Commissioner Starks Remarks to NAB Joint Board of Directors

Since day one as a Federal Communications Commissioner, I have been speaking up and speaking out to advance diversity in broadcast media. I am also focused more broadly on what we as public servants should be doing to achieve the mandate in the Communications Act of making communications available to all Americans. We must do better in fulfilling the FCC's obligation to promote ownership by women and people of color. In one of my first votes as a Commissioner, I observed that the FCC was failing to make good on its statutory mandate to collect workforce diversity, or equal employment opportunity (EEO), data from broadcasters. It is still not clear to me how, for nearly twenty years, the FCC ignored Congress’s will by not collecting this information. That means we have had zero visibility into the diversity of station management and news and production teams. I will continue to work to re-open this issue going forward so we have the data necessary to fully and meaningfully engage on it.