In other words, we believe that communications policy is a civil rights issue. Before becoming a public interest advocate, I was a lawyer representing communications companies, and before that I was a commercial broadcaster. I reported on floods and fires in Toledo, Ohio, produced local and national news programs in Washington, D.C., and I produced local and national public affairs programs, some even aired on primetime. I am a member of a growing number of former broadcast journalists concerned about the direction of the industry we love. We know that television is not a toaster with pictures . . .
Television can be a powerful tool for democracy and civil society . . .
I would also like to share with you my particular perspective as one of the very few minorities allowed to produce local and national news and public affairs programs. Let me start by saying that I owe my opportunities to the civil rights movement, and perhaps especially to the work of a living civil rights legend, Doctor Everett C. Parker of the United Church of Christ. Permit me to tell the story. In March of 1964, Reverend Parker took a group of idealistic students from the North down to Jackson, Mississippi. There they found the result of an unregulated market, southern style.