September 13, 1994
     CHAIRMAN HUNDT ADDRESSES ETHICS AND THE COMMUNICATIONS REVOLUTION
     In a speech delivered today to the United Church of Christ
in New York City, FCC Chairman Reed E. Hundt said, "the
communications revolution should not be a highway--it should be a
bridge between the world of opportunity and the world of
despair."
     Hundt elaborated that, "The great web of digital electronic
communications that will extend across our country has vast
power. It will transform our economy into one in which value is
added...by generating and wielding information.  It will change
profoundly all the ways we teach, learn, and converse."
     In discussing ethics and the communications revolution he
noted that defining ethics isn't that easy.  "When it comes to
ethical codes, we have a heck of a lot more choice than in local
telephony or cable tv markets!  But touchtone dialing and channel
surfing through the these schools of thought is not an option."
     Chairman Hundt continued, "But in order to live successfully
in our complex society, we need to create together what the legal
philosopher John Rawls described as a 'well-ordered society.'  In
other words, in our Babel of ethics and languages we have to
communicate well enough so that all 'free and equal' persons
participate in the process.  Through this communication, all of
us together must come to a consensus about the way we should
govern ourselves.  This applies to discussions of value...to
debates over who should pay for the information highway."
     Addressing the FCC's involvement in the communications
revolution, the Chairman said "a task we can and should assign to
government.  I refer to the guarantee that the communications
revolution will provide to all Americans the tools to participate
in ethical consensus.  All Americans must be able to share their
views, to submit their different ethics to fair competition in a
public reasoning process.  Only then will all feel bound to
understand and accept the common consensus.  We need to make sure
that with respect to ethics, as well as wealth, we do not divide
into a society of haves and have-nots."
                                   -FCC-
                        FCC CHAIRMAN REED E. HUNDT
          EVERETT C. PARKER ETHICS IN TELECOMMUNICATIONS LUNCHEON
                 ETHICS AND THE COMMUNICATIONS REVOLUTION
                            SEPTEMBER 13, 1994
                            NEW YORK, NEW YORK
Thank you, Rev. Bailey, for that kind introduction.
I particularly want to note how delighted and honored I am to be here with you and with John
Seigenthaler.
John is notable for many things, but he deserves more credit for his vision and judgment than
you may know.  In the early 1970s he gave what I think were the first full-time post-college jobs
to a young newlywed couple from a small Tennessee town; one became a reporter and the other
a photographer.  This was the fine young couple we now recognize as Vice President Gore and
his wife Tipper.   Now that's excellent judgment and tremendous foresight.
I am here to talk about ethics and the communications revolution.  I'd like to begin by reading
from the Biblical book of beginnings.
From Genesis 11:
"And it came to pass, as they journeyed East, that they found a plain in the land of Shinar; and
they dwelt there....
"And they said 'Come, let us build us a city and a tower with its top in Heaven'...
"And the Lord said 'Behold, they are one people and they have all one language; and this is what
they begin to do; and now nothing will be withholden from them, which they propose to do.
Come, let us go down, and there confound their language, that they may not understand one
another's speech.'
"So the Lord scattered them abroad from thence upon the face of all the earth; and they left off
to build the city.  Therefore, was the name of it called Babel."
Here we are then -- spread across the face of the earth, divided by barriers of different tongues,
culture and distance.  And in this condition we have to find ways to communicate in order to
agree on how to exercise our responsibilities as stewards of this earth.
Most scholars agree that the three most important periods in the history of communication have
been the eras of the invention of writing, the printing press, and electronic communication.  The
last era started with Morse's telegraph but now, 150 years later, it is exploding in scope with the
conversion to digital signals over wire, wireless, broadcast, satellite and cable networks -- the five
lanes of the information highway.
The great web of digital electronic communications that will extend across our country has vast
power.  It will transform our economy into one in which most value is added, not by refining
iron or molding steel, but by generating and using information.  It will change profoundly all the
ways we teach, learn, and converse.
To discuss in a learned manner both the dazzle of the communications revolution and its
relationship to ethics requires a joint degree in philosophy and science.  I have neither.  I'm just
a lawyer.  Of course, as such I am certainly ready to offer remarks about these subjects anyway...
Now I need to know that you're not expecting to hear literature today.  After all, as Gertrude
Stein once said to Ernest Hemingway, "Remarks, Hem, are not literature."  So with expectations
I hope sufficiently low to let me get by with what was called a gentlemen's C when I took
Philosophy 10 in college, I'll proceed on. . .
Ethics, as I was told in that class, is the study of how one ought to act in life.  Others say it is
the study of what one ought to believe.  Others claim that it concerns how one can distinguish
between good and bad, right or wrong.  Still others suggest it is the study of what sort of
character one should strive to develop.
Defining ethics isn't that easy, is it -- even for a lawyer, who by training ought to be willing to
say anything.
But perhaps the difficulty we have even in defining the term ethics is similar to the trouble we
have with defining values in this country today.
Perhaps my difficulty in finding a way into these remarks and our difficulty in sorting out what
has been called the chaos of values in our country are both related to the complexity of our
culture.
We live in the most exciting, diverse, complex society that has ever gathered together on this
planet. We experience here the full impact of the scattering and confoundment of the people of
Babel:  in this country, our 250-plus ethnic groups speak more than 350 languages.
The airwaves carry our Babel of tongues:  over 450 radio stations have non-English formats.
As we are multilingual, so we are multiethnic.
And as we are multiethnic, so we are multiethic.  This country has 80 different religious bodies,
each with more than 60 thousand members.  They agree on some things, but disagree on many
things.
In the academic world, or in the religious community, there has been a great burgeoning of
interest in the question of defining ethics in our multi-cultural society.
This development traces back to the work of philosophers Elizabeth Anscombe and Alasdair
MacIntyre in the 1950's.
Anscombe recognized that our historical notions of morality were becoming unintelligible in our
complex, modern, polyglot culture.
MacIntyre agreed that our modern world had inherited a crazyquilt of conflicting ethical
traditions.  But he said the search for meaning is more likely to be more successful if we can
ascribe moral traditions that suggest orderly narratives for a successful life.
Contemporary philosophy has taken on the search for moral tradition sparked by Anscombe and
MacIntyre.  But just as physics has not developed a grand unified theory that ties together the
20th century's many discoveries, so philosophers offer us not one settled doctrine but a welter
of choices in our search for a code of ethics.
We can choose to be realists or intuitionists, naturalists or subjectivists, relativists or metaethical
relativists or universal prescriptivists.
If we want to know how to live we can adopt the precepts of natural law or Kantian ethics, social
contract or egoism, deontology or consequentialism, utilitarianism or virtue theory.  And if all
else fails we can rely on the bedrock injunction to respect the rights of others -- although few
want to leave those rights for lawyers to define.
When it comes to ethical codes, we have a heck of a lot more choice than in local telephony or
cable tv markets!  But touchtone dialing and channel surfing through these schools of thought
is not an option.  And to those who are waiting for remote controls to help you figure out what
to believe, maybe you know something I don't.
Nevertheless, the bookstores are stocked with the publications of would-be ethical guides,
advisors, and savants.  The top two hottest selling paperbacks this week are about the search for
ethical guidelines and values.   A former cabinet official creates a bestseller by writing a modern
day version of Poor Richard's Almanac -- and it reads pretty well, too!
We look for answers everywhere -- in schools, neighborhoods, exercise classes, self-improvement
clubs, radio talk shows, and even the Internet.
The search for values must be and can be an individual quest.  But in order to live successfully
in our complex society, we need to create together what the legal philosopher John Rawls
described as a "well-ordered society".
Rawls taught that a fair, just and well-ordered society depends upon two ideas.
First, all citizens are free and equal persons.
Second, society must be "regulated by a public political conception of justice".
Rawls argued that this "conception of justice" must be shaped by the development of a
"consensus" in the midst of a "diversity of conflicting. . . and reasonable . . . doctrines".  In other
words, in our Babel of ethics and languages we have to communicate well enough so that all
"free and equal" persons can come to a consensus about the way we should govern ourselves.
This applies to discussions of value and to debates on the crime bill, from discussions on the
meaning of life to debates over who should pay for the information highway.
Now this "consensus", Rawls said, is shaped by a public reasoning process.  There are three pre-
conditions for public reasoning to succeed.
First, we have to adhere to the duty of civility.
This is the duty to explain our views while being willing "to listen to what others have to say
and being ready" to change our own views.
Second, in shaping a consensus, we must seek true facts and accurate information.  After all,
when we agree on the true facts we are far more likely to agree on matters of opinion.
Third, there must be universal access to the public reasoning process.  Everyone in this country
of "free and equal" citizens must be part of the public reasoning process.
So now we see where modern communications comes into this discussion of ethics.
How does the public reasoning process get conducted if it isn't over all the lanes of the
information highway -- broadcast, wire, wireless, satellite, and cable?
But do modern communications increase or decrease our willingness to listen to the views of
others?  Do talk radio and broadcast television help us learn the facts or do they spawn
misinformation and enhance disagreement?  And if modern communications only are available
to the "haves", as opposed to the "have-nots" of our society, how can we hope to include all our
citizens in the "overlapping consensus of reasonable doctrines"?
These are critical questions.  But we should start working on answers by recognizing, gratefully,
that modern communications has the potential to enhance greatly the terms and methods for
pursuit of the "consensus of reasonable comprehensive doctrines."
First, the new communications techniques give almost infinite access to knowledge to those who
know how to use them.
Second, the communications revolution greatly expands access to communications.  The first
books were fabulously expensive.  The first telegraph services were only for big business.  But
now we have the capability to talk to each other -- through voice, video, and data exchange --
more easily, more cheaply, more extensively than has ever before been possible.
Those who like to know, to think, to talk, or just like to watch the world pass by should all feel
about this revolution in communications the same way that Wordsworth felt about the French
Revolution, as he wrote:  "Bliss it was, in that dawn, to be alive."
It will not surprise you to learn that at the FCC we're all in favor of promoting this
communications revolution.
Our means is a policy of competition with three guiding principles.
First, we want to introduce choice for consumers in all communications markets.
Second, we want open competitive markets because we want to create opportunity for all
Americans to participate in the communications revolution, especially small business, women and
minorities, for whom we are making special efforts.
Third, we want to establish fair rules for the competition.  The policy of competition under the
guidelines of choice, opportunity and fairness will help our country see:
       --      more investment;
       --      more jobs;
       --      more participation by small business women and minorities;
       --      leadership by America in sustainable economic development all over the world;
               and
       --      a  revolution in education, a reinvention of  job training for adults, and the
               delivery of better health care services to all Americans.
The policy of competition encourages fair competition among business plans to let the best plans
win -- just as fair competition among ethical ideas should shape the consensus that governs our
well-ordered society.  And our competition policy stimulates the communications revolution to
reach all parts of the private sector -- that will bring the greatest number of Americans into the
public reasoning process.
Yes, the communications revolution will give each of us access to more information than any one
person can absorb.  But if there are more books in the library than you have time to read, do you
react by closing the library?
We will need ways to filter information -- to sort out what is usable in the public's reasoning
process.  But we won't need censors and we won't need governmental control over the content
of the ethical debate that I see thriving in the electronic Chautauqua of tomorrow.
Now, as I suggested before, the FCC is in effect working to become the Federal Promotion of
Competition in All Communications Markets and Protection of Consumer from Monopoly
Commission. That would give us the initials FPCACMPCMC, which we're thinking of just
shortening to The Commission.  In that case I would just be called The Commish.
What we don't want to be is the Federal Civility Enforcement Commission or, even worse, the
Federal Censorship Commission.
Living up to the duty of civility is up to people on their own.
Just as we don't want the FCC enforcing civility, so we don't want it to decide who has spoken
truly or falsely.
But the public reasoning process that will define our consensual values also depends on the
communication of truth.  On this subject in Sunday's Washington Post, radio talk show host
Diane Rehm asked hard questions, including these:  "[s]hould there be as careful an examination
of statements uttered on the air as there is of words printed?  Is there any way in which talk
programming can be monitored to ensure factual presentation and correction of error?  How can
we as citizens participate more fully in the process of questioning and demanding accuracy?"
These are excellent questions.
At the Emmy's Sunday night, Jeff Greenfield also asked the broadcasting industry hard questions
about itself.   I was glad to hear him.
But we don't want to leave the answers to government bureaucrats.
Nevertheless, without government intrusion, as a society we still need solutions to public
disinformation and misinformation that don't involve governmental intrusion but that also don't
leave us as a society callously indifferent to truth or falsity.
Similarly there is a tremendous concern in this country about TV violence.
The concern is justified.  Violence on TV is one of many causes of violence in our society.  And
violence is totally  unacceptable in any "well ordered society".
It should not be necessary for government to step in to deal with violence on broadcasting.
Look at what has happened because Congressional leaders such as Senators Hollings, Inouye,
Dorgan, and Simon and Congressman Markey helped identify this issue:
Both the cable and television industries announced  comprehensive, industry-wide anti-violence
initiatives.
ABC this fall will introduce a new on-air logo to designate certain programs as "particularly
enjoyable for family viewing."
Television set manufacturers have approved a standard for blocking technology that will rely on
the programmers sending their ratings electronically.  A number of companies already have begun
to sell devices that will enable parents to block programs.
The third precondition to public reasoning is a task we can and should assign to government.
I refer to the guarantee that the communications revolution will provide to all Americans the
tools to participate in ethical consensus.   All Americans must be able to share their views, to
submit their different ethics to fair competition in a public reasoning process.  Only then will all
feel bound to understand and accept the common consensus.
We need to make sure that with respect to ethics, as well as wealth, we do not divide into a
society of haves and have-nots.
Think about how you would develop the consensus ethic of a well-ordered society if we were
divided into two groups:  those who could read and write and those who could not?  How could
these two groups truly compare their beliefs, share their aspirations, agree on facts, or reason
civilly together?
The difference between those who can read and those who can't is similar to what will in the
future be the difference between those who have the opportunity to take advantage of modern
communications and those who do not.
Now some say that by virtue of the inexorable logic of market economics the information
highway will naturally reach to all Americans who need it.  Is this true?  Let's look at how we
are doing with regard to the oldest lane on the information highway:  the wire telephone network.
In 13 states more than one in twelve households don't have telephones.
In the African-American and Hispanic households representing the lowest one-quarter of income
groups, from 10% to 36% lack active phone service.  Overall, 15 million individuals are without
phones.  Nearly 10 percent of children under age 6 live in homes without phones.  Among
African-American and Native American children, the numbers are 20% and 36%.
Is it important for these people to be connected?  You bet.
You need a phone to participate in the economy, to leave a phone number so that a potential
employer can call you, to make arrangements for child care and transportation. These are obvious
truths, but they add up.  It is virtually impossible to participate in today's society if you didn't
even have a telephone.
And the capabilities of the humble telephone line are multiplying.  The fact is that the common
telephone line could bring every classroom in the country, all 45 million students, onto the
information highway.  That common line could connect the computers that are in half the
classrooms in the country to a world of information.  But only one out of twenty-four classrooms
even have telephone lines.
Why focus in particular on connecting our children to the potential of the communications
revolution?  Because any concept of a well-ordered society depends on raising our children to
participate in public discourse and that discourse will increasingly be through electronic means.
We can't affford to deny anyone the opportunity to enjoy the communications revolution.  In this
regard, your organization has been particularly important.  The office of Communications of the
Church of Christ, led by Everrett Parker and more recently by Beverly Chain, has provided the
Commission with valuable input and information on critical issues of social justice ranging from
cable television, equal employment opportunities and "electronic redlining".  This input is vitally
important.  While we might not adopt every argument you make, every argument helps clarify
our thinking and improve our decision.
Soon after Harry Truman became President he met Churchill and Stalin at Potsdam. Truman
confronted Stalin with the rumor that the Red Army had slaughtered  a group of Polish officers
in the forest of Katyn.  Stalin brushed him off with the response that "the death of any one
person is a tragedy.  The death of many is just statistics".
Here in the United States, we don't agree.  Every life is important, statistics about all lives are
also crucially important.  We live according to John Donne's famous words, "Do not seek to ask
for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee".
When we read that not only are our children falling behind, we are all responsible.  When we
learn from the Department of Education that 90 million adults, 47 percent of the us adult
population demonstrate low levels of literacy, in this country we accept that as a challenge for
us all.
The communications revolution could bring all these adults, and all our children, into the great
public reasoning process that ultimately will sort out the chaos of values in this country, and
bring Rawls' ethical consensus into being.
I believe this from personal experience.  In 1969, when all telephones were black and all dials
were rotary, I spent a short time as a school teacher in a middle school.
Only half the kids who started the 7th grade would graduate from 9th.  On average, in 3 years
at my school, a child would fall two years behind in reading skills.
The best way out -- the only way out -- was physically to get out.
And the way to get out was to be permitted to enroll in one of the city's magnet schools.  The
magnet school was the only ticket out of an ever deepening cycle of poverty and hopelessness.
Three students out of my 150 who started 7th grade read well enough to qualify for a chance for
admission to the magnet school.  We met every Saturday for special study sessions on how to
pass the entrance exam.  After months, the day of the exam came.
Maybe you've seen the movie "Lean on Me" about the New Jersey principal, Joe Clark -- or the
movie "Stand and Deliver", about East Los Angeles math teacher Jaime Escalante.  Both were
true stories in which the efforts of dedicated teachers vastly improved the test scores of their
students.  Both movies included the key to all successful movies:  A Happy Ending.
But no movie was made about me and my three special students.  No movies will be made.  All
my students failed the test.  And I failed them.
But I did make a promise to myself.  I wouldn't settle for that ending.  None of us should settle
for that ending.  The schoolchildren of today must have better ways to escape poverty, despair,
and hopelessness.  We must make sure that the teachers of today are better teachers than I was,
have better tools than I did, and don't bring too little too late to their mission as I did.
Now the communications revolution won't guarantee happy endings for all.  It is not a cure for
all society's ills.  But when I think about what it could have meant to my students, I know it
presents an opportunity that is far more important than simply getting more cable channels or
movies on demand.
The communications revolution should not be a highway  -- it should be a bridge between the
world of opportunity and the world of despair.
In closing, I'd like to express the urgency I feel as we take on the many issues of the
communications revolution.  This moment reminds me of a hymn I used to sing in high school
as part of our daily service.  It said:  "once to every man and nation comes the moment to
decide, in the strife of truth with falsehood, for the good or evil side."
We are now at such a moment.  This is a moment to decide if we want the communications
revolution to be a dawn of opportunity for everyone, for kids in all schools, for adults with low
literacy levels, for those who don't even have a simple wire phone line.
This is the moment to decide whether the communications revolution will be like the tower on
the plain of Sinar that brought down confoundment and scattering and division on the Sumerians.
Or will it be the way to bring new understanding, tolerance, and learning to all of us?  Will it
give us, as it can give us, the ways to build an enduring, ethical, well-ordered society?
I thank you for participating in this moment of decision and for listening to these remarks.