www.ucc.org

I‘ve been accused by someone within my denomination of assaulting the first amendment. He describes activities I’ve had a major role in as a “full-fledged assault on conservative media” – “an organized campaign . . . a carefully planned, well-funded systematic assault on talk radio and Fox News that involves at least seven major liberal American religious denominations.”

I’ve never seen myself as a part of something like that and I’ve never been described that way before. It brings home the talk about cyberpolarization — how we tend to use media that reinforces our own viewpoints and therefore are not aware of misinformation and are not sensitive to insults and accusations lacking objectivity and logic.

Jeffrey Lord (From The American Spectator)

And it gives me a lens from which to see how it works. It occurs to me that others might be interested in that view. So I’m going to first lay-out my description of activities I’ve been involved in for a few years through my church and follow that with a description of them by someone writing for The American Spectator, Jeff Lord. I conclude with why an objective and logical basis for Lord’s conclusions seems lacking to me and why members of the same church ought to do better by each other.

My Account

My family and I are members of the United Church of Christ (UCC), a U.S., Christian, Protestant denomination. Go to http://www.ucc.org to check us out. For the past 8 years or so, I have been on the board of an independent, non-profit corporation related to the UCC that was formed in 1959 to advocate for media justice. For the last three years or so I have been the Chair of that board. The organization is O.C. Inc. or The Office of Communications of the United Church of Christ. You can learn more about it at: http://www.ucc.org/media-justice/.

www.ucc.org

Led by the Rev. Everett Parker, in the 1950s O.C. Inc. petitioned the FCC (Federal Communications Commission) to have a Mississippi station, WLBT-TV, lose its license for failure to broadcast in the public interest. O.C. Inc. alleged that WLBT discriminated against African-Americans in the way it presented news and announcements and in its selection of programming. Basically it didn’t report on the civil rights movement or gave only a one-sided view of it. O.C. Inc. won! Normally only businesses regulated by the FCC had brought their interests and concerns before it; the WLBT decision said a citizen group like O.C. Inc. had standing to raise the public’s interests and concerns.

Today O.C. Inc. works with others in administrative and court proceedings as well as in education and advocacy efforts to uphold the public interest in broadcasting. I’m proud of our work for accessible low-power or micro radio stations and to enforce the minimal FCC requirements for educational children’s programming on TV. See an article on the last at:   http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/02/24/AR2007022401453.html.

All our policies are determined by our board – the whole church does not vote on them. Our board members are UCC members that our nominating committee finds, the Executive Council of the Church approves and nominates, and the annual General Synod of the Church elects. We are an independent corporation but our by-laws commit us to work in covenant with the UCC.

www.ucc.org

It is good work. I believe in it. I think our democracy is a good form of government and I am glad to be able to have at least a small voice in protecting and ensuring it through O.C. Inc. I believe the free and frequent flow of opinion and information is crucial to a democracy – to voters being informed and holding elected representatives accountable. And I think the first amendment to the U.S. Constitution protects exactly that. It’s not an ideal we always met, but we try to and that matters.

My convictions are equally grounded in my religious faith. I believe in one God, in the worth of each and every human life and in the familial relationship of all humanity. I think the political ideals behind the first amendment — liberty, equality and self-government — are rooted in or closely related to those beliefs. My particular faith tradition stems from the Protestant Reformation and its stress on the ability of each and all to read the Bible and to approach God directly – that idea and the printing press are tied together in history and in my mind. So I think freedom to read, learn and communicate are critical to personal faith and church community.

My religious beliefs include an understanding of human limitations: humans are not God. This means that individuals and groups never get things quite right or stay true in the service of God’s promised realm of justice and peace. Therefore we need not only forgiveness but to live in peace with others — to see if the needs and voice of others is a means to our renewal and reform. In more secular language, we need to tolerate and address opposing viewpoints. I could go on and on with this kind of stuff, but you get the idea.

In the last few years, while I served as its Chair, the O.C. Inc. Board has approved use of a new education and advocacy technique: using the internet to identify and communicate media justice problems to people of faith. With interactive websites, we could also urge them to take some sort of action on the problem and be a part of a meaningful group effort with others who had similar concerns. We did it through the UCC web site in 2008 – our staff created an interactive web site and emailed, asking folks to join a “Media Violence Fast.” They could commit to one week without watching violence on TV, movies, video games, etc. And they could go to other sites and learn more about violence in the media and the effects of violent media on children, etc. For me, the fast was very, very easy: when my family watched “Lassie’ in the 1950s, I hid behind the couch whenever Timmy was in trouble.

This past year O.C. Inc. broadened its work with and through other Christian denominations and other faiths. Rather than inviting others to join in the UCC effort, it seemed better to have an interfaith organization and web site that many could act through on common issues. We were able to get grant money for it, and the result was “So We Might See,” for which we use the acronym, SWMS. Check it out at http://www.uccfiles.com/swms/. It includes The National Council of Churches, The Disciples Action Network of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ); the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, Communications Services; the Presbyterian News Service of the Presbyterian Church (U.S. A.), the Islamic Society of North America and the U.S. Catholic Conference of Bishops. Before Mr. Lord wrote, the United Methodists were also involved.

Through it we launched a campaign aimed at widening access to the internet – getting policies to promote everyone having fast internet service and to limit providers’ ability to restrict or condition use of the internet. It was called “Bring Betty Broadband.”

The Bring Betty Broadband Campaign of So We Might See

Check it out here: http://www.ucc.org/news/bring-betty-broadband.html. We found religious groups across the spectrum of political views have similar views on violence in the media and hateful, false portrayals of religious and other groups. SWMS, in partnership with the nation’s Domestic Violence Awareness Month and the YWCA’s “Week without Violence,” promoted the second “Media Violence Fast.” You can learn about it here: http://www.ucc.org/news/why-am-i-watching-this.html.

An emphasis in the second Media Violence Fast campaign was hate speech — false or misleading characterizations of a specific type of person or group as worthless, bad, inferior, etc. The example used was speech against Mexicans. The action people could take was to sign a letter to the FCC asking for more investigation into hate speech and to update an earlier FCC report on it. See http://www.ucc.org/media-justice/mvf2009/about.html. The letter says the “appropriate government role would be to collect statistics and monitor trends that will provide a broader context when individuals are concerned about what they see and hear on the nation’s airwaves.” I pledged to fast and I signed the letter.

Staff and leaders of the SWMS members were invited to our O.C. Inc. annual Parker Lecture, held on September 30^th this year, and to a luncheon before the lecture. We are proud of the annual event; it attracts many members of the media and public interest groups working for fair and just media and it draws attention to ethical and fairness issues. It is also our main fund raiser. Our grant money is dedicated to the projects it given for, and although we have some donated funds, income from ticket sales for the Parker Lecture is the only money we raise for general operations.

We search every year for a prominent speaker and considered ourselves very lucky this year to have both the head of the National Council of Churches, the Rev. Dr. Michael Kinnamon, and a member of the Federal Communications Commission, Michael J. Copps. Frankly, I can’t remember much of what Mr. Copps said. But I am pretty sure I generally agreed with his priorities – the FCC had been pretty weak in the face of large media companies recently and he was urging a stronger stance in the public interest.

Another Description

Alternatively, what I’ve been involved in has been described as “a full-fledged assault on conservative media.” This is Jeffrey Lord’s description in a series of articles for The American Spectator that began with an October 20, 2009 article entitled “FCC-Church Conspiracy to Silence Talk Radio and Fox?” http://spectator.org/archives/2009/10/20/fcc-church-conspiracy-to-silen.

Lord’s path to the above accusation is long with lots of links and maybe a few missing links. It starts with the O.C. Inc. Parker Lecture luncheon on September 30^th and Commissioner Copps’ remarks. Lord ties Copps’ comments to the So We Might See (SWMS) sponsored campaign for the second Media Violence Fast, apparently because Copps mentioned that the SWMS folks had lunch with him (and O.C. Inc. staff and board) before his lecture.

FCC Commissioner Michael Copps

Lord calls this a “cozy, private lunch.” He thinks it links Copps to the SWMS and therefore to the invitation on the SWMS Media Violence Fast website to sign a letter to the FCC about hate speech. This seems like a weak link to me.

Lord says this letter to the FCC is part of a “push” to “de-legitimatize and silence not just talk radio . . . but Fox news.” For proof of this push and Copps’ role in it, Lord relies in part on Copps’ statement that he was working for “a comprehensive FCC evaluation of the state of broadcast journalism.” I don’t see the link here.

From lunch prior to giving remarks to a push to de-legitimatize Fox News seems like a long jump. But Lord finds additional proof in the words of the letter to the FCC on the SWMS Media Violence Fast website.

In a paragraph asking for investigation into the “possible correlation” between hate speech and acts of violence, the letter quotes Russ Limbaugh as “calling Mexican immigrants, regardless of legal status, a renegade, potential crime element that is unwilling to work.” This follows a sentence about two Mexicans who were beaten and robbed by teenagers who accused them of taking jobs from U.S. citizens, which occurred a few months after Limbaugh spoke the quoted words.

In Lord’s view, this means the letter claims Rush Limbaugh “is responsible for beating up Mexican men.” I think that is a stretch, but Lord has a point. The letter does suggest a correlation between Limbaugh’s insulting generalizations about Mexicans and the subsequent violence against some Mexicans, and does not offer proof.

Lord ridicules the very idea of a correlation. But I think he ignores that the letter only asks for investigation by the government agency  – it does not say there is a correlation, only that we need to learn what we can about speech that could be inciting or augmenting violence.

So, because: 1) FCC Commissioner Copps was at a lunch with SWMS folks, and 2) SWMS sponsored a website for a Media Violence Fast, and 3) the site asked people to sign a letter to the FCC re further investigation of hate speech that quoted Limbaugh, Lord concludes there is “a full-fledged assault against conservative media” afoot. Whew! I think I knew of 1-3, more or less, but the conclusion Lord draws did not occur to me.

But the next jump is an even longer one. Lord connects what he has described above with recent derogatory White House statements about Fox News. He does not give any facts to support such a connection; he just asserts it.

Yet it is the culmination of his argument, and he seems to think it demonstrates “[t]here is an organized campaign now afoot, a carefully planned, well-funded systematic assault on talk radio and Fox News that involves at least seven major liberal American religious denominations.” And this, he says, is an assault on the first amendment.

My Conclusions

I feel unfairly attacked by Lord’s published comments.

I understand that he disagrees with me, O.C. Inc. and SWMS about what is hate speech in the media and whether a government agency concerned with the media should collect statistics about it and monitor trends. And he feels it is unfair of us to suggest in a letter to that agency that Rush Limbaugh’s comments are hate speech and could correlate with subsequent violent acts. But his article reads like the uncovering of a sinister plot against conservatives and the first amendment.

And I don’t think he gives evidence and reasons sufficient to support his conclusion that there is a plan to assault conservative media among the White House, a FCC Commissioner and a coalition of religious groups concerned about hate speech and its effects.

It hurts to imply our actions as the O.C. Inc. Board are illegitimate because the 1.2 million rank and file UCC members did not join in.  Mr. Lord and I are members of the same church, and probably we would agree that its organization is odd and does not make the national church agencies very accountable to local congregations and their members. But to insinuate that I or Rev. Guess did something our church did not authorize us to do is hurtful.

Lastly, I did what I did in a spirit of service to the first amendment, our society and the church of which we are both members. Writing to a government agency about a concern is activity squarely protected by the first amendment. It is not an assault on the first amendment.

That we share a faith and a church, however, testifies to the unity of the Spirit that transcends political and personal differences. Trust in that unity as something we do not create but can rely upon should lead us to good will and let us be a  means of renewal and reform for each other. I don’t think it is impossible.