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A Reexamination of the WLBT-TV Case Steven Classen George Fox University, Sclassen@Georgefox.Edu Digital Commons @ George Fox University Faculty Publications - Department of Department of Communication Arts Communication, Journalism, and Cinematic Arts 1994 Standing on Unstable Grounds: A Reexamination of the WLBT-TV Case Steven Classen George Fox University, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.georgefox.edu/comm_fac Part of the African American Studies Commons, and the Mass Communication Commons Recommended Citation Classen, Steven, "Standing on Unstable Grounds: A Reexamination of the WLBT-TV Case" (1994). Faculty Publications - Department of Communication, Journalism, and Cinematic Arts. 22. http://digitalcommons.georgefox.edu/comm_fac/22 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Department of Communication Arts at Digital Commons @ George Fox University. It has been accepted for inclusion in Faculty Publications - Department of Communication, Journalism, and Cinematic Arts by an authorized administrator of Digital Commons @ George Fox University. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Standing on Unstable Grounds: A 1 Reexamination of the WLBT-TV Case STEVEN DOUGLAS CLASSEN During the 1960s, disparate discourses of consumerism intersected with concerns regarding race and civil rights in the realm of broadcast law and regulation. This reexamination of the social and legal struggles surrounding WLBT-TV in Jackson, Mississippi (1964-69), shows how conflicting consumerisms were mediated by legal institutions in an attempt to address social tensions, and reveals how the dominant discourses of liberal consumerism often displaced issues of race. In 1962, the "Jackson Nonviolent Also in the spring of 1962, hun• Movement" began to change busi• dreds of miles to the north, Presi• ness as usual in Mississippi. The up• dent john Kennedy returned to a start organization, comprised largely popular political campaign theme, of local teens, targeted prominent evoking the concerns of a general• Jackson businesses, demanding that ized "consumer" in a congressional basic employment and consumer address. Explicitly, the president al• rights be extended to African Ameri• lied himself with this abstract Ameri• cans.2 They insisted that the segrega• can. Implicitly, his speech defined tion, degradation, and physical abuse the consumer as individuated, grimly familiar to black consumers middle-class, moral, and rational. in the white marketplace be con• Throughout the 1960s such implicit fronted and addressed. In the spring, political definitions and more ex• when a pregnant African-American plicit affirmations of the "American mother was verbally and physically consumer" were common, since pro• assaulted by a white grocer, the consumer rhetoric was regarded as Movement called a church meeting, relatively inexpensive and attractive distributed leaflets, and led a success• to middle-class voters.3 ful boycott against the store. Months Although the superficially singu• later, this strategy was reemployed lar discourse of consumerism was with a massive boycott of downtown fully engaged in Washington a n d businesses and the demand that "Ne• Jackson, its practices and meanings gro consumers ... [be] treated as were multiple, mobilized alongside they ought to be-as first class different contexts, goals, and con• citizens" (Salter, 1987, pp. 36, 56). cerns. And in 1964, with a legal chal• lenge to the racist practices and li• Steven Douglas Classen is a doctoral candi• cense of a powerful Mississippi date in the Department of Communication institution, Jackson’s WLBT-TV, Arts, University of Wisconsin, Madison. the disparate consumer concerns articu- lated in Washington and Jackson Further, it cautions students of law would find themselves in uneasy jux• and regulation "not to assume the taposition. Contrary assumptions re• coherence and consistency of legal garding the free marketplace were discourse but to search out the reso• brought into focus as the Jackson nances of the social, economic, and Movement argued that consumer• ism political struggles that reside behind entailed matters more funda• mental the smooth surface of legal reason• than product safety, truthful ing and judicial utterance'' (Hum. advertising or product choice. This 1985, p. 16). paper examines how the multiple dis• courses of consumerism intersected with the legal struggle over WLBT• THE CHALLENGE TO TV, and with larger social, and spe• WLBT cifically racial, concerns. It is widely acknowledged that the Scrutiny of this specific moment WLBT-TV challenge (1964-1969) suggests that troubling social prob• was a defining moment for the broad• lems are often elided within the for• cast reform movement of the sixties mal language, analysis, and opera• and seventies (see discussions of tions of law. Of central concern here Krasnow, Longley and Terry, 1982; is how legal decisions and texts deny Rowland, 1982; Haight and Weinstein, their specifically located social con• 1981; Cole and Oettinger, 1978). In struction and rely on the appropria• the early seventies, citizen and advo• tion of liberal discourses to deflect cacy groups employed the "WLBT direct encounters with social struggle. model"-filing petitions to deny li• With faith in the adequacy of law's cense renewals-in fights to change formal justifications, traditional local broadcast practices. Because the analyses routinely ignore the social extended conflict over the WLBT tensions and assumptions which un• license established strategic and legal derlie law and regulation. Frequently precedents pertaining to broadcast the focus is placed on law's formal reform, scholars have frequently de• continuity, its formation in the rari• scribed the WLBT case and its impor• fied climate of judicial and govern• tance.5 Left largely unexamined has mental institutions, or relative tran• been the relationship of specific so• scendence over everyday life and cial and cultural forces-such as the things political. Instead, this essay disparate discourses of consumer• foregrounds the disjunctures and so• ism-to the operations of broadcast cial contingency of law and legal regulation. At the center of this legal processes by reexamining the legal and cultural contest was the concept challenge to the license of WLBT- of the consumer, consumer rights, TV, describing how dominant and several related questions: Who discourses of consumerism interacted were the consumers of television, and with broadcast regulation and of this particular broadcast outlet? displaced issues of race.4 What rights, if any, did these consum• Situating legal struggle in this way ers have? From 1964 to 1969, in the reveals the problematic consequences midst of a decade that saw the rise of Ralph Nader, these questions and of translating marginalized or minor• ity concerns into the terms of the others were argued in various dominant liberal legal establishment. forums including the Federal Commu- 75 CLASSEN nications Commission (FCC) and the sion hostility toward the public inter• District of Columbia Federal Court venors and revoked the station's li• of Appeals.6 cense (425 F.2d 543). In April of 1964, a coalition of Out of this complex legal history, reformers including Aaron Henry, the present focus is on the early years the Reverend R.L.T. Smith, and the of this struggle, and, in particular, New York-based United Church of on the legal notion of standing (locus Christ (UCC) filed a petition to deny standi) which was crucial to the semi• the license renewal of WLBT televi• nal 1966 Court of Appeals decision. sion in Jackson, Mississippi. These Briefly put, the 1966 court ruling petitioners, in a cooperative effort gave local citizens (audience mem• with other local citizens, began in bers) "standing" --entitlement to inter• 1963 to gather evidence systemati• vene (or the right of direct representa• cally demonstrating that the station tion) in administrative agency (FCC) was not meeting local public interest proceedings. Although "standing" is standards. Specifically, their formal a legal concept most often debated petition alleged: (a) a failure to serve on the formal grounds of process and the local black population; (b) pro• precedents, by employing a social gramming that discriminated against historical perspective we can see how blacks; (c) unfairness in the presenta• such formal concepts operate tion of issues, especially about race in, and are situated at, specific histori• relations; (d) failure to provide the cal conjunctures. community with adequate religious and other public affairs program• Since the 1966 Court of Appeals ming; and (e) an excessive amount of decision granted legal standing to airtime devoted to commercial an• broadcast consumers, and the 1969 nouncements (Parker, 1972, p. 2). 7 opinion revoked WLBT's license, A lengthy legal battle ensued. Act• textbook treatments of this case his• ing on the 1964 petition, the FCC tory often implicitly promote the no• asked the station for programming tion of continuing progress in broad• improvement yet granted a short• term cast regulation and suggest the one year license renewal and dismissed progressive movement in this in• the petitioners as lacking formal stance was largely the result of indi• "standing" before the administrative vidual agents and successful legal body (38 FCC 1143). The petitioners strategy. Rather than attributing a appealed this ruling, resulting in the legal decision to judicial idiosyncrasy 1966 District of Columbia Court of or inherently superior arguments and Appeals decision which
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