wfn.org | Don't tinker with rules, coalition warns FCC

[powellb@ucc.org]

Feb. 24, 1997
United Church of Christ
Office of Communication
William C. Winslow
(212) 870-2137
E-mail:  william.winslow@ecunet.org
Andrew Jay Schwartzman
Media Access Project
(202) 232-4300
On the World Wide Web:  http://www.ucc.org

Don't tinker with personal attack rules, coalition
warns FCC

WASHINGTON, D.C. -- Led by the Office of Communication
of the United Church of Christ, a coalition of
broadcast advocacy groups and civilian activists are
warning the Federal Communications Commission to back
off from any attempts to eliminate political,
editorial and personal attack rules.
      The warning is contained in public comments
filed by the coalition in response to a petition by
the Radio and Television News Directors Association to
eliminate the rules.  RTNDA, in its petition to the
FCC, says the rules are an extension of the fairness
doctrine, but because the doctrine was scrapped by the
Commission in 1987, the attack rules should be
removed, too.
      The attack rules require broadcasters to give
reply time to individuals whose honesty and integrity
is attacked on the air and to political candidates
whose opponents receive stations' editorial
endorsement.  Although the fairness doctrine is no
longer in force, the rules still are.
      In fact, the advocacy coalition says that based
on two court decisions, the personal attack rules are
a bedrock of the public trust responsibilities that
the Communications Act of 1934 mandates for all
broadcasters.
      The personal attack rules were upheld by the
U.S. Supreme Court in 1969 in the Red Lion case.  In
that landmark decision, the Court ruled that a
Pennsylvania radio station, which attacked an author
in a broadcast, was obligated to offer him free time
to respond.  Also in 1969, in a similar case brought
by the United Church of Christ against Jackson, Miss.,
TV station WLBT for espousing only the segregationist
point of view, the Court of Appeals ruled that a
broadcast station "cannot be operated at the whim or
caprice of its owners ... (but rather) is a public
trust subject to termination for breach of duty."
      The coalition also argues that recent
developments in communication regulation provide
further impetus for the public interest responsibility
of broadcasters.  In the Children's Television Act of
1990, for example, the FCC requires TV broadcasters to
serve the educational needs of children and
subsequently tightened the rule by requiring that
stations offer three hours a week of such programming.
      Members of the coalition include the UCC's
Office of Communication; Media Access Project; Center
for Media Education; Washington Area Citizens
Coalition Interested in Viewers' Constitutional
Rights; Peggy Charren, former head of Action for
Children's Television; Henry Geller, former FCC
counsel and the Rev. Everett C. Parker, retired
director of the United Church Office of Communication.
      The 1.5-million-member United Church of Christ,
with national offices in Cleveland, has more than
6,100 congregations in the United States and Puerto
Rico.  It was formed by the 1957 union of the
Congregational Christian Churches and the Evangelical
and Reformed Church.
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