“News deserts” and the continuing challenge of providing affordable broadband services to all Americans were highlighted Tuesday (September 24) at the 2024 Everett C. Parker Ethics in Telecommunications Lecture and Awards Breakfast. Former Washington Post media reporter Paul Farhi, this year’s Parker Lecturer, addressed the growing problem of what he called “news deserts,” communities that no longer have a single professional source of local news.
Paul Farhi
The United Church of Christ’s Media Justice Ministry, the event’s sponsor, also recognized U.S. Rep. Yvette C. Clarke (D-NY), with the Everett C. Parker Award for her many years of work to promote the public interest in telecommunications services, most recently in support of funding to extent affordable broadband services to low-income Americans.
Rep. Yvette D. Clarke
In addition, Assistant Secretary of Commerce Alan Davidson, head of the National Telecommunications and Information Administration, received UCC Media Justice’s Newton H. Minow Award, recognizing a government official’s leadership, in this case, Davidson’s direction of Biden administration initiatives to build out broadband infrastructure and increase access to Internet services.
Alan Davidson
In his lecture, Farhi described his recent visit to one “news desert” as part of his work on the Medill School of Journalism’s annual State of Local News report. Cairo, Illinois, and surrounding Alexander County, he reported, don’t have a single professional news source — “no newspaper, digital site, TV or radio station or ethnic publication. Not even a blog that I’m aware of.”
Farhi explained that 55 million Americans now live in 212 counties that are already news deserts or another 228 that are on the verge of becoming one, according to the Medill School’s count. He likened this trend to “a kind of de facto redlining:” news deserts are primarily found in poor, rural or isolated communities, or places that have older populations, are less densely populated and whose residents are less well educated. Digital news start-ups, meanwhile, are attracted to big cities or their prosperous suburbs, places that are still relatively well served by news outlets.
Farhi observed that some philanthropies and state legislatures have stepped in to try to help. But, he concluded, “We need more. Because if journalism is essential for preserving democratic self-government, maybe democratic self-government can preserve journalism.” He urged his audience — “you who make policy, you who affect policy and you who just care about it” to “do something.”
Rep. Clarke was honored for her foresight in introducing legislation to promote equity in artificial intelligence and other technologies before those issues were on the front page, and for her tireless effort to restore funding for the Affordable Connectivity Program. Rep. Clarke declared it was “time for Congress to act” on the Affordable Connectivity Program, which has helped millions of Americans afford broadband services since the law was passed.
She recalled that in 2012, Everett Parker had said he wanted to be remembered as “a guy who fought like the devil” on behalf of underserved populations. She noted that receiving the Parker Award meant, “she has much more to do.” “Our work is not yet finished,” Clarke asserted, “let us be remembered as the people who saw the digital divide, and like the great Dr. Parker, fought like devils — or some would say, saints — to fix it.”
Alan Davidson recalled the words of the late FCC chairman Newton Minow about the promise and the dangers of the television industry. Noting the lesson he learned from a mentor at MIT who helped to create atomic weapons as part of the Manhattan Project, but then spent the later part of his career trying to stop them, Davidson observed, “humanity has the power to create technology that can improve our lives, connect the globe and tackle the big challenges the lie in front of us but it also has the power to monitor our population, to divide our societies, to weaken the vulnerable, and the choices to build technologies for good or evil, in service of to promote freedom or control, to promote equity or sow division. Those choices are ours.”
Davidson described the work his agency has accomplished so far, but added that this is “a once-in-a-generation” to improve America’s infrastructure for the wider public good. He likened the current challenge to previous initiatives — to extend electrical and water resources to all parts of the country, and to build the Interstate highway system — and emphasized the importance of doing the work “in the public interest.”
The event was held at First Congregational United Church of Christ in Washington DC. You can watch the video of the full event here.
About the UCC Media Justice and the Parker Lecture
The United Church of Christ Media Justice Ministry is the media justice instrumentality of the United Church of Christ denomination, which includes approximately 5,000 congregations and nearly three-quarters of a million members. Rev. Dr. Everett C. Parker was inspired by the work of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to reform television coverage of the civil rights movement in the South. UCC Media Justice’s advocacy — under its original name Office of Communication, Inc. — established the right of community members, not just corporate entities and licensees, to participate before the FCC and compelled the FCC to deny the broadcast license renewal of the pro-segregationist television station WLBT-TV in Jackson, Miss., in 1969 for failing to serve the public interest.
The Parker Lecture was created in 1982 to recognize the Rev. Dr. Parker’s pioneering work as an advocate for the public’s rights in broadcasting. The Parker Lecture is the only program of its kind in the United States that examines telecommunications in the digital age from an ethical perspective.