are involved in ownership. i think my comments and my remarks are meant to suggest that there are 1700 or so tv stations across the country. there is an opportunity for diverse ownership and there may be in a world where the national licensees and the national providers of the content is the real they we live with. and i think the country is at risk with less diversity and i would note that minority groups are dependent on broadcast reception. 28% of asian household, 23% of african-american households, 26% of latino households are today receiving broadcast reception over the air. >> thank you very much. mr. chairman, without objection i would like to enter into the record my letter that was just filed into the fcc a couple of days ago by stakeholders asking the fcc to study the black radio

ownership and programming diversity and to now move to address these disparities even though the subject we're taking up today is video and not audio, stating concerns and the state of minority ownership in the video marketplace and even more acute and troubling. >> no objection. >> all right. this is a question i have for both mr. barrett and mr. powell around the issue of certificates. in the past, mr. barrett, your association we're representing here today strongly endorse passage of legislation to establish a new communications certificate program. is that still the position? >> yes, it is. the nab would continue to support such a legislation initiative. >> and mr. powell, the

association that you're representing here today also previously endorsed passage of legislation for new -- for new communications tax certificate programs. is that still the ncta's position? >> yes. in 2003 when senator mccain introduced tax certificate as chairman of the fcc it was an enormous proponent and remains so. >> thank you very much. mr. chairman, without objection i would like to enter into the record the fcc's section 257 report recommending that congress reinstate a tax certificate policy. i would point out that the statement of former fcc commissioner michael j. comps, accompanying that order and being the source for the minority ownership percentages that i cited earlier. and with that, mr. chairman, i yield back the balance of my time. >> gentleman yields and there's

no objection to the gentleman's unanimous consent motion. so that will be entered. now the gentleman from massachusetts, mr. markey. >> thank you very much. mi mi miss sohn, can you tell us about the telecommunications marketplace? so it will have negative effects both for competition and consumers, and one is that because there are these side agreements, and there was a spectrum sale and affiliated side agreements. one is a marketing agreement and one is a reselling agreement and basically it is an agreement between the cable companies to lay down arps and no longer compete in the video and wireless marketplace and verizon and at&t will get the wireless and it will get the wire line

industry to themeses and there's the joe operating entity and that's an agreement between the five cable companies and verizon to develop patents and technologies that would help to stream a video from wireless to wire line systems and that has an enormous capability to be used against, for example, mr. earning rgen's company. if he wants to use the technology he probably wants to be charged high licensing fees and he needs to be told, sorry, you're not part of the club and not part of the cartel, you can't use this technology. >> are you afraid of that, that you might not be part of the club as i guess what miss sohn is saying that it's got to be in a cozy, cooperation here that you might get walled out. do you agree that's a possibility? >> unfortunately, zee not seen the unredacted comment so i can't say specifically what they say, but we certainly have a

concern where two vicious competitors might get together to a, not compete with each other and, b, exclude other people from competing with them. >> yea. that's always been the beauty of the 1992 and 1996 telecom act is that it created, you know, the conditions for darwinian paranoia-inducing competition which ultimately is the result -- which ultimately results in the innovation and more benefits for consumers and so you always have to be wary especially when people talk about rewrithe the telecommunications act, where some now there's too much competition and maybe some of the you will smaller players don't need protection. let me go to you, mr. powell. you just heard the two comments made by miss sohn and mr. ergen.

how would you comment upon them? i would be limiting my comments because as head of the association i would not be a party to the transaction and not have the specifics that they have in terms of the conversation. all deals like this deserve the vigilant and that's why they have an anti-trust process and we should rely on the skills of the federal communications commission to vigorously scrutinize the transaction for those purposes and to reach a conclusion in the public interest. i don't believe that it's intuitively clear that it's a capitulation and it wouldn't be continued competition among these companies and i think that's why we have an antitrust process and i have a lot of faith in it. >> let me ask you, mr. barrett and you, mr. o'leary. july 1st is the deadline for the

completion of the rule making and the implementation of the provision switch i built into the 2010 law for video accessability. can you give us an update as to where the two industries are in terms of complying with that? >> speaking on behalf of hearst television, we are well in hand. our implementation will be fully complete and i'm very pleased with how that has proceeded and on behalf of the nab member stations the same can be said. >> mr. o'leary? >> i would say effectively the same thing in response to your question. >> and what was that? >> that we are working towards a compliance and also pleased with the way the process is going. >> is it so important that the deaf and the blind do have access in the 21st serve re? that they are able to use all of their god-given abilities to

fully participate and so it really is very, very important that we get the full cooperation and we thank you for your positive comments about the process, and i thank you, mr. chairman. i yield back the balance of my time. >> the gentleman yields back the balance of his time and that's the last member of the subcommittee with the time. i want to thank all of the participants today. as you probably heard from the colleagues and they have other questions that they submit for the record that they can be responsive in the answers and help us in the work, your certa that and it's a policy level and your input is helpful in our process. so thank you for participating and with that, the hearing is adjourned.

as this hearing comes to a close this arch, throughout the hearing we've been asking for your comments and reactions on twit perp here is a look from tweets, can i pay video by the hour and get flat rate, all i can eat broadband rather than the other way around? it will turn into another lobbying frenzy and consumers always get the short end and tim lorton writes the future of tv gets congressman bill waldenay son watches netflix while his tv sits idle a few feet away and congressman walton is chair of the committee. and a quick reminder that you can see it any time on the c-span video library and go to c-span.org/video library and consider the conversation at twitter.com, #, future of tv.

coming up this afternoon here on c-span3 two house, science space and technology subcommittees. hear a report on whether the satellite programs run the oceanic atmospheric administration or noaa. congress has spent $6 million on that so far. we'll have that hearing at 2:00 p.m. eastern right here on c-span3. july 7th and 8th, book tv explore the heritage and literary culture of missouri's state capital, jefferson city with with c-span's local content vehicles and book tv on the campus of lincoln university. >> this is probably the most famous book and this is the one we like to show to visitors when this is a book about harriet tubman called harriet, the moses of her people and the special thing about this, this book was written in 1866. the special thing about this

book is that harriet tubman made her mark on there and that's really the most famous autograph, if you want to call it that, of what we have here in the paige library and obviously, she couldn't read or write so she left her mark, the sign of the cross. >> watch for book tv in jefferson city july 7th and 8th on c-span and book tv. >> i could have told you at the beginning of this year that here's how they would run the bid by two republican primary and the republicans would look unfeeble that there be a nominee and that the republicans would then rally around that nominee and the true nature of the race would reveal itself which is that it was going to be close and i would tell you that the media would eat that up and say romney is surging and obama's flagging and this is a race.

that is -- and i'll tell you what the next phase is going to be. the next phase is going to be the media will become more alert to the fact that governor romney has been completely evasive about his positions and has been -- and has been all over the lot on many of them and has tried to play a game of hide and seek with the american people, and i think that the news media will be challenged to -- to challenge him to be more forthcoming and then the story's going to be that for a while. this is the nature of this business. >> look behind the presidential election process when you want online with c-span's road to the white house and the c-span video library. the state department's bureau of democracy, human rights and labor is celebrating its 35th anniversary this year and to mark the occasion the department brought together senior diplomats who served in the bureau to discuss the evolution of u.s. human rights policy. this panel includes staff members with jurisdiction over the human rights bureau.

topics include the situation in syria, burma and egypt. it lasts about an hour and a half. >> go ahead. okay, great. welcome again, everyone. this is going to take us from -- theement atticly, we'll end up covering more than that, but this conversation will begin with 2001, 9/11 through the arab spring and even beyond that. i want to quickly start by introducing, i'm kyle gibson. you have programs, the longer, much-better bios on our great guests. i'll quickly introduce actually beginning with the current -- the assistant secretary for drl currently mike posner. you've heard a lot about mike today. michael posner. i would also like to introduce lauren craner who is an old friend of mine who found himself here on 9/11 running as the assistant secretary for drl from

2001 to 2004, lorne? please. [ applause ] >> beyond lorne, we have paul grove who is the minority clerk for lindsay graham, and next to -- and you have much longer bios as the senior bios and right next to paul grove you have tim reisner who is the minority clerk to patrick leahy on foreign operations and we want to dive right in, oh, and i haven't introduced tomorrow wittis who is now running the savon center at brookings which is a very, very powerful think tank on the middle east, particularly the savon center. i'm a big fan of the work there. let's dive right in. it's 2001. i actually remember being involved in an event on the spring of 2001 on what income in foreign policy, actually with a

lot of interesting intellectuals, i wish you'd been there, lorne, and we were talking about it might be in the spring of 2001 and no one mentioned anything approaching what was happening and what was about to happen on t a movie person because the work of this bureau since it has begun is tremendously important and those

of us who held the position in a brotherhood or sisterhood. i think all of us, you know, there may be things we disagree on him and we have disagreed here or there, but it's a very, very tough job, and so i'm always full of respect and admiration for those who have held the job and i just want to thank mike for organizing this today. 9/11 changed everything. i was telling kyle that i was watching with one eye on my tv in the assistant secretary's office and if you haven't been there, the assistant secretary's office looks down the potomac and you can see all of the way down the national airport and the pentagon and i was watching the re-runs and the re-do of the planes crashing into the world trade center and my other eye starts seeing smoke from the pentagon. and i thought it's a terrible day to have a crash on the helicopter pad and it took me a

second to realize what happened that morning. i had spent the previous summer working on a very, very worthy cause which some of of you may remember ended disastrously. some of you will remember that very well. on the 8th of september. so on tuesday 9/11 i was sitting in the secretary staff meeting wondering why i joined the state department. i joined personally because of colin powell. in my interview that i had for the job, in february of 2011, said, what do you want to do if you come here? i mentioned a couple things, working on human rights democracy in china but also working on human rights and democracy in the middle east. the summer of 2001, he said start working with bill burns and ryan crocker. bill was the assistant secretary. i had known them from my iteration here before. so we were already working together on some new things to be doing in the middle east before 9/11.

i remember right after 9/11 there was a lot of talk from across the river from the pentagon about draining the swamp. and those of us who had gotten into this business, who had been in it for some time, knew that that wasn't going to be sufficient. that you would spend -- we would spend the rest of our lives killing off individuals one by one. so i wrote an outside the system memo, which is in some box somewhere in the archives, to powell, saying this was an insufficient strategy. and i had in mind some of what had been done during the cold war, that as in the cold war we had to offer an alternative. and i'm -- i always do credit the beginnings of that to jimmy carter, and also to ronald reagan. i was just out at the reagan library. i gave a talk in october over at the heritage foundation about how we were going to have to emphasize this, but it was clear to the building. so it was obvious that there was going to be some effort -- there was an effort at the time,

obviously, to get rid of this issue, but it was also obvious from having it cleared, and i talked to powell and armitage before delivering it, where i said, it's going to be even more important to work on these issues. i wasn't here before to hear elliot's speech, but elliot as always was critical in this. and i think the most mementos and important thing was president bush's, in this era, was president bush's state of the union in 2002 when he gave this little notice passage at the end where he talked about the non-negotiable demands of human dignity, that we were going to push them including in the muslim world. and that was a really important signal to us within the bureaucracy, to start pursuing this. we had a lot of help from capitol hill. there were large increases in funding after 9/11 for hrdf, in particular, including for the middle east. did not come to exist until '03,

so in those first two years we were able to use that increased funding to really begin some of the work in the middle east. and obviously we were working on other issues. i mentioned china, central asia, the muslim world in general became to exist. 9/11 really gave us an early focus and really enabled us to begin working. i saw gene, he used to be on my board at iri. this was some years before she died. i remember going over to see her at aei. she said, what's different over there? this was in early '02. i said, tifinally the middle ea is open for business. she said, that's huge, because in my day under reagan it was not open for business. it gave us a real focus. we had never been able to move on the middle east before. and, you know, i think it's true, and i'm sure we'll get into this later, we made mistakes in the bush administration. i think every administration makes mistakes.

but it can't be a coincidence that things finally started to move in the middle east. and i think that's really, really important. >> let me address, quickly, then, the political will created by 9/11, both in two different directions. now, it's about us in a different way. when we're attacked on 9/11. and what that does to human rights, perhaps overseas, and also the new legislation here at home that some saw as an invasion of privacy, but all geared to accelerate the ability to track down terrorists at home. since these people had been inside the united states. can i ask either of you who have come from the capitol hill to talk about how -- how 9/11 affects the will of congress in this moment in terms of the issues lauren was just discussing. in this context. in the human rights context and in the context of drl. >> it's always the unfortunate

aspect of being in the majority, you have to go first. >> that's right. >> one of the things i'll be looking forward to when i'm in the minority again. >> you're welcome. >> let's see. i guess i would respond this way. i -- i think that one of the things we learned about the congress is that it has a way of overreacting to almost anything that happens. it's a very reactive institution, and when bad things happen, it tends to sort of shift into overdrive and legislate in ways which in retrospect often cause more problems than they solve. and we then spend years or more kind of trying to find our way back to a reasonable point that if more caution had been taken at the outset, we could have got

to earlier. and i think what happened after 9/11 is an example of that. and for the most part, that much of what was done while well-intentioned and understandable was to human rights and to the principles of democracy, and that we are trying to find a balance that both addresses the legitimate concerns that 9/11 focused our attention on, and at the same time, protect the most important values and rights that distinguish us in many ways from those who attacked us. and i think that, you know, that's still a big work in progress. we're clearly not there yet. it's a struggle every day within the congress. there are diametrically different views. different priorities.

different emphases. and, you know, i work for senator leahy, so he has one perspective, and i can only speak from that perspective, really. his view, i think, is that we are still at a point where our own rights and principles are being threatened and challenged by some of the very actions that we have taken ourselves and that in the end that makes us weaker, not stronger. so, you know, i think that's at least how i would begin. >> paul? if you want to weigh in on this. >> let me start with a disclaimer, which is the views i express are entirely my own and don't reflect that of the committee or anybody on the committee. i want to talk about democracy in the funding aspect of democracy. as lauren indicated, everybody had one eye on the tv and one eye, or one part of the brain, thinking, what do we do about this? how do we approach it? and i think in terms of the

response, consistently since that time, there has been emphasis on democracy promotion and human rights promotion in the subcommittee, subcommittee's bill. bipartisan recognition that it is not enough to drain the swamp. recognition that the rule of law, inclusive governments, competition, political competition, are all a central components of a country's development, governance, progress that are in our direct interests. and so it has really been an issue, as i look back, and i was in this position in 9/11. i had just come onboard. full disclosure, i came onboard for iri, was regional director for asia in the middle east. it certainly was an opportunity, in a part of the world where there were limited opportunities and, frankly, there was limited

political will by the state department to really push on these issues. and that's not the case today. >> tamara, if i could quickly ask you about the -- the context of 9/11 in terms of human rights. just back up for a minute. it's an explosive issue, but that's why we're here. the notion that what gave birth to this movement, to a certain extent, not to necessarily all of these people who join al qaeda, but that there was this nobody cared about the human rights of a certain group of people and that part of it may have been economic or not. i've read all these wonderful books about this. but my question for you is the context of what elliot abrams talked about in the previous -- earlier this morning, that our eyes were not on the middle east in terms of human rights. prior to 9/11 is what he said. would you agree? and then how does that then read 9/11, or does it? >> sure.