Coalition Defends Educational TV
From Right-Wing Takeover

Washington - A broad coalition of national educational and religious organizations are urging their members to write to Congress to fight a growing takeover of reserved educational licenses by ultraconservative religious broadcasters under the guise of religious freedom. Members are urged to tell their representatives to oppose House Resolution 3525, known as the "Religious Broadcasting Freedom Act" and Senate Bill S.2010, known as the "Noncommercial Broadcasting Freedom Act."

The still growing coalition includes educational groups like the National Education Association, Center for Media Education, People for the American Way, Benton Foundation, Political Research Associates and National Writers Union and religious groups like the National Council of Churches, The Interfaith Alliance and Unitarian Universalists.

Coalition coordinator Jerry Starr, Executive Director of Citizens for Independent Public Broadcasting, observes, "Already having easily intimidated the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) into rescinding guidelines intended to protect educational licenses from partisan abuse, the religious right and their political allies now seek to deprive the FCC of all discretion to properly defend any eligibility requirements for noncommercial educational (NCE) television licenses."

Attorney John Crigler has notified the FCC that this is part of a growing takeover of NCE broadcasting licenses by the religious right. In the absence of any regulation, such groups have flooded the FCC with applications for NCE licenses, effectively barring community organizations with a genuine educational purpose. Donald Wildmon's American Family Association alone holds 165 NCE radio licenses and has 178 pending full-service applications.

Cutting through the rhetoric and reminding the FCC of its legislative responsibility, Diane Shust, Manager of Federal Relations at the National Education Association, has proposed that meaningful eligibility requirements for reserved educational licenses "is not discrimination against religion, but a defense of education. It is not unwarranted federal intrusion, but the FCC doing its duty to protect the public interest, convenience, and necessity."

Randy Naylor, Director of the 53 million-member National Council of Churches (NCC) agrees, "Protecting the integrity of a noncommercial and public channel does not constitute discrimination against religious broadcasters." In the view of the NCC, these channels "should provide a diversity of truly educational programs for all significant constituencies in the community."

Rob Cavenaugh, Legislative Director, Unitarian Universalist Association of Congregations adds, "The issue here is not government hostility towards religion, but weighing the needs of the whole community against the wants of a strident religious minority." Ralph G. Neas, President of People for the American Way, has accused religious broadcasters of "asking for special privileges and claiming that failure to grant them is discrimination."

Starr points out that, under the guise of "religious freedom," many of these broadcasters pass off hate mongering as educational. In the Pittsburgh license transfer case that sparked the new guidelines and the reaction, local clergy and academics documented for the FCC Cornerstone TeleVision attacks against Catholics, Jews (e.g. leaders of an international conspiracy of bankers and intellectuals to create a "New World Order"), Hindus ("the Kingdom of the enemy"), Unitarians (promoters of "divorce, teenage pregnancy and venereal disease"), Mormons ("a cult"), and even Methodists, Baptists, Episcopalians, Lutherans, and Congregationalists who are alleged to be "not really Christian" unless they are "born again."

Members of the coalition are asked to place action alerts on their web sites and to link with Citizens for Independent Public Broadcasting so that members might receive direction on how to write to their representatives in Congress on this matter. "Beyond that," Starr says, "we plan to call for a rulemaking to revisit this question of eligibility requirements for reserved education frequencies and how the public interest might best be served." He adds, "Perhaps in a non-election year, we might have a less hysterical climate in which to reflect on the true meaning of education and religious freedom as they apply to broadcasting."

Background

The two resolutions follow an FCC decision on the Pittsburgh license transfer applications that exposed Senator John McCain's influence peddling on behalf of media mogul Lowell "Bud" Paxson. The highly controversial deal proposed to transfer the license for Pittsburgh's popular second public television station, WQEX, to televangelist station, Cornerstone TeleVision, so that Paxson could take over Cornerstone's old license for his Pax TV network.

The Save Pittsburgh Public Television campaign generated tens of thousands of letters and phone calls, plus organizational resolutions representing hundreds of thousands more in opposition to the deal because residents did not want to lose WQEX and were offended by its proposed replacement which a group of Pittsburgh academics and clergy charged offered bible thumping hatemongering as educational programming.

Under pressure by McCain, the commissioners narrowly approved (3-2 vote) the sale/swap conditional on Cornerstone's promises to broaden its governance and programming. However, by the same margin, the commissioners voted to interpret the guidelines that educational frequencies provide programming that is "primarily educational" and "responsive to the overall public" as meaning that at least half the station's schedule must consist of programs that are "primarily educational in purpose." Moreover, "programming primarily devoted to religious exhortation (e.g. preaching), proselytizing or personal statements of belief [while permitted], generally will not qualify as educational programming."

Within days, a torrent of protest from members of the National Religious Broadcasters (NRB), a self-described "Association of Christian Communicators," Paxson Communications, and their conservative Republican allies, intimidated the FCC into rescinding its own guidelines. Several reporters also have cited pressure from Presidential candidate Al Gore who is running as a "born again" Christian against Bill Bradley and did not want to have to defend the additional guidance during the campaign.

In her dissent, commissioner Gloria Tristani deplored her colleagues' capitulation to "an organized campaign of distortion and demagoguery." Tristani stated, "In a religiously diverse society, sectarian religious programming, by its very nature, does not serve the 'entire community' and is not 'educational' to non-adherents."

A spokesperson for the NRB boasted about winning the "battle," but vowed to continue the "war." In mid-February, FCC Mass Media Bureau Chief Roy Stewart appeared at the NRB's annual meeting to assure them that the commission is going back to relying "on the good-faith judgment of religious broadcasters that the programming serve an educational purpose." Nevertheless, Oxley and Brownback have vowed to leave their resolutions in Congress to make certain that the FCC does not regulate religious broadcasters too closely in the future.

Before the FCC's sudden retreat, the Rev. Barry W. Lynn, Executive Director, Americans United for the Separation of Church and State, had commended the new guidelines as a "fair and reasonable" attempt "to ensure that educational TV stations are truly educational and not extensions of somebody's religious ministry." He urged the FCC "not to cave in to pressure from powerful religious broadcasters and their political allies." In the aftermath, Lynn has reaffirmed his organization's commitment to protecting the integrity of educational broadcasting license assignments.