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Introduction

We understand communication to be basic to community and the right to communicate a basic human right. The right to receive and to provide information is as fundamental to the quality of life as worship, food, clothing and shelter. The right to communicate is essential to human dignity. It is a precondition of a just and democratic society. It is necessary if ever peace is to be achieved.

We acknowledge that every right brings with it responsibilities, and that the whole community is responsible for the functioning of communication in society. Christians, as citizens, have an obligation to exert whatever influence they can to ensure that the mass media in our society operate to serve the public good rather than merely commercial interests or those of individuals.

This policy statement addresses the issues of global communication and justice outlined above. It suggests steps our churches may take to provide alternatives to the increasing centralization of control and ownership and to the politicizing of world media by a few powerful governments and transnational media giants.

In this document we affirm communication as both message and process. When we speak of communication, we speak of that which takes place between persons, in family and community, as well as the more formal communication structures that society has built and continues to embellish. We speak also of messages both overt and covert and the intended and unintentional impact or results of such messages having been "heard" and internalized.

We affirm communication as both message and process.

When we speak of "mass" communication, we speak of its current and potential uses for information, entertainment and education. When we speak of the communication industries, we include their structure, politics, economics and regulation, as well as their responsiveness to the public agenda.

When we speak of "informal," "alternative" or "people's" communication, we speak of those forms of communication used by individuals, family or community groups to exchange messages and information and/or to provide an alternative (in form and content) to the more institutionalized "mass" communication largely controlled by corporations and/or governments.

The Biblical and Theological Basis for Our Understanding

Communication is one of God's gifts to humanity, the gift that binds individuals together into communities, and communities into one human family. The capacity for sharing knowledge and love with God and each other is the foundation of our human dignity.

While we honor the beliefs of other faiths, as Christians we affirm that the supreme act of God's communication with the world is the incarnation of Jesus Christ. As God's "word became flesh" in Jesus Christ, the promise of creation was restored and human beings experienced the possibilities of dialogue with God and with each other.

Christ communicated through acts of self-giving. He "emptied himself, taking the form of a servant" (Philippians 2:7). He ministered to all, but took up the cause of the materially poor, the mentally and physically ill, the outcasts of society, the powerless, and the oppressed. Therefore, we boldly state that communication by Christian churches and people should be acts of love that liberate.

The abuse of communication is one form of humanity's alienation from God and neighbor. The consequences of this alienation can be deadly. But Christians do not speak with a single voice on communications policy. Some Christians seek to impose censorship on the mass media to exclude some opinions and enforce others. We reject this agenda as incompatible with the belief that no community should be silenced, and, therefore, that all communities should have access to the means of communication.

Communication by Christian churches and people should be acts of love that liberate.

The Bible, the inspired word of God, is also a book of communication and relationship for those who call themselves the people of God. In its account of the tower of Babel, we see a classic example of the integral relationship between communication and culture, for here is a story of communication broken by pride and the search for power. The theme repeats itself in a positive way in the story of Pentecost, the birthplace of the mission of the church. Being filled with the Holy Spirit and in communion with God and one another, the people of God spoke and heard the divine message of God in their own languages. They were empowered to communicate the Word.

The Role of the Church

The church has a critical interest in media structures, control, audiences and effects.

Churches recognize that issues of justice in local and national development cannot be addressed without a consciousness of the role of communication, nor can any group do so without the tools with which to make their views known.

The churches of the world are a global communication system through which the voices of those rendered voiceless because they lack access to the media can be raised to question societal trends that may be antithetical to justice, freedom and human dignity.

As Christians, we recognize that religious organizations and individuals have been guilty of not using the communication media primarily for the public welfare, and we repent both our inaction and transgressions in this regard.

Often we, as religious groups, have put our institutional self interest above the public interest. We have failed to give serious attention to the forces that constrain the press and other communication media and often have sought simply to put forward our own special interests rather than challenge the use of communication as a cultural force that supports the powerful and that victimizes the powerless.

We have ignored the use of communication by Western societies as a tool of cultural domination of other nations instead of speaking to marketplace, industrial and government interests in our own society on behalf of our brothers and sisters in other countries. We further observe that sometimes parts of our churches have subjugated the spirit, mind, will and voice of our people, particularly when Christian media initiatives invade other countries and cultures without an understanding of the life, realities and involvement of the local churches and Christian councils in a particular nation.

Our Concerns

I. The Influence of Communication Technologies and Resources

The traditional arbiters and purveyors of "culture" (including governments, churches, educational and scientific organizations) have lost much of their influence when compared to the influence of mass media.

Public discourse increasingly takes place around an agenda set by the media. People, whether they live in Manila, Moscow or Morgantown, now have nearly simultaneous access to the same images and viewpoints in the interpretation of events.

In long industrialized nations and newly industrialized nations alike, the social, political and cultural arenas of life are defined and debated in ways controlled by the media. The media play an ever more important role in such events as political campaigns, the overthrow and creation of governments, and in the way wars are planned, fought and interpreted. The media increasingly shape consciousness and define the quest for the meaning of life.

II. The Regulation of a Public Resource in the Public Interest

At the same time that mass communication has come to be more important to social and cultural processes, the media themselves are undergoing great change. Traditional definitions of media practices, such as the line between entertainment and news, have become blurred. In the electronic media, producers now enjoy greater freedom in what may be "aired" regardless of consideration of the nature of the audience or community sensibilities, which once were honored.

The media, particularly television, have enormous impact in the lives of people and societies over a relatively short time. This impact may at various times be positive or negative, but currently the negative impact of the entertainment media, advertising, and even the way news programs are constructed appear to outweigh the more positive benefits.

Media have enormous impact in the lives of people and societies.

We do not attribute the negative effects of media to the individual creations of writers, reporters and producers as much as to the cumulative effects of a way of viewing the world brought about by the technical demands of the media themselves.

We recognize that international journalistic and media organizations have their own codes of ethics. These, however, most often stress the right to know, objectivity in reporting, freedom of movement in order to report freely and responsibly on all issues, and the freedom of journalists to communicate without restrictions. As Christians, we endorse these ideas, but insist that this agenda is not adequate to deal with the deeper issues of the cumulative effect upon cultures, nations and individuals by the mass media.

The church's role in combating the negative aspects of the media while upholding freedom of speech and opposing censorship has been discussed at length in other policy documents prepared by the National Council of Churches. We would particularly call attention to the Council's stand against the inclusion of gratuitous violence and sexual violence in film and video materials. Rather than address the issue in detail in this paper, we commend to all the Council's policy statement on "Violence in Electronic Media and Film." ¹

III. Concentration of Media Ownership and Control

A very few media conglomerates (probably no more than a dozen) dominate the struggle for hundreds of millions of minds in the global community. These media giants control television and radio, magazine and book publishing, newspapers, movie production, cable and record companies. They shape the consciousness of millions and control access to news and information.

Global media establishments are more and more driven by the needs and demands of world markets and less and less driven by national or cultural needs and interests. By concentrating on the commercially successful strategy of serving "mass tastes" in entertainment, the media have never adequately served the interests of the majority of people and seldom those of marginalized peoples. Neither have they served minority groups, neglecting to program for their cultural, racial, artistic and justice concerns.

Media increasingly represent the interests of forces at the centers of political and economic power, neglecting the concerns of churches and other institutions that advocate for alternative visions and futures.

As a result of the concentration of ownership and power, a narrower range of viewpoints is represented. Fewer persons, nations, groups and societies have the possibility to get their stories told, their views made known or taken seriously, their cultures considered, honored or preserved. Instead they are swept away in the flood of mass images (mostly provided by the United States or other "Western" nations).

IV. The Impact of Global Media on Indigenous Culture

Individuals and whole communities of persons within nations are frequently victimized rather than assisted by the way in which information is controlled and often distorted. The powerless, whether in the United States and other developed countries or in the developing world, rarely have opportunities to tell their own stories. Others tell the stories for them, often filling these stories with unacceptable stereotypes.² The reality of those without power is not depicted fairly. Neither is the information provided geared to their best interests, but rather is tailored to the demands of their own nation or those of foreign commerce.

In this post-industrial era there is an erosion of dynamic culture alive to its own needs and true to itself. While traditional modes of communication enabled development based on cultural autonomy, mass communication discourages such development. Through mass media, people in every nation have become consumers of the values embodied in the entertainment and advertising supplied by their own or "foreign" societies.

Media today have an unprecedented ability to define what exists and what does not.

It is the nature of this global discourse that it can define and limit human prospects for successful common life. The media encourage an artificial transnational culture based on a selective vision, which affects the relations between nations and peoples throughout the world.

As churches, we say we have placed ourselves on the side of the social, cultural, economic and spiritual development of all peoples. But we have not always recognized that such development must be based on a strong cultural identity and autonomy through which peoples define themselves, their situations and their needs.

V. The Positive and Negative Potential of New Technologies

While it is not the purpose of this policy statement to discuss individual technologies, which are being introduced at an astonishing rate, it is important to note certain specific attributes of transborder electronic data flow and its potential impact on the economics of every nation on the globe.

Unfortunately, most of the people of the world do not share in the real benefits of these technologies. The problem is not only the relative lack of communications media available for use by the developing world. Equally significant is the quality of information that is offered.

New technologies and mass media have separated us from control over our cultural and economic lives. Control has been transferred, in large part, to those with technical expertise in the service of the mercantile and the military.

These technologies allow those who own them to manage information and resources at increasingly remote distances from the local cultures and economies affected. The instantaneous nature of global data transmission means that economic powers (both governmental and non-governmental) have access to current information about weather and agricultural conditions often before people "on the ground" do. The global-technological nature of the economy gives tremendous fiscal power to these same first-world and transnational interests.

However, these technologies also have benefits. They enable global contact, and when made available for human uses and to address human needs, can significantly enhance life, development and global consciousness. Such uses will not become widespread unless concrete enabling steps are taken. Such uses are not of primary concern to the current media industries, so the voice of the churches is significant.

VI. Toward a Forum for Global Dialogue

One result of the trends toward "privatization" has been a virtual elimination of any basis for global dialogue about equity and justice in communication. Whereas for a brief period in history there were influential public arenas (such as UNESCO, the International Telecommunications Union, etc.) where such issues could be addressed, in a totally commercialized world marketplace such discussion may disappear. Media are being viewed instead as products and thus discussion is taking place in the realm of trade negotiations where issues of justice and equity are often ignored as irrelevant.

We ask that appropriate United Nations agencies, governments and the communication industries in the United States and around the globe consider exploring and undertaking some strategies that could work toward change. For example:

1. Establishment of a forum for domestic dialogue on the matters discussed in this paper. The object of such a forum would be on-going dialogue among citizens, government and industries on the country's communication agenda, to the end that such a dialogue would result in specific actions and recommendations that would deal with communication policy in society globally rather than be limited to short term response to specific and immediate situations.
2. Establishment of a number of global forums of the type described above where true international dialogue around all the issues outlined in this paper could take place.
3. Providing opportunity for citizens to be heard and taken seriously by government and industry circles regulating media in this country at federal, state and local levels. Such an approach might well mean the reinstitution of formal community ascertainment procedures as a prerequisite to license renewal and would certainly embody mandated responsiveness by the media to the local community being served. It could also take the form of citizen public utility boards affording an opportunity to consider effects of policy in advance of its adoption.
4. Providing opportunity for individuals and citizen groups to participate in producing and disseminating their own messages to their community, to have access to all the media of communication in some proportionate way without the need to purchase advertising time and space, or costly production equipment.
5. Providing opportunity for all citizens, but particularly children and youth, to receive media literacy training and to become active in determining what they will see and hear rather than simply being passive consumers.

Call to Action

In Local Church and Family Life

1. Sponsor media literacy classes for all age groups within the church and community.
2. Provide information about public interest groups that have organized to combat various abuses by the media — from the use of excessive violence in programming to misleading advertising in children's programming — so that those who wish may join in these advocacy activities at the local and community level as well as nationally and internationally.
3. Provide commentary from the pulpit on the impact of media on the quality of life and values of individuals and society and suggest ways congregations and individuals can both work with the positive forces and resist the negative.

C. Urge local public broadcasting stations to carry more programming from other nations, particularly developing nations, such programming to encompass artistic and entertainment programming as well as news and information.

D. Affirm the church's support for the integrity of women and challenge the media's stereotypes and exploitative representation of women.

E. Work with regional and national bodies to provide support for such activities as:

1. Scholarships and training of persons, especially women, in developing countries in communication policy issues and communication management in order that they may be fully prepared to participate in planning for the communications policy, programs and infrastructure in their respective nations.
2. Assistance to independent local film and video makers in every nation so they may share their works in international film festivals and with people in other parts of the world.
3. Participation in grass-roots communication efforts that offer alternatives to the mass media.

In Regional and National Church Settings

B. Integrate sustained work for global communications justice into current peace and justice advocacy agendas.

C. Oppose gender-biased reporting and encourage the equal participation of women in mass media and alternative media.

D. Support opportunities for women media practitioners in career training/development, and advocate for promotions based on merit, for independent decision-making and for freedom from sexual harassment in the workplace.

E. Strengthen and support our nation's public broadcasting system.

F. Work with U.S. companies through such groups as the Interfaith Center for Corporate Responsibility³ on shareholder actions to persuade U.S. companies to respect nations' attempts to protect their cultural sovereignty.

G. Assist church members in the United States and in countries around the globe to meet together to share information and to understand the importance of their participation as citizens in the development of policies that determine their own nation's telecommunications infrastructure.

H. Urge a U.S. policy of neutrality toward actions taken by less developed countries to preserve their cultural heritage through restrictions on the importation of cultural products.

I. Support freedom of movement for journalists of every nation, so that they may report freely and from first-hand observation.

J. Work with other communions through the National Council of Churches and the World Association for Christian Communication on the agenda outlined below.

In Our Ecumenical Life

B. Assist in developing guidelines for the organization and functioning of citizen advocate groups.

C. Provide research and information to citizen advocate groups on the process for obtaining "leave to participate" in governmental proceedings, public policy development and rule-making in the communications arena.

D. Work with U.S. counterpart agencies, which are often invited to provide models of communication policy for developing nations, to ensure that means for such access is an integral part of the advice provided.

E. Urge that all ecumenical and global churches and agencies work to assist their members to become media literate. As part of becoming aware of the power of the media, we particularly suggest the study of the Principles of Christian Communication developed by the World Association of Christian Communication.⁴

F. Urge all church bodies, as well as UNESCO, the U.S. Agency for International Development, and other similar groups, to place more emphasis on funding of training and technical assistance for communications policy in developing nations.

G. Seek inclusion for local cable programmers, local public radio broadcasters, computer network operators and similar professionals operating in the public interest as members of training delegations going to developing nations in order to propagate the concept of a vigorous, involved public citizen movement.

H. Work together on ecumenical productions that stress the values and address the issues about which we are concerned.

I. Work with institutions of higher education, particularly communication and theology faculties, to encourage them to address societal communication issues in a systematic way.

Notes:

2. As a result of the gender bias prevalent in the media, women are likewise frequently ignored or presented as stereotypes.

3. The Interfaith Center for Corporate Responsibility, Room 550, 475 Riverside Drive, New York, New York 10115.

4. Christian Principles of Communication, available from the World Association for Christian Communication, 357 Kennington Lane, London SE11 5QY, England.

The Church and Media Series:

• Violence in Electronic Media and Film
• Global Communication for Justice
• The Churches' Role in Media Education and Communication Advocacy
• Member Communions of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA

For more information, contact:

NCCC Communication Commission

475 Riverside Drive, Room 850

New York, NY 10115

212-870-2227

Foreword

Violence is simple and brutal, but its roots are complex. We know it to be bred in families where children and spouses are abused and maltreated, where problems are met with force or threat of force. People who are in submissive positions to authority, actual or perceived, including women, racial ethnic persons, as well as lesbian, gay and bi-sexual persons, are particularly vulnerable to violence. We know that violence may be related to learning disabilities and chemical dependency. And we know that violence is exacerbated in communities and families living in poverty, and by the prominence given to it in films, television and other media.

Women often are portrayed in the media as being subjected to sexual violation and violence. These sexual situations would appear to create no harmful effects for women when, in fact, the context of the encounter is a power or authority relationship. The electronic media and film often reinforce this authority/victim relationship, depicting it as harmless or neutral.

Violence cannot be reduced to one cause. It is clear, however, that films and television play a role not only in reflecting but also in contributing to a violent and mean world.

Films and Television:

• Give the only information many of us receive about some aspects of life. Frequently, there are no other comparable sources of information available on human relationships or complex social issues.
• Model and prompt emotional responses to the realities of individual and social life. Entertainment that provides a vicarious experience of violence also models a response, often one of anger and retribution.
• Over-represent violence, with television sometimes showing as many as 30 violent acts per hour as preferred solutions to disagreements. This increases viewer concern for self-protection and a fear of going out alone. In addition, it enhances the acceptance of utilizing violence as a solution to problems.
• Increase an appetite and tolerance for entertainment with a violent content, since the more violence an audience sees, the more violence it will want. This appetite for violence entails an increased callousness to people who may be hurting or in need.
• Sexualize violence by rendering it pleasurable and/or by depicting an erotic payoff for the protagonists who initiate the sexual violence.

Our Faith Perspective

This reconciliation is part of who we are as children of God — proclaimed at our baptism when we were welcomed into the family of God. When a child is baptized or dedicated, a congregation promises to nurture and care for the child and to bring the child into faith. How can we help but be concerned about those media that have so much impact on a child's life?

We therefore deplore the competing stories of violence from the media that continue to shape our society. Even in doing so, however, we know that sin still infects and affects us all. Too often we ignore our personal and corporate complicity in violence, blaming others. Too often we are weak and uncertain about our part of the solution.

After all, we Christians:

• Support the media industries as consumers, thereby helping to form their financial backbone. We are, indeed, part of the audience that media violence attracts.
• Permit and sometimes encourage our children's exposure to media with violent content.
• Participate in the media industries through our investments, and through our vocations as producers and writers. We do not always use our power to work for better programming.
• Shirk our duty as citizens to be vigilant in the pursuit of a common good.

• Church of the Brethren (1962, 1978, 1985)
• American Lutheran Church (1969)
• Reformed Church in America (1971)
• Presbyterian Church in the U.S. (1973, 1976)
• The United Methodist Church (1976)
• United Church of Christ (1977)

Churches have not been alone in calling for curbs on media violence. Other concerned organizations also have taken a stand, including:

• The National Commission on the Causes and Prevention of Violence (1969)
• Surgeon General (1972)
• National Institute of Mental Health (1982)
• Attorney General's Task Force on Family Violence (1984)
• National Parents and Teachers Association (1987)
• The American Psychological Association (1992)
• National Commission on Children (1991)
• H.F. Guggenheim Foundation Study (1993)
• Citizens' Task Force on TV Violence (1993)

An Issue of Urgency

If the violence has not abated, neither has the public outcry. In fact, it will become sharper as:

• More parents of young children see television as a teacher of often negative behavior and attitudes.
• More citizens view what the Surgeon General has described as a "public health crisis" with alarm, recognizing that it needs to be addressed through regulatory standards in several arenas.
• More grass-roots organizations challenge the presence of violence in the media, occasionally falling into extremist reaction.
• Cultural warfare breaks out over our institutions — government, universities, schools, churches, media — pressing the question as to what we want our society to be, and who we want our children to become.

We strongly object, however, to what we see as the misuse of the First Amendment, by commercial interests, as a cover for a quest for profit. Free speech and a free press have their places within a context of social responsibility and a concern for the common good. We hold media industries accountable for what they produce and distribute, and challenge them to act as good citizens in society.

We commit ourselves to work through government and with industry to find ways to respect free expression while abhorring and selectively limiting media violence, the moral equivalent of a harmful substance. We commit ourselves also to support families and churches in their aspirations and strategies for more appropriate media choices.

A Call to Action

We call for media that clearly:

• Create community, and value and develop cultures.
• Help to remove people and society from the cycle of violence that we understand to have been broken definitively by the cross of Christ.
• Respect human dignity and seek to involve people in participatory communication processes that enhance human dignity.

• Critical viewing: learning to discern the meanings of media messages.
• Critical analysis: determining the cultural, social, political and economic influences on a media message.
• Creative production skills: producing films and programs that create community, value cultures and respect human dignity.
• Preparation for "citizenship in a media culture": understanding how the media work in society; taking personal and public action to challenge government and industry.

Our Challenge to the Churches

We call upon churches to:

• Provide leadership through congregations, as centers of media literacy.
• Promote specific life-enhancing electronic media and film programs for pastors and people that teach moral and ethical values.
• Provide assistance to parents of children and youth about how families may utilize television more creatively.
• Prepare leadership, through media literacy programs in seminaries and universities, and through other means; and to develop and promote media literacy resources.
• Urge the integration of media awareness and literacy programs as critical components of peace, justice and advocacy agendas.
• Organize their efforts for continuity and wider impact, working ecumenically wherever possible.

Our Challenge to Families

• Monitor family viewing habits of television, film and video games.
• Discuss programs, films and media experiences in relationship to their faith.
• Participate directly in the media world through conversations with the church, government and media industries. It is helpful to let these groups know what is valued and what needs to be changed among the media options.
• Protect children from seeing films expressly intended for adults.

Our Challenge to Government

Keeping this balance in mind, we call upon our federal government to:

• Lead in the development of media standards, through an open, representative and accessible process.
• Develop not only regulations but also incentives for producers in order to encourage media choices that build community and enhance human dignity.
• Review its mandated task of regulating airwaves, which we hold in common.

We call upon our municipal governments to:

• Review and discuss media violence, especially when making contracts with the cable television industry.

Our Challenge to the Media Industries

We strongly urge the media industries to contribute to the development of media standards by which we all can live. This includes the film, television, cable television and video games industries.

We will support these industries in such efforts, through:

• Ongoing dialogue with media management and professional media practitioners.
• Bringing together those who manage the media and the consumers who receive their products.
• Reinforcing a voluntary approach for protecting children from adult material, through the film industry rating board of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA). We urge the members of the MPAA to reverse the trend toward the increasingly violent images that now appear in films rated suitable for children. We call upon the National Association of Theatre Owners (NATO) to enforce more diligently the rating system at the box office to prevent children from exposure to R-rated films intended strictly for adults.
• Publicizing advertisers of specific programs that depict significant values of the religious community.
• Encouraging investors, media management, and practicing media professionals to acknowledge their responsibility for ameliorating the climate of violence and for developing alternatives to gratuitous violence.

• Adopt public and verifiable community interest standards.
• Participate in open discussions on the development and use of media technology and their implications for our common interests.
• Provide programming that promotes peaceful alternative resolutions of conflict.
• Provide increased programming from international sources to enhance our understanding of our neighbors in the global community.

Conclusion

While we acknowledge the broad nature of our concerns for violence in the media, the National Council of Churches of Christ and its member communions declare their renewed commitment to changing this climate of media violence.

• Global Communication for Justice — policy statement.
• Violence and Sexual Violence in Film, Television, Cable and Home Video — an earlier version (1986) of the current policy statement, which includes the report of a study committee on this issue.

• "Media and Violence," Parts I & II, Number 62, 63 (1993) — special issues of Media and Values magazine.
• "Violence and Sexual Violence in the Media," Number 33 (1985) — earlier special issue of Media and Values on this topic.
• Beyond Blame: Violence in the Media — a multimedia educational resource package.

• Fore, William F. Mythmakers: Gospel, Culture and Media (1990).
• Pomeroy, Dave. The Mything Link: A Study Guide on Gospel, Culture and Media (1990).
• Pomeroy, Dave. Video Violence and Values — a workshop on the impact of video violence, especially in relation to use of home video (1990).
• Peterson, Linda Wood. The Electronic Lifeline: A Media Exploration for Youth (1990).
• Duckert, Mary. Who Touched the Remote Control?: Television and Christian Choices for Children and Adults Who Care About Children (1990).

• The Power of Image — video cassette on the impact of television (1990).
• Ethics in Media: Evaporating Values or News You Can Use? — video cassette on how television shapes our world perspectives (1992).

• Communication and Community: The Manila Declaration (1989) — includes Principles of Christian Communication.

• On Television: The Violence Factor — one-hour videotape (1984).
• Television and Violence: The Violence Factor — Television series (1984).

• Donnerstein, Edward; Linz, Daniel; and Penrod, Steven. The Question of Pornography: Research Findings and Policy Implications (1987).

• Fortune, Marie. Sexual Violence: The Unmentionable Sin (1983).

• Gore, Tipper. Raising PG Kids in an X-Rated Society (1987).

• "TV Violence," The Congressional Quarterly Researchers (March 1993).

The Church and Media Series

• Violence in Electronic Media and Film
• Global Communication for Justice
• The Churches' Role in Media Education and Communication Advocacy
• Member Communions of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the USA

For more information, contact:

NCCC Communication Commission

475 Riverside Drive, Room 850

New York, NY 10115

212-870-2227

Public broadcasting was a Johnny-come-lately to the American scene, partly because the U.S. never had the equivalent of a BBC. When broadcasting developed in the 1920s, the British saw it as so important that it had to be separated from church, state and the workings of the marketplace. Accordingly, citizens paid a license fee directly to an "outside corporation," the BBC, thus preventing Parliament or anyone else from exercising program control.

In the U.S., Congress created a completely commercial system from the very beginning, rejecting proposals to designate frequencies for noncommercial groups and allowing broadcasters to charge what the traffic would bear for carrying commercials. The frequencies were simply given to stations for nothing, which was like giving them the right to mine gold on public lands. It was a gigantic and permanent public subsidy for commercial broadcasters, since the frequencies were (and according to the Supreme Court, still are) acknowledged to be common public property.

While there was plenty of political rhetoric about requiring broadcasters to serve the public interest in exchange for broadcast licenses, the requirement was never enforced. And as broadcasters grew in economic and political power during the ‘30s, the willingness and finally the ability of Congress to enforce the public-interest requirements diminished until, like the Cheshire cat’s grin, it became nothing at all.

By the ‘60s, however, TV game-show scandals and the public’s growing perception of TV as a "vast wasteland" set the stage for change. Lyndon Johnson was a staunch supporter of education, and several states had developed large public educational radio and TV systems. In 1968 Johnson signed the Public Broadcasting Act. He thought of it as an educational tool. Others, including the Carnegie Commission, realized that it created a national communication system that could counterbalance commercial broadcasting and provide the kind of robust discussion impossible in a commercially driven system.

But Congress and Johnson made a fatal mistake. When they established the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) to insulate public radio and TV from political pressures, they failed to guarantee insulated funding. As a public-interest representative involved in the creation of the Public Broadcasting Act, I remember the anguish we felt at failing to get through Congress a 5 percent tax on TV and radio sets—something like the gasoline tax for roads which was protected from congressional raiding. The tax was defeated largely because labor unions objected that it was regressive—it taxed the poor relatively more than the rich. This objection played into the hands of those who did not want a strong alternative to commercial broadcasting.

Since then, every presidential administration and Congress has attempted to slash funding, primarily because public television—the Public Broadcasting Service—and National Public Radio would not go along to get along. Richard Nixon was particularly vexed that he could not control such documentaries as "The Banks and the Poor," which revealed how banks’ lending policies were increasing people’s impoverishment.

Two years after the creation of CPB, Nixon instructed his staff to see to it that "all funds for public broadcasting be cut immediately." His veto reduced congressional funding of CPB, thereby forcing public broadcasters into the arms of major corporations. Ever since, public radio and television have

been more dependent on the largesse of some of the world’s richest corporations—whose goals have more to do with burnishing their public images than with serving the public interest.

The percentage of public television’s budget that comes from the federal government fell from 26 percent in 1980 to 16 percent in 1990, while corporate funding increased from 11 percent to 17 percent. Pressures to commercialize public broadcasting continue and have created a classic Catch-22. If PBS and NPR were to depend entirely on congressional support, they would be out of business. But if they accept commercial sponsors and grovel through public "pledge weeks," then they are accused of selling out. They are damned if they do, defunct if they don’t.

Even this dismal situation has turned out to be relatively good news. The really bad news is that the political right wing is not satisfied with emasculating the public broadcasting system. They want none at all. In January 1995 the Washington Post quoted Newt Gingrich as saying that public broadcasting is a "sandbox for the rich" which should not be paid for by "poor workers." Gingrich told GOP staffers: "I don’t know why they call it public broadcasting. As far as I am concerned, there’s nothing public about it; it’s an elitist enterprise." As for his own intentions:

The charge that public broadcasting is elitist is nonsense. In the first place, it is not true that such programs as MacNeil-Lehrer Report, Washington Week in Review, Morning Edition, All Things Considered and Garrison Keillor’s Prairie Home Companion appeal only to affluent Americans. Research shows that people of all socioeconomic strata tune to both PBS and NPR; 40 million people listen to NPR each week—hardly a tiny "elite."

Second, to believe that people with less means are ipso facto incapable of being interested in certain programs is worse than elitist; it is brutish and dangerous. It’s a way of saying: If you aren’t rich, you probably don’t have the aesthetic capacity to enjoy a classical music broadcast or the intelligence to follow a Nova program about the human brain.

Third, the right wing makes an error that has long been used to justify commercial broadcasting: it confuses the public with the market, and equates citizens with consumers. Public broadcasting at its best seeks to provide programming to meet the diverse needs and interests of the entire citizenry. Commercial broadcasting’s sole object is to deliver potential consumers to the sponsor, and "programming" is anything that can attract the greatest number of them at any given time. Public and commercial broadcasting are in two different businesses; only the media are the same.

Fourth, the suggestion that public broadcasting is on the far left is erroneous. A study of NPR’s Morning Edition during the first Bush administration, for example, revealed that of 616 high-ranking political figures quoted 57 percent were Republicans or high-ranking Bush administration members, and 42 percent were Democrats. Among think tanks quoted on NPR, the most citations were of the Brookings Institution, Kevin Phillips’s American Political Research and the pro-business American Enterprise Institute—none known for leftist views.

Finally, the actual cost of public broadcasting is minuscule in comparison with other "public" activities. In fiscal 1995 the total federal operating budget for the CPB is $286 million, while $200 million yearly is allocated to military bands. The CPB’s $286 million is about one-fiftieth of 1 percent of the federal budget (the defense budget takes up 16.6 percent). The federal subsidy of CPB comes to less than one tax dollar per citizen; the subsidy for Japan’s public broadcasting system is 20 times as much.

However, the 14 percent of CPB’s budget that the federal government supplies is essential, both because of the money’s multiplying effect (it enables matching funds from many other sources) and because a further trimming would be catastrophic, as anyone who has ever had to trim a little from a tight budget knows.

Political conservatives are entitled to their views. But others are entitled to theirs as well. And there’s the rub. How can we discuss all sides of issues if there is no media platform available for free and open—and sometimes disturbing—discussion? The public broadcasting issue transcends the liberal-conservative controversy. What is at stake is whether our society intends to maintain a reasonable amount of open and robust debate about issues of consequence.

If we cut off public broadcasting, we will lose one of the few platforms devoted by its very nature to informing, entertaining and enlarging horizons, independent of economic or political control. And consider what would happen, for example, in the lives of children, especially ghetto children, if PBS were eliminated. There would be no Sesame Street, Where in the World Is Carmen Sandiego?, Reading Rainbow or Mr. Rogers—all now available to every home, regardless of ability to pay.

There is one other factor of which most people are, thus far, unaware. A number of recent technological breakthroughs, through digitalized compression techniques, will at some point allow every television station to offer six or seven channels in the spectrum space now occupied by a single one. Very soon every TV channel—including PBS stations—will increase enormously in value. In March 1995 the FCC auctioned off a few of its newer and far less valuable high-frequency channels for mobile telephones and realized a mind-boggling $7.7 billion. In light of that sale it’s reasonable to conclude that if the FCC decides to auction off some or parts of existing TV frequencies, the value of public broadcasting’s 351 TV channels could be worth countless billions.

The right wing's response is to attempt to privatize public broadcasting. This would get rid of those irritating noncommercial news and information programs, and complete the monopoly of private networks, resulting in a total commercialization of information. Each year Senate Republicans put forward bills to sell the entire public broadcasting system. Since even now owning a commercial TV channel is like having a license to print money, there are plenty of prospective buyers. Rupert Murdoch needs stations to fill out his Fox Network. Jamie Keilner, the head of Warner Brothers, has announced that he wants to buy time on PBS stations to air his programs. Owning the stations outright would be much better.

Interestingly, the right wing never challenges the huge subsidies that taxpayers already provide private radio and TV. The truth is that commercial stations pay absolutely nothing for their federally protected frequency assignments. And Congress has decreed that corporate advertising on radio and TV is a fully deductible business expense, which means that every advertising dollar costs a company only 30 cents.

Fortunately, the public senses public broadcasting’s importance. A poll in January 1995 showed that 84 percent want federal funding for public broadcasting maintained or increased (80 percent of Republicans, 86 percent of independents and 90 percent of Democrats). And last year 6.8 million Americans gave some $390 million of their own cash to their public stations—more than the total federal subsidy.

There are ways to solve the funding crisis without adding to the federal deficit. One solution would be to dedicate to public broadcasting just 10 percent of the federal take from those high-frequency auctions; from the one auction held so far, the sum would be $770 million—more than twice the annual federal subsidy. Another solution would be to charge a modest fee for broadcast licenses (we pay a fee for every other license); charging less than 1 percent on earnings would provide millions for PBS and NPR and only modestly reduce broadcasting profits.

Yet another strategy would be to reduce the tax write-off for advertising; a 20 percent reduction of that corporate bonanza could produce more than $4 billion annually for public broadcasting. And the original idea of a 5 percent levy on TV sets would collect about $450 million a year. But these strategies have very little hope of being realized, largely because the very media which could generate public support for them are almost totally controlled by commercial interests which will see to it that the public never receives this message.

Reinhold Niebuhr told us that we must know what is going on before considering what we ought to do. But how shall we know without a messenger? Because public broadcasting is one of society’s best hopes for disseminating information and penetrating the clouds of commercial obscurantism, support from every political quarter should rally behind our public system.

A few months ago I discovered that I am living in an America that is different from the one in which I grew up. And many of the differences are not good. It is far beyond the scope of this article to try to analyze them all. Instead, I want focus on the one area that I believe is a key to most of the differences, namely the role of the mass media in our society.

The media environment in which I grew up was far from perfect. I have no illusions about that. It was the time when, early on, Father Charles Coughlin used the radio to attack blacks and Jews. It was a time of the Ku Klux Khan and John Birch Society. It was a time of slap-stick comedy on radio and the retread of old vaudeville acts on TV, and a bit later it was the time of the fraudulent quiz shows like "The 64 Thousand Dollar Question" and Charles van Doren, a contestant who was secretly fed the answers by CBS executives.

But it also was the time of Edward R. Murrow and his war reports, live, from London, and of "See It Now," It was the time of the Lux Radio Theater, NBC White papers and hour long CBS documentaries that ran in prime time. It was a time when TV first flexed its muscles to bring down a towering political figure -- the telecast of the McCarthy hearings and that riveting moment when the defense lawyer, Joseph Welsh, faced Senator Joe McCarthy and said in exasperation, "Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last?" -- and Joe McCarthy was finished. It was the time when Public Broadcasting was chartered and, at its the beginning, fairly well funded by the Congress. It was a time when just about every major town in the nation had both a morning and an evening newspaper.

In the early sixties, I was asked to lead the National Council of Churches' Broadcasting and Film Commission. Our 42 member denominations cooperated with the three networks (and yes, there were only three) in many joint productions. -- more than a hundred each year. But we also worked with the FCC to seek fairness and responsibility among broadcasters whom we understood to be still very much licensed in the "public convenience, interest and necessity." In theological jargon, we tried to be in the world but not of it.

Early during that period, Dr. Everett Parker, the Director of the Office of Communication of the United Church of Christ and a member of my Communication Commission, brought us an idea. He said, "There’s a TV station in Jackson Mississippi that is flagrantly failing to meet the needs of the black half of its community, and together we could do something about it." Jackson had a population that was one-half black, yet WLBT, the leading TV station in the area, carried not a single program about the situation of blacks in the South, not a single on-air black personality, no black ownership, nobody in the station who was black, except the man who swept up at night. In fact, when network feeds came down with a program about race, the station went off the air with the sign "We are having technical difficulties."

This seemed so egregious that I took the idea to my Commission and they voted to join in action with the United Church of Christ. We went to the FCC with a request that they revoke the license of WLBT. But the FCC said, "Sorry. We can’t hear your petition; you don’t have standing before us." They claimed that only people who owned a license or who wanted to buy a license had standing before the regulatory commissions – but not the general public! So -- we sued the FCC in the DC Court of Appeals, and after a year or so the Court ruled that the FCC had to grant standing to any legitimate representative of the public.

This was a significant decision. It held that every governmental agency must grant standing to the public, and it still holds true today. This opened up the door for Ralph Nader’s work with the Transportation Safety Board and the Food and Drug Administration. It also spelled the end of cigarette advertising on TV when John Banzaff, a young lawyer, successfully petitioned the FCC to require stations to provide equal time for a statement on the dangers of smoking every time they aired a cigarette ad. Somehow the stations didn't like the idea of giving away all that free time, so cigarette advertising was banned -- by the broadcast industry!

Now that we had standing, we next asked the FCC to examine the logs and hiring practices of WLBT. We were sure they would revoke the license. The FCC sent an examiner down to Jackson, and he came back and with a straight face said that he found that WLBT was in compliance with its obligation to meet the needs and interests of its viewing public. So we sued the FCC again After several years of some fairly intense battles, the D.C. Appellate Court once again agreed with us, and directed the FCC to revoke WLBT’s license.

This was truly a landmark decision. It was the first of only two times a TV station has ever had its license revoked. And it was a decision that was heard across 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. So a blow was struck that had much the same effect as the Civil Rights legislation, but in the area of information access that the Civil Rights Act did not cover.

The point of the story is this: in those decades, in spite of the fact that broadcasters were already very strong, levers of power were still accessible to the public. Stations could still be held to some public accountability. The public could still be heard. During this same period, the Fairness Doctrine and the Right of Reply Rules were also in place. When statements were made on radio and television that slandered individuals, or strong positions about issues of public importance were aired which needed balance and rebuttal, it was possible for ordinary citizens to demand that the station provide time for reply.

In fact, in one other action, called the Red Lion case, we raised the issue of whether citizens had a right to reply on a station even if the station owner refused. We took this one to the Supreme Court, and the decision, written by Chief Justice White, held that the First Amendment does not protect private censorship by the broadcaster and that, between the right of the broadcaster and the right of the listeners and viewers, "it is the right of the viewers and listeners that is paramount."

But all that was then, and this is now. Today I am living in a different America, one in which the nature of the mass media has changed radically.

The New Broadcast Dispensation began in earnest in 1980. That year, President Ronald Reagan, explaining that government was the problem and not the solution, proceeded to gut the FCC. He reduced the number of Commissioners from 7 to 5. He cut both the budget and staff almost in half. He selected a Chairman who famously said that the television set is no different from an electric toaster -- thus signaling that he completely rejected, or at least misunderstood, the enormous cultural power of the medium. The FCC and the Congress soon made critical changes in all the rules. They did away with the Fairness Doctrine and the right of reply. Instead of having to ascertain their local community's needs and interests every three years and then planning how their station would program to meet those needs, the broadcaster was now required only to send a post card each year to the Commission, stating weather or not they had met the community's needs! It would be laughable if it were not so shocking.

It is shocking because democracy simply cannot exist for long without an informed electorate, and today we do not have an informed electorate. We do not have the ground rules that make it possible for there to be an informed electorate. We have among the electorate 30 per cent functionally illiterate, and when you can't read, you get your news and information from only one source -- television. Meanwhile, television has become totally integrated into the capitalist political economy. Instead of diversity and the clash of ideas we have monopoly and information and ideas that systematically favor the rich and powerful and keep the poor and uneducated uninformed and unmotivated.

Ralph Nader claims that today America is "growing young people up corporate rather than growing them up civic." This puts the issue clearly. People who grow up civic are taught how to relate meaningfully to others, to put the good of the group first, to consume wisely and to use amusement sparingly, and to be concerned for rights of others, for their environment, and for the future of human kind. That used to be pretty much the underlying theme in America. I believe it was the dominant theme when I was working in the media. But during the last forty years people have been grown up corporate. They have been taught to look inward, to put themselves first, to consume endlessly, to seek out the maximum possible amusement, and to be unconcerned for others, their environment or even the future. That is the dominant theme in America today. We have moved from an ideal of the common good, the commonwealth, to a vision that "greed is good."

Acting within this framework, the communication media are actually suppressing democracy through its influence on the political process. During the past forty years, voters have been taught by TV to make political judgments based on how they feel about a particular candidate, rather than how to evaluate a candidate's actual positions and actions. We know from research that television bypasses the cognitive centers of the brain and goes directly into the centers of feeling. So every ten second sound bite and every misleading commercial further separates the voter from the real issues. Every shouting match on Fox News further trains people to expect entertainment rather reasoned debate. And so of course the candidate with the most money for media exposure is the one most likely to win.

Large corporate interests have unparalleled power over politicians and their vote. We have witnessed this almost daily during the struggle over the universal health care bill. In fact, Rupert Murdock, the media mogul who last year captured the Wall Street Journal recently said that he would be willing to keep his Fox News Channel on the air even if it were not profitable, because he wants "the political leverage he can get out of being a major network." As Robert McChesney puts it, the electronic media are "a poison pill for democracy."

Of course, the whole mix media has changed with the advent of cable TV and the Internet. But an interesting thing happened as cable developed. It over developed. So many groups got into the pie that the slices have remained extremely thin. According to a recent analysis by the Chicago Tribune, Fox News averages just 2.6 million viewers on a typical weeknight, or less than 1 per cent of Americans. MSNBC does even worse, with 831,000 per night. The three major network newscasts, which still aim at a modicum of balance and depth, pull in a combined total of more than 20 million viewers each evening. Still, the flamboyant channels provide outlets for the strident and the calculated misdirection -- a home for every latter day charlatan and snake oil salesman. And the effects of the media's brain washing can been seen everywhere. Millions of citizens actually vote against their own self-interest, and cries like "Let's keep the government out of Medicare!" are both astonishing and depressing.

The jury is still out on the long-term effects of the Internet. Blogs provide almost instant response to emerging issues and are valuable to those who write up the news. But if the audiences of cable TV are fragmented, the audiences for Internet sites are shattered. The rapid disappearance of the daily newspaper leaves a gaping hole in information gathering that may possibly be filled to some extent by Internet web sites. But mass media it is not.

That leaves us with only one fairly strong and balanced communication system available to all -- and that is public broadcasting. For almost a half century PBS and NPR have managed to survive. Every new administration has wished they would go away, and Richard Nixon almost killed them. Congress continues to shamefully under fund them so that stations have been forced to go to the public, tin cup in hand. But they have survived. And they provide some of the only serious alternative programming in the entire media environment.^.

Now what is the role of religion in this gloomy media situation? Does religion have anything to say relevant to the current role of media in society? Of course it does. The biblical view of man says that he is creator of historical events and therefore is responsible for all his actions -- past, present and future. When Jesus placed the Great Commandment to love God with all your heart and mind and soul above the Ten Commandments, he introduced human kind to a new dimension of freedom and responsibility. To Christians, God goes ahead of our human history, calling us, leading us, opening up ever new and larger possibilities. This is what differentiates the living God from every false god. And in our world, the mass media are the agents that act either to open up or to restrict this freedom.

TV is the dominant releasing force, revealing new worlds of ideas and peoples and cultures. And it is also the great constricting force, limiting our freedom by manipulation and stultification. So this situation is not merely a public concern. It is a Christian concern. For without the freedom that comes with an open information environment, human beings are pressed into fear and neurosis that makes them less than human, and makes our society less than it should be.

I believe that is what is happening right now. I believe that the media are making our society less than it should be. America is becoming a declining power. Our reputation around the world is in tatters. Our schools are desperate for rejuvenation. Our highways and transportation systems are in a dangerous state of decay. Our banking system demands a major overhauling. Our military is overreaching and spending billions to police the world as if no-one had ever read the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Congress doesn’t dare seriously reform the bankers or Wall Street. And we citizens are afraid to rein in the so-called Defense budget that consumes 54 per cent of our tax money, or to stop the military-industrial complex because it has contrived to employ workers in almost every city and town in the nation -- with the result that support for the war machine has become in millions of homes a bread and butter issue, instead of a moral issue.

What specific remedies need to be taken to deal with these problems are almost overwhelming in their complexity. But the fundamental first principle is clear. Unless the general public -- not just the highly educated leaders of church and society, but the general public -- knows about these problem with all their pros and cons, and are able to weigh and consider alternatives and solutions from every standpoint -- left, right and center -- unless that happens, our nation will never be able to fight its way back toward solutions that will build us up, strengthen our resolve, and re-create the nation I used to love and I now would love to reform.

Yes, it is true today that What You Don’t Know Can Kill You. And it can kill America. The one essential requirement for starting reform in every area I have mentioned is having truly open media. So we need to fight once again for a return to sensible regulation. We must fight for a reinstatement of the Fairness Doctrine and the Right of Reply Rules (under which Mr. Limbaugh and Mr. Beck would have a hard time justifying many of their wild accusations, and therefore just might go the way of cigarette advertising). We must fight for an FCC that expects TV and radio stations to provide free time to all candidates for national public office. The result would be boring at times, but not so boring if the Congress also set strict limits on the length of campaigns. Meanwhile the cost of campaigns would plummet, as paying for more TV time would no longer provide the only route to winning an election. And we must fight for an FCC that requires stations to provide programs without commercials for children during the late afternoons, and to provide at least 25 minutes of genuine news during prime time instead of infotainment. Finally, we must fight to expand the non-commercial broadcast system that is made possible by the new digital spectrum to PBS stations, and fight off attempts to privatize what is left of public broadcasting.

The "We" I have in mind here is the institutional church, the power of thousands and even millions of people in the pews of our denominations. This is where the communication offices of the churches have responsibility. This is where the National Council of Churches -- and the National PTA, the National Library Association and other national organizations -- should wield their clout to make a difference in the halls of Congress, even as it was done a half-century ago.

About that time theologian Paul Tillich had already identified the problem, and he laid down a challenge:

"Yes, knowledge equals power. Three and four decades ago we still had a reasonable amount of information available to every citizen. The question of saving power in the nation is the question of whether there is a minority, even a small one, which is willing to resist the anxiety produced by propaganda, the conformity enforced by threat, the hatred stimulated by ignorance. The future of this country and its spiritual values is not dependent as much on atomic defense as on the influence such groups will have on the spirit in which the nation will think and act."

Tillich's challenge is more urgent now than it was then. Today our media environment is seriously dysfunctional. We must all decide whether we will be a part of that group, that small minority, that is willing to resist the propaganda, the conformity, the hatred and to create an open media environment. Because what we don’t know can kill us. And it can kill our society. But what we do know can bring to us, the nation, and the world, a truly abundant life.

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*Fore, Mythmakers: Gospel, Culture and the Media, (Friendship Press, 475 Riverside Drive, New York, NY 10115), Chapter 11, "What We Can Do."

Why when almost every major denomination on record opposed unilateral U.S. action in Iraq, did most people in the pews support it? In recent months researchers have begun to address that question by examining knowledge, attitudes and beliefs about involvement in Iraq. The findings reveal a deeply disturbing gap between the facts and the public’s beliefs.

"Misperceptions, the Media and the Iraq War," the most recent study was released in early October by the Program on International Policy Attitudes of the Center on Policy Attitudes and the Center for International and Security Studies at the University of Maryland (UM). The primary question asked was, "Are average Americans ‘misperceiving’ information about Iraq and the war?"

Between January and September of 2003, after conducting seven different polls, researchers found that the answer was yes: "A substantial portion of the public had a number of misperceptions that were demonstrably false, or were at odds with the dominant view in the intelligence community. . . . [These misperceptions] have played a key role in generating and maintaining approval for the decision to go to war"

Early in 2003, for example, 68 percent of respondents believed that Iraq played an important role in the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center. While 13 percent went on to claim that they had seen "conclusive evidence" of such involvement. At that time, both propositions were unsupported and in some cases denied by the U.S. intelligence community. In August a Washington Post poll reported that 69 percent of Americans still believed that Saddam Hussein was "personally involved" in the attack on the Twin Towers. And as late as September, approximately half of respondents said that the U.S. had actually found evidence in Iraq that Saddam was working closely with al-Qaeda. As President Bush clarified on September 17, Saddam had nothing to do with the 9/11 attack.

From May to September, 35 percent of the public believed that weapons of mass destruction had been found in Iraq, and 22 percent believed that Iraq used such weapons during the war. An ABC/Washington Post study showed similar percentages. But U.S. troops have failed to discover any such weapons, and the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency earlier had reported that "there is no reliable information on whether Iraq is producing and stockpiling chemical weapons, or whether Iraq has -- or will -- establish its chemical warfare agent production facilities." On October 2, David Kay, the U.S. inspector in charge of finding weapons of mass destruction, reported to Congress that he had found no chemical, biological or nuclear weapons, although their existence was one of the major rationales for going to war with Iraq.

Finally, the researchers asked Americans, "How [do] all of the people in the world feel about the U.S. going to war with Iraq?" Thirty-one percent expressed the mistaken view that attitudes overseas were evenly balanced on the issue, while another 31 percent believed that a majority of people in the rest of the world favored U.S. action.

In fact, polls have shown -- for more than a year -- that world opinion is strongly opposed to American action. In a Gallup International study, not a single one of 38 countries polled (including 20 in Europe) expressed majority support for unilateral action by the U.S. A Pew Global Attitudes Survey in April-May 2003 found that between 67 and 97 percent of people in six out of eight Muslim nations (Turkey, Indonesia, Pakistan, Lebanon, Jordan, Kuwait, Morocco and the Palestinian Authority) opposed U.S. action, and only one -- Kuwait -- was in favor.

These studies make it clear that Americans are full of misperceptions about the war and, in particular, about three issues -- the link between Iraq and al-Qaeda, the existence of weapons of mass destruction, and the nature of world public opinion. Why? The chilling answer is that their "misperceptions" are closely related to their news sources.

When people were asked where they get most of their news, 19 percent said newspapers and 80 per cent said radio and TV. The primary source of radio and TV news was: two or more networks, 30 percent; Fox, 18 percent; CNN, 16 percent; NBC, 14 percent, ABC, 11 percent; CBS, 9 percent; PBS-NPR, 3 percent. The degree of misperception varied according to the source of news. To quote the UM study: "Those who receive most of their news from Fox News are more likely than average to have misperceptions. Those who receive most of their news from NPR and PBS are less likely to have misperceptions."

In fact, Fox News watchers were three times more likely to hold all three misperceptions than those watching the next most watched network. In the NPR-PBS audience, an overwhelming majority had none of the three misperceptions. If one looks at each of the categories, the differences are dramatic. Sixty-seven percent of Fox viewers had a wrong perception about links between Iraq and al-Qaeda (16 percent for the PBS-NPR audience). On the existence of weapons of mass destruction, 33 percent of Fox viewers had the wrong perception (11 percent for PBS-NPR). On world opinion, 35 percent of Fox viewers had misperceptions (5 percent of PBS-NPR viewers). In all three cases, the misperception percentages decreased when moving from Fox to CBS to NBC to CNN to ABC, to print media, to PBS-NPR

The UM report also found that supporters of the president are more likely to have misperceptions" than nonsupporters. Potential voters for the president were more likely to misperceive the three issues and support the war; potential voters for a Democratic nominee were less likely to misperceive or to support the war.

That supporters and opponents of the president’s policies have differing views is not surprising, and Is even desirable in a democracy. What is troubling is that all citizens were significantly affected by the news media; that the media are fostering a considerable amount of misperceptions about issues of great public importance; and that these misperceptions tend to follow a particular ideological line -- namely, that the war in Iraq was justified.

What we are seeing is the result of deregulation in the U.S. broadcasting system. Instead of being required to ascertain the local community’s "needs and interests" as once required by the Communication Act, stations are now allowed to provide programs that meet the economic and ideological needs of the owners. This has resulted in intentional news bias and distortions.

Fox News, owned by Australian-born Rupert Murdoch, is the prime example, having pushed the envelope of buccaneer broadcasting to new heights as the FCC knuckles under to pressures from the multinational communication companies. Murdoch bends his broadcast and print news to fit his politics. He has played a crucial role in persuading Americans to support the war in Iraq.

The Fox network could not have existed three decades ago because the Federal Communications Commission still used the Fairness Doctrine and equal time rules to require stations to provide time -- even free time -- to air all sides of issues of public importance. FCC regulations prevented any single broadcasting company from owning more than seven stations in major markets nationwide. The outcome, although never perfect or free of controversy helped maintain a level playing field in which no small group of companies could control all the sources of news and information coming into a given community -- as they can today.

An alternative to regulation might be simply to let the liberals have their own version of Fox, conservatives their own network, and soon. But because there are still only a limited number of frequencies, and thus a limited number of TV and radio stations, each station has an obligation under the law to meet the needs and interests of the public -- all the public. A reasonable amount of regulation is essential to make certain this is done.

Ronald Reagan began deregulation in 1980; for two decades power steadily moved to the owners at the expense of the public. This year Federal Communications chairman Michael Powell, son of Secretary of State Colin Powell, proposed to further loosen restrictions. In June the FCC ruled that a single company could increase its ownership of TV stations covering U.S. households from 35 percent to 45 percent. The ruling outraged both liberals and conservatives, and a bipartisan group of senators pushed through an unprecedented vote to roll back the FCC’s new rules. The matter still has to come before the House, however, and Bush has threatened to veto the legislation if it is passed.

The connection between the public’s misperceptions about Iraq and the administration’s support of further media deregulation is an unholy alliance. Government supports the interests of the broadcasting industry, and the broadcasters are allowed to mislead the public. If this were an ordinary industry -- say, airlines or electric utilities -- the problem would be serious enough. But we are dealing with information -- the lifeblood of how citizens exchange ideas and come to form their opinions. We need some reregulation of broadcasting in order to maintain a balance in media news and information.

Broadcast bias resulted in significant national misperceptions about a major political policy issue -- going to war in Iraq. If the unholy alliance between government and broadcasters is allowed to persist, if broadcast media remain unregulated and unrestrained, then the misperceptions about Iraq are only a harbinger of many more to come. The democratic experiment cannot survive for long if the citizenry is, with state approval, systematically misinformed.