Thank you, Katherine, for your generous introduction and for inviting me out to St. Louis today.  I always jump at the chance to counsel with my friends in the Catholic community – first of all because you are committed on so many of the same issues I am committed to; and, secondly, it keeps me in good stead at home, since my wife serves as Parish Secretary at St. Mary’s Church in Old Town Alexandria, Virginia, and also because I have two kids in Catholic high school, one at Gonzaga in D.C. and the other at Bishop Ireton in Alexandria.  So I’m never far away!

I am especially excited to meet with you today because I believe events are unfolding in our direction right now on some of the big issues.  This is preeminently the time to be pushing, and pushing hard, on these issues because there is a better opportunity now to do something about them than there has been for a long, long time.  I know the Catholic community in general, and many of you in particular, have devoted considerable energy to these communications issues.  You understand that television, radio, newspapers, cable service and the Internet are perhaps history’s most powerful transformative tools.  When they are used rightly, they can enlighten minds, convey powerful ideas, educate, and lay the foundation for economic and human development.  When they are used wrongly, they not only fall short of their potential, but they can retard economic and human development and inflict real social harm.

Yours have been used for the public good.  The television and radio stations, cable channels, Internet sites and newspapers operated by Catholic organizations produce some truly wonderful programming.  You advocate for moral values in the media, support legislation to protect children from exploitation, and fight for a greater diversity of voices on the radio dial through low-power radio.  You should take enormous pride in what the Catholic Church and its related organizations have done to assert themselves as positive advocates in the world of communications technologies.

I know that this audience understands how integral communications are to your mission.  I want you to understand that your mission and mine intersect, because my job as FCC Commissioner is to work to create a regulatory environment wherein the best of communications technologies can flourish, entertain, inform and enlighten.  That’s my public interest obligation.  I take it seriously because the term “public interest” occurs some 112 times in the Telecommunications Act.  When some demean the term public interest, I reply that when Congress tells me something once, I pay attention.  When it tells me something 112 times, I snap to attention and salute.  I’m trying to get my colleagues to salute, too.

To do my job, to really understand and reflect the public interest, I need the help of all those who I call the communications industry’s “non-traditional stakeholders.”  All Americans have a stake in the communications networks.  But all too often, we at the FCC only hear from the inside-the-Beltway lobbyists.  Unless the FCC hears from Americans across this country, our decision making will be skewed by an incomplete understanding of the effects of our actions on all our stakeholders.  Catholics around this country need to be participating in the resolution of the great communications issues before the Congress and before the FCC.  As Catholic communicators, you have done much to involve them in a number of these critical issues.  But I think that, together, we can do more, and we can do better.  There is so much on our FCC agenda that impacts you in direct and tangible ways.  It’s a challenge for outside organizations just to keep up with that agenda.  But it is absolutely essential for you to be familiar with what is on the Commission’s docket.  There is an old adage that I learned from Senator Hollings when I went to work for him: “Decisions without you are usually decisions against you.”  I believe it.  So you need to be involved across the whole range of FCC activity.  And to make my challenge even more difficult, we also need your help in getting the word out about how and why these decisions are important to every member of the Catholic community.  

Today I want to mention a few of the most critical issues that I hope we can work on together.  I want to begin our discussion today with what I believe is the most important decision the FCC has made in the time I have been a Commissioner.  And that is the decision a majority of the Commissioners took last June 2 to walk away from our media ownership, or media concentration, protections.  As many of you know, I dissented rather strongly from that decision. 

Industry concentration is already a reality.  Fewer people own more properties.  Big companies own television, radio, newspapers and cable – cable systems and cable channels.   They own the production.  They own the distribution.  Increasingly, they own the creativity.  I don’t think I have to tell those of you in this room what that kind of content and distribution control means for your ability to get out your message.    

At issue in that June vote was how America’s TV, radio, newspapers and even the Internet are going to look for many years to come.  Who is going to control the media?  How many -- or rather, how few -- companies?  For what purposes?  Will we still be able to get real local news and clashing points of view so we can make up our own minds on the issues of the day?  And how do we assure quality TV and music instead of being so often fed a diet of pre-canned, nationalized and vulgarized fare aimed primarily at selling products?  I think I exaggerate not at all in saying that the issue is whether a few large conglomerates will be ceded content control over our music, entertainment and information; gatekeeper control over the civil dialogue of our country; and veto power over the majority of what we and our families watch, hear and read.  So the stakes are enormous.    

As the June 2 vote approached, I saw two divergent paths that the Commission could travel.  Down one path was a reaffirmation of America’s commitment to local control of our media, diversity in news and outlook, and the importance of competition.    Localism, diversity, competition – these are the very heart of the Telecommunications Act.  Down this path we would reaffirm that FCC licensees have been given very special privileges and that they have very special responsibilities to serve the public interest.  Down this path the public interest in served and even enhanced.              ....see Attached PDF File for complete file.