A moment in ecumenical history

Clearing the air

For years, the most powerful television moguls in the U.S. were scared of three things: poor ratings, diminishing profits and Everett C. Parker.

At first glance, Parker would seem the least of their worries. The Chicago-born United Church of Christ minister is slightly built, warmly engaging and nice to his friends. But when he takes off his spectacles and affixes you with a disapproving stare, it feels like a precursor of Judgment Day. And there were a lot of things in television land that invoked Parker's wrath: gratuitous violence, puerile programming, tobacco and liquor commercials and a dearth of public service broadcasts, to name a few.

But the cardinal sins in Parker's unwavering gaze were television executives who thought the airwaves were their private money-making apparatus. That, he pointed out, was a violation of the Federal Communications Act of 1934 that declared the airwaves are a natural resource that are owned by the American people, and that telecommunications operators must act "in the public interest, convenience and necessity."

In 1964 -- barely 10 years after Parker founded the UCC Office of Communication -- he became increasingly enraged by the fact that there were FCC-licensed television stations across the south that refused to hire African Americans and declined to offer programming that was of interest or benefit to black viewers. Station WLBT in Jackson, Miss., a city with an equal number of black and white viewers, was a prime offender.

"One day Everett -- a member of the NCC Communication Commission -- came up to me and said, 'There's a TV station in Jackson that is flagrantly failing to meet the needs of the black half of its community and we need to do something about it," recalls Dr. William F. Fore, chief of NCC communications at the time."

Parker declared that the station had no on-air black personalities, had no black employees except for a single custodian, and carried no programs about the interests of black people. "When network feeds came down with a program about race," Parker told Fore, "the station went off the air with the sign, 'We are having technical difficulties.'"

With the backing of the NCC Communication Commission, the UCC Office of Communication filed a petition with the Federal Communication Commission to deny WLBT's application to renew its license. The FCC replied that neither the UCC nor the citizens of Jackson had legal standing to comment on the station's renewal application.

That's when the kindly twinkle faded from Parker's eye.

The Office of Communication filed an appeal with Warren E. Burger, then a federal appeals court he judge, later Chief Justice of the United States. In 1966, Burger granted standing to the UCC and to U.S. citizens in general. Nevertheless, the FCC renewed WLBT's license. The UCC filed suit again and Burger revoked WLBT's license in 1969.

"This was the first and only time a TV station has ever had its license revoked," said Fore in a recent meeting of the General Assembly of the NCC and Church World Service. "And it was a decision that was heard around the entire nation. Every TV station realized that they had to begin to seriously meet the interests of their minority publics or risk losing their license."

Today, WLBT in Jackson has an integrated management and reporter staff and earns high grades for its efforts to serve the diverse public in the Jackson, Miss. viewing area.

Other ecumenical communication actions led to landmark decisions, Fore recalls. When individual citizens came under editorial attack by stations or persons they interviewed, the stations were not required to grant a right of reply.

"We took it all the way to the Supreme Court," Fore reports. Associate Justice Byron "Whizzer" Whit(nicknamed for his prowess on the college grid iron) supported the right of editorial reply. "He stated that between the right of the broadcaster and the right of the public, 'it is the right of the public that must prevail.'"

Those were the halcyon days of ecumenical communication, and it's tempting to look back on Parker, 95,  and Fore, 80, and their contemporaries as giant killers in a land of communication Goliaths. Unfortunately, the Goliaths were not down and out. The deregulation of federal communications law began under President Jimmy Carter and continued under President Reagan.

"It wasn't long before the media became monopolized by large multinational corporations and the diversity of viewpoints became seriously threatened," Fore laments. "After all, if General Electric, one of the world's largest suppliers of war materiel, now owns NBC, how could one expect that network to do investigative reporting of the war in Iraq?

Even so, Fore is hopeful that the churches, once so instrumental in confronting media moguls, will again realize their potential.

"Scripture tells us that in the beginning was the Word," he says, his Methodist preacher's voice taking on resonance. "And we know that people heard Jesus' good news gladly. But while God's communication is ultimately personal, it is today very often communicated through radio and television. So what would be religiously more important than reforming our mass media? Remember that ultimately there is no freedom of religion unless there is freedom of expression."