraging everyone to join the MediaJustice campaign to ask the Federal Communications Commission to act immediately to secure relief for incarcerated people and their families.

One of our main advocacy tasks at OC Inc. is working with our allies to protect and enhance the incredible Lifeline program, which offers a subsidy to low-income households who qualify.  In some cases, the $9.25 monthly subsidy is enough to pay for a free mobile phone. 

Unfortunately the current Federal Communications Commission has set forth a series of unhelpful and paternalistic proposals that would harm Lifeline and make it more difficult for eligible families to use it.  We joined with the National Consumer Law Center to file comments last month and yesterday with our allies under the banner of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights to push back against these destructive ideas.  At least we are gratified to know that these proposals received almost no support in the record before the FCC.  The FCC should not be able to adopt these ideas, but the threat of their implementation is destabilizing the program and the previous decisions the FCC adopted are hurting the chances for families to get access to affordable communications.

Learn more and join the coalition's efforts at www.savelifeline.org. 

Since a 1997 General Synod resolution, the United Church of Christ has formally recognized that we need to ensure we do not become a society divided between "information rich" and "information poor," which leaves struggling people without the tools to succeed in modern society.   

This weekend we celebrate the leadership and sacrifice of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The United Church of Christ has so many proud moments in its legacy working for the U.S. civil rights movement -- including the time a UCC leader met with Dr. King and inspired much of the early media justice movement. The UCC's media justice ministry, called the Office of Communication, Inc., was created after the UCC's original Communications Director, Dr. Everett C. Parker, met with Dr. King. As we get ready to celebrate Dr. King, we're sharing the UCC-made documentary, OC Inc., The Untold Story, as a resource for UCC churches to learn more about this unique UCC connection to MLK's legacy (available in the full 22 minutes or a 6-minute preview.)

Because OC Inc. is celebrating its 60th anniversary, Brian Lapis, one of OC Inc.'s board members, recently took a moment to reflect on his history with OC Inc.  He says:

I remember the moment when my love for the United Church of Christ and my love for the broadcast industry intersected. I was a student at Syracuse University's S.I. Newhouse School of Public Communications when I opened up my communications law and ethics textbook, and there it was: United Church of Christ vs. Federal Communications Commission. The UCC won this case against insurmountable odds, to unseat racist owners from WLBT-TV and to make owners of all broadcast stations accountable to the communities they serve. As Kay Mills describes it in her 2004 book, Changing Channels, this was 'the civil rights case that transformed television.'

The work leading up to those famous court cases came from a meeting in which Dr. King met with Dr. Parker. "Can you do something about the TV stations in the south?" said Dr. King in response Dr. Parker's question about how he could help. And thus, a movement was born. Dr. Parker, whose birthday is January 17th, has been called the "the founder of the citizen movement in broadcasting."

As Brian explained, "while the UCC's work in media justice is not always well known in our churches, it is famous (and at times, relied upon) in the world of media advocacy. The UCC and OC Inc. are household names in the halls of the Federal Communications Commission and justice advocates." 

Take this weekend to learn more about the unique role of the UCC in media justice, watch the 20-minute documentary The Untold Story:

UCC's media justice work continues today -- just last September UCC OC Inc. was a critical part of a court victory case bolstering citizen standing and ownership by women and people of color in broadcasting. We're campaigning to end predatory pricing to communicate with incarcerated people, working to ensure a free and open Internet for all and one that does not spread hate speech. And don't miss the inspirational remarks by the UCC's own Rev. Julian DeShazier from this October's annual Parker Lecture.

Remember that every time you use your TV, radio, phone or internet service, the UCC's media justice work is impacting you!

If you want help support this work, please consider supporting this effective ministry and celebrating of sixty years of this work, with a contribution to our $60 for 60 Campaign. 

Press Contact: Cheryl Leanza
Cell: 202-904-2168
Email: cleanza@alhmail.com

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE (OCTOBER 17, 2019)

Three media justice advocates stressed the importance of retelling stories—and telling them accurately—at the 37^th Annual Everett C. Parker Ethics in Telecommunications Lecture and Awards Breakfast today in Washington, DC, sponsored by the United Church of Christ’s media justice ministry, the Office of Communication, Inc.

The Rev. Julian DeShazier, senior pastor of University Church in Chicago and the Emmy Award-winning hip-hop artist J.Kwest, brought the full range of his skills to his Parker Lecture address. To underscore his theme, he began with a rap:

“. . . Is Chicago making
A different kind of statement, you looking at me

Like please stop rapping! So I can hear what you’re saying

American way, to reject another language
American angst, try to HEAR what I’m saying

I’m saying THAT DAY won’t come, ‘til we make it . . .” 

DeShazier related a parable of the Akan people of Ghana about “Sankofa,” a bird who struck out from her community until she was bullied by “Big Bird,” and returned home, regretting that she had ever left. But then her village told her, “Don’t forget us this time. Don’t forget who are you are.” With her confidence renewed, she returned to confront Big Bird and found that he was gone.

The lesson, DeShazier said, is “you can’t know where you’re going unless you know where you’ve been.” Sankofa, he said, “reminds us that the past and future are tied together, that destiny is not only a matter of will but of knowing where you and your people have been, what that creates in us. Identity formed through the past, which means the story must be told, told well, and told rightly. 

“Sankofa is what reminds embattled people, forgotten people, disinherited people who traverse a sky full of Big Birds – the Big Bird of xenophobia, the Big Bird of poverty, the Big Bird of corporatized education, militarized peacekeeping – Big Bird does not want you to have your story, because with your story comes your identity and with an anchored sense of being no thing and no one can get in your way.

“Sankofa is our reminder that stories carry within them the power to make people and the power to remove them: the power of life and death.”

DeShazier’s message was underscored by the stories told by those who were recognized with awards at this year’s event.

Cayden Mak, executive director of 18 Million Rising, an online organization that builds community in the Asian American and Pacific Islander community, received the Everett C. Parker Award in recognition of his work in support of greater public access to affordable and open broadband technologies. Mak described how as a queer youth, “the Internet saved by life.” Growing up feeling “isolated and weird,” the Internet enabled him to “find people like me.”

But, he noted, “the social web has become a lot less social.” Before “the ideology,” he said, it embraced “the search for belonging.” But he asserted that he still believed “we can have an Internet built on care,” and a technology that is “expansive not expensive.”

Sarah Macharia, global coordinator of the Global Media Monitoring Project (GMMP), traveled from Kenya to accept the Donald H. McGannon Award on behalf of her organization. The McGannon award recognizes special contributions in advancing the role of women and persons of color in the media; the GMMP is the longest and largest longitudinal study of women in the media—both their presence and how they are covered—in the world. The project’s next study, conducted at five-year intervals, will take place in 2020 and is expected to involve volunteers in 130 companies.

Macharia described how the project began in 1995, monitoring the media in 70 countries. The idea “was not an idle curiosity but came out of frustration over the media’s seeming lack of respect for the integrity and dignity of women the world over.”

“Think of the stream that becomes a river as tributaries merge into it, bringing life to the land through which it crosses,” she said.  “So it is with the GMMP, as more countries and tens of thousands of volunteers have joined in.” The project is “three things in one: It is a research project, it is an action network and it is an activist movement.”

Macharia noted that the project had determined that “out of every four people seen, heard or read about in the mainstream news media globally, only one is a woman. Based on the trends, we forecast it will take at least three quarters of a century to reach parity.”  The problem, she said, was “more or less identical the world over, whether in the USA, in Uruguay or in Uganda.”

The event celebrated the 60^th anniversary of OC Inc. Participants recalled how media monitoring was important to the early work of the Rev. Parker, who founded OC Inc. in 1959. Parker organized volunteers to monitor television stations in the Deep South to demonstrate that they were failing to cover the local African-American community. In 1963, he filed a petition with the Federal Communications Commission that ultimately stripped WLBT-TV in Jackson, Miss., of its broadcast license.The court case also established the principle that the public could participate in matters before the agency, a principle that OC Inc. helped successfully defend, with other advocacy partners, in a federal appeals court case this past year.

OC Inc. created the Parker Lecture in 1983 to recognize its founder’s pioneering work as an advocate for the public’s rights in broadcasting.

About the United Church of Christ: The United Church of Christ is a mainline Protestant denomination comprised of nearly 900,000 members and 5,000 congregations nationwide. Headquartered in Cleveland, the UCC is a church of many firsts, including the first mainline denomination to ordain a woman, the first to ordain an openly gay man and the first predominantly white denomination to ordain an African American. The UCC and its members are tireless advocates for such social issues as immigration reform, racial equality, LGBT rights, marriage equality, environmental protection and economic justice. The Parker Lecture is the only lecture in the country to examine telecommunications in the digital age from an ethical perspective. More information is available at

www.uccmediajustice.org.

The UCC's media justice ministry, OC Inc., won a great victory for racial and gender equity in communications because U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit overturned a decision of the Federal Communications Commission's decision permitting radically increased media consolidation for the fourth time.

The court found the FCC ignores impact of the consolidation on ownership by women and people of color.   The UCC's media justice ministry (OC Inc.) was part of a coalition challenging the rules.  The ruling also affirmed that the challengers had "standing" or the legal right to sue the FCC. The standing decision is of particular meaning to the United Church of Christ because ordinary citizens' right to sue the FCC was first established by the UCC in the 1960s.

Cheryl A. Leanza, who is the ministry's policy advisor and also lead counsel on the case said, "The Federal Communications Commission has not learned its lesson, even after almost 20 years of litigation. The law says the FCC must consider how its rules impact ownership by women and people of color. The FCC treated its obligation as less-important than high school math homework and it got caught turning in work that, according to the court, 'would receive a failing grade in any introductory statistics class.'"

Leanza continued, "Not only did the FCC ignore its obligation to diversity, but the Third Circuit opinion upholds the right of public interest organizations and ordinary individuals to sue the FCC. The UCC's legacy in this regard is critically important. And reasoned federal decision-making should not fear court review."  Members of the UCC assisted in this work by writing declarations showing the harm of consolidation.

As a result of this decision, fewer mergers in local TV and radio will occur and the FCC must return to the drawing board on its most recent proposals for even greater consolidation in local media.

For more background on this case, read our previous blog posts:

• Behind the Scenes in Fighting for Media Justice in Court
• Sustaining our Leadership Role, UCC Members Speak out in Federal Court to Stop Media Mergers
• Celebrating Christmas with a Suit for Media Justice

UCC OC Inc. is pleased to announce this year's honorees.  Learn more about the lecture and obtain tickets.

 

2019 PARKER LECTURE TO HONOR DIVERSE VOICES,

FRESH APPROACHES TO MEDIA MINISTRY ON OCTOBER 17

 

WASHINGTON—A diverse group of persons and organizations will be honored October 17 for the United Church of Christ’s media justice ministry’s 37th annual Everett C. Parker Ethics in Telecommunications Lecture and Awards Breakfast.

 

The Rev. Julian De Shazier, senior pastor of University Church in Chicago, will deliver this year’s Parker Lecture. DeShazier, under the name J.Kwest, is an Emmy award-winning hip-hop artist, featured in the video “Strange Fruit.” He is a faculty member at McCormick Theological Seminary and the University of Chicago Divinity School. DeShazier has been recognized by the Center for American Progress as one of “10 Faith Leaders to Watch” in 2018 and by Crain’s Chicago Business as one of “40 under 40” leaders in that city.  DeShazier was instrumental in establishing an adult trauma center on the South Side of Chicago, currently serves on the University of Chicago Medicine Community Advisory Council (CAC).  He is a regular contributor to Sojourners, ON Scripture, and HuffPost publications and has appeared on ABC, FOX, NPR and Dr. Maya Angelou’s “Oprah & Friends” radio program.

 

Cayden Mak, executive director of 18 Million Rising, will receive the Everett C. Parker Award, in recognition of his work to provide a voice to persons of color and underrepresented communities. 18MR builds identity, belonging, and community power online in the Asian Americans and Pacific Islander community. Prior to becoming executive director, Mak was chief technology officer at 18MR, leading the team that created VoterVOX, a tool designed to help locate volunteer translation services for voters with limited proficiency in English. In addition, Mak was a cofounder of youngist.org, New York Students Rising, and an officer and staff organizer for the Communications Workers of America.

 

The Global Media Monitoring Project (GMMP) of the World Association of Christian Communication (WACC) will receive the Donald H. McGannon Award in recognition of special contributions to advancing the role of women and persons of color in the media. The project is the largest advocacy initiative in the world seeking to improve the representation of women in the media. Every five years since 1995, it has conducted the largest and longest-running longitudinal study of gender in the world’s media, including such metrics as the numbers of women versus men, gender bias, and gender stereotyping in content. It involves participants ranging from grass-roots observers to academic researchers to media practitioners, all of whom serve on a volunteer basis. Its next survey, in 2020, is expected to involve volunteers in 130 countries. Sarah Macharia, the principal editor of the 2010 and 2015 GMMP reports, GMMP global coordinator and WACC’s gender and communication program manager, will be traveling from Africa to attend the Parker Lecture and accept the award on behalf of her organization. Macharia represents WACC on the board of the UNESCO-initiated Global Alliance on Media and Gender (GAMAG) that promotes gender equality in the media.

 

The Parker Lecture and Awards Breakfast will begin at 8 a.m. on October 17, 2019 at First Congregational United Church of Christ in Washington, DC. 

 

The Parker Lecture was created in 1982 to recognize the Rev. Dr. Parker’s pioneering work as an advocate for the public's rights in broadcasting. Parker founded the UCC’s Office of Communication, Inc., sixty years ago to successfully challenge the broadcast license of a Jackson, Mississippi, television station for failing to serve the public interest and cover the local African American community.

 

The subsequent court battle established the right of ordinary citizens to participate in regulatory proceedings before the Federal Communications Commission. Today, those battles continue around such issues as Net Neutrality, prison telephone rate reform, and broadcast industry consolidation.

 

The Parker Lecture is the only event of its kind in the United States to examine telecommunications in the digital age from an ethical perspective.

In addition to the main case about deregulation and race/gender ownership diversity, two other petitioners argued. The Minority and Media Telecommunications Council (MMTC) argued about flaws in the radio incubator program, and a group of television owners (Independent Television Group) asked the court to end the restriction on top-4 TV combinations. 

Listen to a recording of the oral argument. Cheryl’s argument starts around 18:40, and her rebuttal is around 1:14:20.

For more background on this case, read our previous blog posts:

• Sustaining our Leadership Role, UCC Members Speak out in Federal Court to Stop Media Mergers
• Celebrating Christmas with a Suit for Media Justice

Friday April 12, UCC OC Inc. continued its effort to block federal rules that are permitting vastly increased consolidation in television, radio and newspapers in local communities. Following up on its opening brief, filed last December, UCC OC Inc. and its allies filed their response to the Federal Communications Commission and industry briefs which defend consolidation. 

The question of legal "standing" is an important issue at this stage of the case. In order to bring a lawsuit, a person or an organization must have standing, that is, must demonstrate that they have been, or will be, harmed by the actions they are challenging. The UCC has a special connection to legal standing, as OC Inc.'s groundbreaking lawsuits in the 1960s under the leadership of Rev. Everett Parker, established the right of viewers and listeners to participate at the FCC and in court. Today, the doctrine of standing has been narrowed over the years by the courts, raising barriers to participation. Without standing, ordinary people and public interest organizations cannot legally protect the rights of viewers, listeners and independent content creators.

In the case of the current suit, UCC OC Inc. showed that the church has standing--through harm to its members and harm to its own work caused by the federal rule changes. To do this, UCC OC Inc. relied on declarations of a proud UCC member and its board chair. OC Inc. is very grateful to Tony Miller, of St. John's UCC in Chambersburg, PA, near Harrisburg. His declaration showed that if local TV news is degraded, he might have trouble protecting the earth by tracking the permit approval process of a local powerline proposal. He would also have less information about his home community of Shippensburg, PA, and would receive even less information about local efforts to protect LGBTQ rights or local primary elections. UCC OC Inc.'s board chair, Earl Williams, Jr., member of South Euclid UCC in Cleveland, explained that the church's work as a whole is harmed by media mergers and the lack of representation in media and news. Citing the General Synod resolutions on Anti-Racism in the Church, Williams explained that when members of the church do not receive sufficient information from local media, the UCC "must work harder to educate our members about the history of race in the United States, the impact of structural racism, and the present-day incarnations of that racism."

Ravi Kapur, winner of OC Inc.'s 2017 McGannon Award and member of Free Press (one of the other participants in the suit) described the impact of consolidation on his efforts, as an entrepreneur of South Asian descent, to serve underserved communities. He owns TV stations in Chicago, San Francisco, and Orlando and in Fargo, ND and owns Diya TV, the first 24-hour U.S. broadcast network serving the South Asian audience, broadcasting to more than 70 million people in a dozen markets nationwide. Kapur described the challenges of expanding his company and successfully serving communities in given widespread media consolidation. He highlighted the innovation creative station owners can bring, explaining his TV station in Fargo "produces more local programming than every other television station in North Dakota combined" and his new efforts to create a new stream of Native American programming there.

These UCC members and allies are helping to push back rules that will permit more consolidation in local media. If these rules had not been changed, mergers like the mega-merger proposed by Sinclair Broadcasting or the Nexstar takeover of Tribune would not be possible. Studies show that people still rely tremendously on local TV news--even people who read their news on the Internet rely on local TV journalism, especially at the current time when so many local newspapers are failing.

Your support of OC Inc.'s work makes this effort possible.

The tragic news this morning about the terrorist attack on Muslim faithful while praying in a Mosque sickened us. We join with the statements of the national setting of the United Church of Christ in condemning white supremacy, racism, Islamophobia, anti-immigrant sentiment and hatred of all kinds and to reject the times when Christian doctrine has been used to justify these vile beliefs, an attitude that was cited in the manifesto of the arrested suspected shooter. 

As a supporter of the Change the Terms Campaign, UCC OC Inc. joins with its colleagues in re-committing itself the our efforts to do our part by working to eradicate hate online. We strongly encourage all social media platforms and other platforms whose infrastructure supports hate--and fails to stop hateful violence--to adopt and implement the Change the Terms model terms.

The Change the Terms policies would require internet companies to adopt policies to stop hateful activities, to ensure their systems to report hate online are fairly implemented, to hold themselves accountable and publicly share detailed data and reporting on its efforts. A company complying with Change the Terms would constantly evaluate and improve its tools and products to ensure no community is the target of hateful violence. 

In particular, today with Change the Terms and other partners, we call on internet companies to use all existing capacities to immediately remove the video of today's attack from their services. We call on everyone to not share these videos or the document and to flag them to internet companies for removal.

Organizations can endorse Change the Terms and individuals can sign the petition.

Today the Trump FCC refused to comply with the law. The Communications Act requires the FCC to collect broadcasting and cable equal employment opportunity (EEO) data. While the Bush FCC voted to collect that data in 2004 under then-Chairman Michael Powell, the FCC's leadership has ignored its statutory obligation for 15 years and reaffirmed that refusal at today's open meeting.

The Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights raised this concern with the FCC last summer when the FCC expended resources to eliminate an inconsequential form while ignoring its must more important legal obligation to collect EEO hiring data. 

Commissioners Starks and Rosenworcel raised this question with Chairman Pai this week. Mr. Pai refused to take action to collect the data even though the data collection form is approved and ready to go and one minor open issue has been ready for a decision for 15 years. We are particularly grateful to Commissioners Starks and Rosenworcel for raising these important civil rights issues which were ignored in the draft of the order that was originally released by the FCC.

UCC OC Inc. has a special connection to this question. In 1967, Dr. Everett Parker, OC Inc.'s founder, petitioned the Federal Communications Commission to adopt pro-active equal employment opportunity (EEO) rules. The following year, after a significant public outcry and the 1968 Kerner Commission report highlighting the negative impact of media coverage which ignored people of color, the Commission adopted those rules. They stood at the forefront of a series of FCC and EEOC efforts which revolutionized EEO obligations and practices throughout the media and telecommunications industry. In 1992, Congress institutionalized these rules into law.

While the FCC paused its data collection in 2002 and 2003 after two problematic court decisions, the Bush FCC affirmed in 2004 that collection of statistical data had no constitutional implications and were not barred by those court decisions. The Commission has only one final loose end to wrap up (on the appropriate confidentiality treatment of EEO data) in order to collect EEO statistics.

Without data about who is being hired, the FCC and the public have no idea whether the recruitment rules and efforts are working. Today many Silicon Valley companies voluntarily release employment statistics as a form of holding themselves accountable. There is no excuse that broadcasting, which uses public airwaves to operate, does not face the same accountability.

The FCC has been failing to collect and use the data about who owns television and radio stations and today has seemingly committed to completely ignoring who works in television and radio. Chairman Pai just created a new Office of Economics and Analytics, but is not collecting the data his agency is required to collect.