Remarks of FCC Chairman Reed E. Hundt Symposium sponsored by Annenberg Washington Program and The Children's Partnership Washington, DC May 25, 1995 I am pleased to address this very special group of pioneers working to bring the benefits of the information revolution home to our children. I am here today because I was so impressed by the report that Laurie Lipper, Wendy Lazarus and those who work with them at the Children's Partnership put together on this topic and feel that it makes an important and timely contribution to the debate over the future of the information highway. This is critical because childrens' issues are all too often caught in the cross-fire of the telecommunications policy debate -- between those who would defend the status quo and those who would get rid of government involvement altogether. This debate presents a false choice for those who are truly interested in children. I hope you won't be caught in it. The status quo is supported by powerful vested interests of the old regime. They relied on getting their way with the much-maligned FCC by a combination of political pressure, public controversy, and private pleasantries. The old regime is marked by monopolies, bureaucracies, and give-aways. Children, needless to say, are not always well represented in the old regime. Most of us would agree that in a world in which technologies are converging and the potential for competition is increasing it is high time we abandoned the status quo. But the answer is not the one presented by the new groups who make war on the very notion that there ought to be public interest goals in communication policy. Their slogan is abolish the FCC, but their meaning is this: they want to quash all claims by the public on any aspect of the communications, information and entertainment sector of our economy. This view, like the old regime, ought to be debated; its consequences should not be covered up; and in the end we need to come together in consensus to agree that the future of telecommunications policy should not be a purely private affair. It has broad implications for everyone involved in our economy, our society, and our communities. And there is no reason to expect that market forces will satisfy all of our common goals for the Information Highway. There is a difference between market values and family values. As we move toward increased competition and increased reliance on market mechanisms, we must create new policies that ensure that these common goals are met. Today, our common goals are not being met on television where educational programming is minimal and violence is maximized. They are not being met on the information superhighway where parents are not yet empowered to filter out obscenity. They are not being met in our classrooms where lack of access to the information superhighway is creating a new class of information have-nots. As Milton Friedman said, "It is the social responsibility of business to increase profits." Businesses seeking to maximize shareholder value do not and should not have the responsibility to raise our children. But it is our responsibility -- as government officials, advocates, concerned citizens, parents -- and if we abdicate it we will regret the results. Look at broadcast television where today we see violent and prurient displays during the erstwhile "family hour." It is more than ironic that at the same time we as a nation mourn the increase in youthful violence, broadcast television uses the public airwaves to depict violence. This is no small problem. Children in the U.S. watch 24 hours of TV a week. Meanwhile, violence on TV tripled during the 1980s. One study showed that in 1992 there were an average of six violent acts per hour during prime time, and 32 violent acts per hour on so-called children's shows. A 1992 survey by the Center for Media and Public Affairs identified 1,846 violent scenes on broadcast and cable TV between 6 AM and midnight on one day in Washington, D.C. Think about children watching 24 hours of TV a week and you aren't surprised when I tell you that, according to the Journal of the American Medical Association, before they finish elementary school most children see 8,000 murders and 10,000 acts of violence on TV. You know intuitively that TV violence incessantly displayed to children has a negative effect on them. This is also a scientifically demonstrated fact. According to Dr. Leonard Eron, Professor of Psychology at the University of Michigan, when it comes to determining whether violence on TV contributes to making children more violent "the scientific debate is over." Numerous studies over more than thirty years have proved a causal connection between TV violence and real-life violence in children exposed to the excesses of broadcast TV. Even children know they don't get to see what they should on television. In a survey conducted by an organization called Children Now, an overwhelming majority of children aged 10 to 16 said that they wanted television to help teach them values. But instead they said it often shows people getting away with deceitful behavior or physical aggression. Similarly, without some public action, the inequality of opportunity facing our children today will only increase. Writing in the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday, Steve Rattner, the leading financier for the communications industry pointed out that real annual earnings in the bottom 20 percent of this nation have dropped by 24 percent since 1973, while those in the top 20 percent have increased by 10 percent. The answer according to Rattner: education and training. Yet in all but a few of the classrooms the technology is locked into the nineteenth century. The market isn't networking our schools. Today, only three percent are linked to the information superhighway. And charity won't do the trick. Today, according to an original and thought-provoking book soon to be released by Lewis Solomon, former dean of the School of Education at UCLA, only six percent of the technology currently in classrooms was donated by the private sector. The rest came from public action. When the Vice President first coined the term Information Highway he talked about the vision of the schoolgirl in Carthage, Tennessee who could go to the Library of Congress to get the learning not available in her small town in rural America. She would be able to travel to Washington without leaving Tennessee. A long time ago I was a teacher. We had almost no connection with the teachers in the next room, much less across the town or around the world. Today the situation is sadly similar. Communications technology is a key to the future of education. I have seen networked classrooms, and they work. I saw this future in the Ralph Bunche Elementary school -- P.S. 125 -- in Harlem, New York. I watched fifth and sixth graders share a lesson with kids in Nova Scotia and Hawaii. They use the CIA World Fact Book to conduct science projects. They electronically questioned researchers in Australia. That access should be available in every classroom and every library. It is, or will be available in the private schools and in the fine universities. However, if no public action is taken, that access will never reach all the classrooms or libraries. Those with access to the Information Highway will expand their opportunities. Those without it will fall farther behind. The gulf that Steve Rattner describes will increase, not shrink. What should be done? First, broadcasters and other organizations should help parents by publicizing clear designations of what they regard as excessively violent and therefore inappropriate for children as well as what they regard as especially appropriate for children. Second, we need to create safe havens, as the Children's Partnership puts it, in TV land and in cyberspace, where parents know their children will find enrichment, not violence, advertising, or promiscuity. The FCC is seriously considering rewriting its implementation of the Children's TV Act of 1990. In this rewrite all broadcasters in a market should be guaranteed license renewal only if they bear the responsibility to transmit a minimum amount of children's educational programming per week. These goals are realistic. These steps can make a difference. Third, parents need to use technology as tools for creating the right information world for their children. The V Chip is one example. Another is a recent innovation called the Surfwatch which filters Internet pornography from children using keywords and a database of blocked sites. Fourth, access needs to be increased. Right now Congress is debating reform of the telecommunications legislation. Both the Senate and the House bills have provisions that would increase availability of telecommunications networks in classrooms by making access for students a keystone of our universal service policy. As we sit here today, Congress is considering the reform bills which will officially kick-off the information revolution. The courts are making decisions allowing phone companies into new markets. The newspapers are announcing new mergers, purchases, or joint ventures among Fortune 500 communications companies readying themselves for the new marketplace. As a result of this activity, many companies stand to make many dollars -- whether schoolchildren have access to the information highway or not; whether there is educational content on the information highway or not; whether parents have tools to filter inappropriate programs from their children or not. To find real solutions that will make the country what we want it to be for our children, we need good ideas, honest debate, a will to change, and a commitment to do what is truly necessary to put good ideas into practice. We must reject all policies that fail to make our kids a priority. You see the information highway can be a bridge. It is a bridge from disadvantage to opportunity, a bridge for our children to cross into the 21st century economy, a bridge we can as a whole country proceed across. So send your representatives to work on our legislation, come meet with us at the Commission. Help us lay the building stones for the information bridge. Many thanks.