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News :: Miscellaneous |
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Grassroots Media News, from WEFT's Radio Free Conscience, 9/2/01 |
Current rating: 0 |
by P. Riismandel
Email: paul (nospam) mediageek.org (unverified!) |
02 Sep 2001
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The following news reports were broadcast on community radio WEFT's Radio Free Conscience, a biweekly program exploring news and issues related to grassroots and community media. RFC airs alternating Sundays at 10:00 AM on WEFT. The next edition of RFC will air Sunday Sept. 16 at 10:00 AM. |
RFC Notes and News, Sunday Sept. 2, 2001
FCC's Most Liberal Commissioner to Leave
The FCC announced on Aug. 27 that Commissioner Gloria Tristani, a Democratic Clinton appointee, will be leaving the Commission on Sept. 7. During her tenure on the FCC Tristani has been the most outspoken opponent of broadcast industry consolidation and the most ardent supporter of consumer rights and protections against the abuses of the telecommunications industries. Tristani’s departure gives President Bush the rare opportunity to completely rework the FCC, appointing all 5 commissioners, two of whom must be Democrats. It is widely expected that he will seek appointees who are more agreeable to FCC Chair Michael Powell’s announced program of tremendous deregulation. This year the FCC is expected to review its rules that disallow a single company from owning two TV stations or a TV station and a newpaper in a single market. Last month the commission granted a waiver from this rule to Rupert Murdoch’s News company, allowing it to now own two television stations—in addition to a newspaper—in NYC. Chairman Powell lauded this decision while Tristani issued a strongly worded dissenting opinion. Powell has gone on record that he intends to see the FCC repeal this duopoly rule and other rules restricting media ownership.
Pacifica Update
It's been a tough few weeks for Amy Goodman, the host of the popular nationwide progressive news program, Pacifica's Democracy Now. The program has been in re-runs since Tuesday, Aug. 13 when Goodman and her staff attempted to originate the program from a studio outside of Pacifica station WBAI, where the program is normally produced. The Democracy Now staff took this action after being moved to moved from their usual location in WBAI’s main broadcast studio to a smaller auxiliary production studio, and after an incident between Goodman and WBAI station manager Utrice Leid, in which eyewitnesses say Leid physically pushed Goodman. After this incident Goodman and her staff say that they fear for their safety at the station and cannot return to WBAI without strong assurances that they will be protected.
Since Aug. 13 Goodman and her staff have been producing Democracy Now from their outside studio in NYC, attempting to have it uplinked by Pacifica for national satellite distribution, which Pacifica management has refused to do. The show, however, has been distributed over the Internet by wbix.org (WBAI in Exile), which has made it possible for some affiliate stations to air the fresh editions of Democracy Now rather than the archive re-runs aired by Pacifica.
At WEFT the volunteer Programming Committee has been trying hard to download the daily editions of Democracy Now in time to air them at program's normal airtime of 4:00 PM weekdays. The Committee has also been airing short announcements before and during the program to inform listeners about the situation that is making it difficult to air new editions of Democracy Now each day.
On Aug. 21 Goodman and the Democracy Now staff learned from the morning NY papers that they had been suspended without pay by Pacifica management, over their refusal to produce the program at WBAI. As of last Friday, Democracy Now remains in reruns on the Pacifica network. On August 23 Pacifica and WBAI's staff union, AFTRA, released a joint statement saying that they had reached an agreement on the safety of working conditions at WBAI, and that Goodman and her staff had been ordered to return to work. On Aug. 27 AFTRA released a statement that indicated a change in their position on the safety of working conditions at WBAI. In it AFTRA says that the supposed joint statement between the union and Pacifica was in fact not a joint statement, but “unilaterally issued by Pacifica,” and that it neither reflects AFTRA's understanding of the terms of an August 17th agreement between the union and Pacifica, nor reflects AFTRA's position on the dispute involving the AFTRA members employed on Democracy Now. AFTRA says that it now does not believe that the WBAI studios are a safe and appropriate working environment for the Democracy Now!
Then, last Wed., Goodman and the Democracy Now staff released a memo they sent to the Pacifica National Board in which they report that Pacifica management had contracted with an off-site, non-union news service to replace the first segment of the repeat episodes of Democracy Now! Being distributed by the network. According to the Democracy Now staff the news service being used, Feature Story News, also provides news for Fox News and Voice of America. We’ll hear more from Amy Goodman about this news service in just a few minutes.
This struggle over Democracy Now is the latest chapter in a more than five year old dispute between the Pacifica Foundation and a diverse and organized group of listeners, former employees and volunteers who believe that the 50 year-old radio network has lost sight of its mission, forcibly instituting a rigid top-down management style, firing volunteer programmers and dissenting staff, and moving programming to the political center. The dispute reached a new climax two years ago when the entire staff of Berkeley, CA station KPFA was locked out of the station for almost a month, a situation echoed last December at WBAI when long term staff were suddenly fired over the Christmas holidays, in what has come to be called the "Christmas Coup."
For its part, Pacifica Management strongly denies the claims of its opponents, and denies that the climate of station WBAI is hostile to Amy Goodman and the Democracy Now staff, and continues to maintain that the staff is in violation of their contract by producing the program outside the WBAI studios.
Closer to home, the WEFT Board Of Directors last Monday decided that WEFT will not continue as a Pacifica affiliate for the Fiscal Year 2002. According to the motion passed by the board, “since WEFT is no longer carrying the Pacifica Network News, and since WEFT is no longer receiving current Democracy Now! editions via the KU satellite system due to the impasse between the DN staff and Pacifica management, and since no contract for the FY 2002 term currently exists with Pacifica, the WEFT Board of Directors at this time will not enter into an agreement with Pacifica for FY2002.”
This decision comes after significant difficulties over the last year between WEFT and Pacifica management in negotiating a mutually agreeable contract for WEFT to continue carriage of Pacifica programming. Other community radio stations across the country have experienced similar difficulties. Some stations, like KBOO in Portland, OR, have already decided to drop Pacifica programming as a result of these difficulties and discontent over Pacifica’s management practices.
The WEFT Board of Directors is communicating to Pacifica management that it will reconsider its decision not to renew its affiliate contract under the conditions that “current editions of Democracy Now! are again broadcast through the KU satellite system; b) an acceptable contract is offered by Pacfica and the WEFT Programming Committee elects to resume carriage of the Pacifica Network News.” For most of this year WEFT has been airing Free Speech Radio News in place of Pacifica Network News, weeknights at 5:00 PM. Free Speech Radio News is a program produced by former Pacifica reporters who consider themselves to be on strike from the network due to what they charge are Pacifica’s unfair and censorious management practices. Free Speech Radio News also collaborates with Independent Media Centers across the country, and has aired pieces produced by the Urbana Independent Media Center.
In local independent media news:
Micro-Film:
Volume 2 issue number two of Micro-Film, the journal of personal cinema, is out now and available at independent bookstores around town. Micro-film is a magazine published locally by Jason Pankoke, and covers in-depth ultra-independent cinema and video. The new issue features an Interview conducted by yours truly with independent filmmaker Kevin Keyser who produced the documentary “Free Radio” which explores the underground world of unlicensed micropower radio broadcasters.
public i
The second issue of the Urbana Independent Media Center’s newspaper the Public I should hit the streets this week. This Sept. issue features articles on the campaign for a Living Wage in Champaign County, standardized testing in schools and the National Endowment for the Arts. The public i is available at businesses and other locations all over Champaign-Urbana, or can be picked up at the Urbana-Champaign Independent Media Center at 218 w. Main St. in downtown Urbana.
The Indy
Another independent newspaper came on the Central Illinois scene last month, this time out of Bloomington Normal. Last month the “indy” became Bloomington-Normal’s free independent newspaper. The newspaper is a project of a registered student organization at Illinois State University. The first issue features stories on waste produced by corporate dairy farms, the campus Green party rally in Chicago, and an alternative guide to life in Bloomington-Normal. Locally, you can pick up copies of the Indy at Urbana IMC in downtown Urbana.
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http://www.mediageek.org/rfc/
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