FCC COMMISSIONER GLORIA TRISTANI

The Road from Barnard/Columbia to the FCC

Washington, D.C.

**May 25, 1999**

***(as prepared for delivery)***

Good afternoon. Thank you for your kind introduction. I am delighted to
be here at this first Columbia/Barnard May luncheon and tell you a
little bit about myself, the Federal Communications Commission and "The
Road from Barnard/Columbia to the FCC." It's also my understanding that
the condition of the invitation to the Barnard women was to ante up the
speaker. Here's the ante.

In preparing for these remarks, I was reminiscing about my first days at
Barnard College and remembered that the first class I actually took was
at Columbia College. Before I first registered at Barnard, I decided to
take summer classes, and recall taking an art history class entitled
Pre-Renaissance Art, taught by Professor Davis. The course had a heavy
emphasis on Giotto's influence on Renaissance Art.

That Fall I took a Barnard introductory history seminar that focused on
the Middle Ages and became interested in that period. Before I knew it,
I was on the road to becoming a "Medieval Studies" major. I took Latin
courses, Church history courses, medieval literature courses and wrote
my senior thesis on [The Position of Women in 13^th^ Century Spain en
Las Siete Partidas de Alfonso X El Sabio]{.underline}. For those of you
who may not know, the [Siete Partidas]{.underline} was a comprehensive
law code adapted from the Roman law that also discussed the manners and
morals of 13^th^ century Spain.

In thinking about those days when I believed that my mission in life was
to become a medievalist, I was trying to make a connection between the
Middle Ages and the Federal Communications Commission. I'll confess I
was having a hard time thinking of anything relevant except that the
National Gallery has a great Pre-Renaissance art collection. Until I
remembered what I had heard about the Internet projects being developed
by certain monks based in my home state of New Mexico.

You may know how it was the medieval monks who produced some of the most
beautiful manuscripts of the so-called "Dark Ages." And it was through
many of these manuscripts that "Western learning" was preserved.

Today in Abiqiui, New Mexico, the Benedictine monks of the Monastery of
Christ in the Desert, are continuing the tradition by becoming
electronic publishers and webmasters. Abiqiui is better known as the
home of Georgia O'Keefe who often painted the barren but beautiful
desert. It's also the home of my maternal grandmother's ancestors. The
Abiqiui monks are developing an Internet project entitled Next Scribe
Studios, in effect making the transition from parchment to cyberspace.
Part of their mission statement reads, and I quote:

"The primary historical characteristic of the advent of the third
millennium will be the spread of ubiquitous digital networks in human
society. The universal digital network -- the Internet and the Web --
will rapidly become as integral to human life as speech and writing
themselves: for all human social communication, all industry and
learning, all religious evangelization, . . . indeed every part of human
life, will either take place directly by means of, or be perpetually
assisted by, this digital "ether" which will be present everywhere."

These savvy Benedictines are assuring the Church is not left behind in
this new information age.

There are also some issues, believe it or not, that we deal with at the
FCC that have been around since the Middle Ages and even earlier.

On a more serious note, an issue that I\'ve been thinking about a lot
lately is our culture of violence. Of course, the tragedy in Littleton,
Colorado and the shootings last week in Conyers, Georgia have focused
all of us on the problem. But some are surprised that the public\'s
attention hasn\'t abated at all in the month since Littleton. Usually,
after a tragedy, the news media (and especially the 24-hour cable news
networks) go into \"saturation mode,\" covering every aspect of the
story down to the minutest detail. But once the media feels like
there\'s nothing \"new\" to report they usually move on to something
else and the public\'s attention is diverted. But that hasn\'t happened
here. As they say in the news business, this story has \"legs.\"

But the \"legs\" of the story is not really the ongoing investigations
\-- although that still gets plenty of attention \-- but the search for
answers. How and why did this happen? And how can we stop it from *ever*
happening again?

The truth is there are no easy answers. We\'ll probably never know why
these young men did what they did. But that hasn't stopped people from
trying to assign blame. Some blame the parents, who should have known
what their children were up to. Some blame the easy availability of guns
in this country. Some blame the school for inadequate security. Some
blame the Internet for teaching children how to easily build bombs. Some
blame Hollywood for airing too much violence. There may be some truth in
all of these. In tragedies like these, there\'s always plenty of blame
to go around.

I would like to discuss one part of the problem \-- media violence.
It\'s not that I don\'t think that the other pieces of the puzzle
aren\'t important. Believe me, I\'d like to see tougher gun control laws
and more parental responsibility. But the level of violence in our media
is something that deeply concerns me and about which, as a Commissioner
of the FCC, I have an obligation to speak.

Let\'s start with TV. There isn\'t any doubt that TV has an impact on
children. 98% of American homes have a TV set \-- more than the
percentage of homes that have a telephone. The average American child
watches about 25 hours of television a week \-- more time each year
watching TV than he or she spends in the classroom.

And, much of what children are watching on TV is violent. By the time
they complete elementary school, children in the United States have
witnessed about 8,000 murders and 100,000 acts of violence. And while
prime-time TV contains about 5 violent acts per hour \-- bad enough \--
there are over 20 violent acts per hour on children\'s programming. Each
week, television programming contains about 800 violent scenes that
qualify as high risk for younger children.

But there is some hope on the horizon. It\'s called the V-chip. The
V-chip is a device that will be installed in TV sets that will permit
parents to block shows that they do not want their children to see.
After years of political wrangling and technical development, the V-chip
is about to become a reality. By July 1, half of new TV sets must have a
V-chip installed. By next January 1, all new sets must have a V-chip.

The V-chip is not a substitute for parents. It is a tool for parents.
Parents cannot always monitor what their children watch on TV. Nowadays
there aren\'t just three channels to monitor, there are dozens. No
parent can possibly know what\'s on all of them all of the time. And in
this age of single parent families and families in which both parents
must work to make ends meet, it isn\'t possible for parents to always be
at home to monitor their children\'s television viewing. The V-chip will
allow parents to block violent, sexual or other programming that they
believe is unsuitable for their children. When the parents leave for
work, or go out for the evening and leave the children with a
babysitter, they will be able to punch a couple of buttons and the
V-chip will block out programming that they do not wish their children
to see.

How will the V-chip permit parents to block shows? Well, along with
requiring V-chip blocking technology in new sets, Congress also required
that program ratings be developed, so that the V-chip would be able to
tell what kind of programming is being shown. The ratings will be sent
by the TV station or cable operator over what\'s called the \"vertical
blanking interval.\" I\'m sure all of you know the horizontal line on
your sets that sometimes needs to be adjusted. That\'s not just there to
annoy you. That line can carry a lot of valuable information, like
closed captioning for the hearing impaired. It will also carry the TV
ratings. The V-chip will be able to read those signals and will block
the show if it has been programmed to do so.

I\'m pleased that this system is finally about to become a reality. And
I\'m honored that the Chairman of the FCC asked me to head a task force
to make sure that the roll-out of the V-chip goes smoothly. I\'ll be
working hard over the coming months to ensure that the V-chips are in
the sets, that the ratings are being sent, and that parents are educated
about the system.

The V-chip is not a cure-all. By itself, it\'s not going to prevent
another Littleton, or save the hundreds of other children who are
murdered or are victims of violence each year. But while it\'s not the
whole answer, it might be a part of the answer \-- at least for some
families.

Of course, there were other media that appear to have played a role in
Littleton. When you hear about those young men playing first-person
killing games like Doom for hours on end, the studies about how our kids
have become desensitized by media violence take on a new immediacy. And
it also appears that access to bomb-making information on the Internet
played a role.

A lot of people are skeptical that there is anything we can do about our
culture of violence. I'm not.

However, under our Constitution, there may be less that the government
can do about the threat posed by violent computer games and the
Internet. Let me just note a few ideas that others have put forward that
are worth considering.

First, there should be a common ratings system. Right now, there are
ratings systems for TV, movies, video games and the Internet, but
they\'re all somewhat different. A common system would be simpler and
easier for parents to use.

Second, ultra-violent material that is designed for adults should not be
marketed to children. It is unconscionable for producers of this
material to claim that they are simply protecting the rights of adults
to have access to this material, and then market it to children. As
Senator Joe Lieberman said: \"Joe Camel has not gone away. He seems far
too often to have gone into the entertainment business.\"

Third, the industries involved should enforce their age restrictions. A
child under 17 should not be allowed into an \"R\" rated movie without
an adult. A child under 17 should not be allowed to buy or rent an \"R\"
rated movie. A child should not be allowed to buy or rent an adult game
at the video store.

Fourth, we must speak out, individually and as a society, and make
content-producers think twice before they put gratuitous violence in
their products. This may be the most important of all, because of the
difficulty in our society of keeping objectionable material from our
children. Just think about what the AIDS crisis has done to the
depictions of casual, unprotected sex in our entertainment. Content
producers have acted more responsibly and now they think twice before
having characters jump into bed at the drop of a hat. The same goes for
depictions of smoking. These kind of social pressures work. And no one
has argued that the First Amendment has been destroyed because of them.

I hope that you will join me in considering and speaking out on these
issues. And I hope to see you all again soon at one of your functions.
Thank you.