THE SINS OF THE GRANDFATHER:

The FCC & Censorship: Legendary Media Activist Everett Parker on the Revocation of WLBT’s TV License in the 1960s for Shutting Out Voices of the Civil Rights Movement (Democracy Now, 3/07/08)

As the FCC begins its investigation of WHNT in Alabama, we take a look at the only time a TV station had its license revoked for failing to serve the public interest. The station, WLBT in Jackson, Mississippi, first came under scrutiny by the Office of Communication of the United Church of Christ. The Office was founded and headed up by media activist Everett Parker. [includes rush transcript]

AMY GOODMAN: So you appealed—applied to the FCC. You wanted their license revoked, that they weren’t serving the community. But the FCC did not side with your appeal.

DR. EVERETT PARKER: No. What we asked the FCC to do was to hold a hearing on the renewal of the license and to hold a hearing in Jackson, Mississippi. And they refused. And so, there wasn’t much you could do about it, because the public had no standing at that time. But we appealed the FCC decision.

JUAN GONZALEZ: And when you say—by “standing," just for our listeners and viewers, you’re saying that, according to regulatory law, the FCC did not recognize that the public in general had an interest, a direct interest—

DR. EVERETT PARKER: Yes.

JUAN GONZALEZ: —in a station, only somebody else who was trying to—who had an economic interest in getting the license or competing with them could have the standing to challenge that license, right?

DR. EVERETT PARKER: Yeah. If you and I had a contract and I had—I said you didn’t fulfill the contract and I went to court, I would have to prove to the court that I had a right to sue you, and the court would give me standing—that’s the legal term—to sue. And the public had no right, if—and we were told off very quickly by the FCC. But we tried some other things beforehand, but I won’t go into all the things we did.

AMY GOODMAN: So, ultimately, you had to go to court. You couldn’t get the FCC to deny renewal of the license.

DR. EVERETT PARKER: No. So we—I talked to Orrin Judd, who was the lawyer for the Church and a very distinguished attorney in New York. And he said, “Well, you know, everybody likes to make new law.”

Which is what made him a bad judge. Great man though.

Posted by Orrin Judd at March 8, 2008 7:03 AM