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News :: Civil & Human Rights : Media |
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Looming Censorship of “Democracy Now!” by Urbana Mayor and How You Can Stop It (audio clips included) |
Current rating: 0 |
by Randall Cotton
Email: recotton (nospam) earthlink.net (unverified!)
Phone: 217-722-8470 |
07 Sep 2004
Modified: 05:58:23 PM |
NEW POSTING: AUDIO CLIPS INCLUDED
This is the story of how Urbana Mayor Todd Satterthwaite is personally obstructing the widely-supported effort to get “Democracy Now!” broadcast on Urbana Public Television (UPTV). You don’t think that could be happening? I don’t blame you. I was pretty surprised myself. But I challenge you to read this article (which contains audio clips of the most recent UPTV Commission meeting) and not come away with certainty that the mayor is personally attempting to prevent “Democracy Now!” from being shown on UPTV. He may think he can get away with censorship of “Democracy Now!”, but he won’t if YOU act to oppose it by attending the next UPTV Commission meeting at noon on Monday, September 13th in the City Council Chambers (largest room on the ground floor) at the City of Urbana Building, 400 S. Vine St. in Urbana. |
My name is Randall Cotton. I’ve been a resident of Champaign/Urbana since 1985. For the past 5 months, I have been trying to get our local public-access cable station, Urbana Public Television (UPTV) to broadcast “Democracy Now!” on weekdays. “Democracy Now!” is an increasingly popular independent, non-profit, alternative news and analysis program which folks in east-central Illinois can hear on community radio station WEFT, 90.1 FM every weekday at 4PM. “Democracy Now!” has many listeners in the Champaign/Urbana area, but it may come as a surprise even to longtime fans that “Democracy Now!” is now actually a full-blown video production. What you hear on WEFT is merely the audio portion of the show. Furthermore, when you listen to “Democracy Now!” on WEFT, it’s actually delayed 9 hours because the show is produced live each weekday at 7AM Central time, recorded at WEFT from a satellite transmission each day and then played back at 4PM. I’m a strong proponent of access to independent, alternative news (For instance, I’m the regular host of the Monday “WEFT Courier” from 4-6PM on 90.1FM, during which I broadcast “Democracy Now!”, Free Speech Radio News and IMC Radio News) and I often thought it would be nice if the full video version of “Democracy Now!” were widely available to the Champaign/Urbana community, and at an earlier time in the day, perhaps even live.
So when I learned one day (while perusing the "Democracy Now!” website) that many public-access cable stations across the country (over 130 at last count) were already broadcasting “Democracy Now!”, I was frankly a bit surprised that our local public-access station, UPTV, was not on that list (as Urbana is known to be a fairly progressive city). I researched things a bit and found that the cost of acquiring the equipment and retransmission rights was actually quite small – under $400. I decided I could even contribute that out of my own pocket if necessary. Another thing I noticed is that there’s quite a bit of underutilized cablecast time on UPTV. Much of the schedule consists of repeated programming and the “community bulletin board” text-based public service announcement system – not exactly the most riveting show on cable. In fact, MOST of the UPTV schedule consists of repeats and the bulletin board. In particular, I saw that the 7-8AM slot (when “Democracy Now!” is broadcast live each weekday) was essentially vacant.
So I figured it couldn’t be that hard to get this going, right? “Democracy Now!” is an increasingly popular program with an already-established audience in the community; the cost is small enough that I could cover it myself if necessary; there wasn’t any prospect of conflicting with existing programs (if I requested the 7-8AM slot) and this wasn’t exactly precedent-setting as many public-access stations around the country were already doing it. No problem, right?
A one-way train ride to the town of Stonewall
It turns out that, unlike other cities which have public-access stations run by the community itself, UPTV is run by the City of Urbana. The staff that runs UPTV are City of Urbana employees. They work for the city administration and the top of that chain of command is the mayor. And although it took a while for the truth to reveal itself, it turns out the mayor himself is personally opposing my efforts. Perhaps that’s why it’s taken five months so far without any progress.
Chris Foster is in charge of the day-to-day operations for UPTV. His title is UPTV Coordinator. Bill Dejarnette, Manager of Information Systems, is his boss. When I first met with Chris and Bill in person (on May 6) to discuss the details of getting “Democracy Now!” on UPTV, I knew it would be a breeze. They were both manifestly receptive to the idea. Indeed, they were enthusiastic. They spoke of how UPTV might just take over the cost of program fees for broadcasting “Democracy Now!” in future years. They were interested in possibly adding other programs from the same satellite setup to UPTV’s schedule (“Democracy Now!” is received from the “Free Speech TV” satellite channel, which broadcasts many other programs besides “Democracy Now!”). Mr. Dejarnette said they would “pursue it aggressively”.
But nothing happened.
Something changed. I don’t know what, I don’t know why, but no concrete steps were ever taken toward broadcasting “Democracy Now!” on UPTV. I checked with them periodically and continued to get promises that it was just a matter of days or weeks before things would start moving, but those promises were invariably broken. UPTV staff became more and more evasive, and provided increasingly tenuous excuses for not making any progress. About a month after my initial meeting with UPTV, they settled on their final justification for the lack of progress. The application needed to be reviewed by the City of Urbana legal department. And that’s where progress ended. I was told by Mr. Dejarnette “As soon as I hear from legal, I will contact you and let you know the status”. That was June 4th. Over 3 months ago. Even after repeated additional calls to Bill Dejarnette, the status on this never changed.
Stonewall. End of the line.
Jumping to a new track (and running into the mayor).
After essentially giving up on that initial track, I learned about the UPTV Commission, an appointed body which advises the UPTV administration. I called the chair of the committee and asked to introduce my proposal to them at their regular quarterly June 21 meeting.
And when I showed up, the mayor was there. That was odd. The mayor doesn’t usually attend UPTV Commission meetings. In fact, it turns out that for the first time in at least three years, the mayor decided to attend a UPTV Commission meeting.
I made a short presentation to introduce my proposal to the Commission. There was a question or two and some signs of a positive reception by Commission members. The mayor didn’t say anything, but no real discussion took place on my proposal – it was, instead, put on the agenda for a special UPTV Commission meeting three weeks later on July 12th. And the mayor apparently took note because when July 12th rolled around, there he was again. And this time, the mayor’s opposition came out into the open.
Now, though I had no idea the mayor would personally get involved in this issue (it really was a complete surprise to me), I had come prepared. In the three weeks between the June 21st and July 12th meeting, I started a petition drive to demonstrate the level of public support for UPTV broadcasts of “Democracy Now!”. The petition reads:
We, the undersigned residents of the Champaign/Urbana area, thank the Urbana Public Television (UPTV) Commission for considering the acquisition of Free Speech TV (FSTV) and regular broadcasts of "Democracy Now!" from FSTV, and We strongly encourage the commission to vote in favor of making FSTV available for retransmission on UPTV and to broadcast the live feed for "Democracy Now!" every weekday at 7AM.
And I had well over 500 signatures. The commission was clearly impressed.
But regardless, as soon as discussion started, the mayor (who isn’t actually on the UPTV Commission himself) spoke early and often in opposition to my proposal. Not overtly, mind you. He didn’t come out and say “I don’t want this programming on UPTV, so the commission shouldn’t take any action on this proposal. But he might as well have said just that because the result was the same – no action was taken even though five of the six commission members present were clearly in support of going ahead with broadcasts of “Democracy Now!” on UPTV (in fact, all five even voted to go ahead with broadcasts at one point – more on that below). The one remaining member, Kevin Maxson, was clearly swayed by the mayor’s opposition, specifically citing one of the mayor’s arguments (even referring to Todd by name) as justification for putting off action on “Democracy Now!”
You don’t have to take my word for what happened at that meeting. It was recorded. And thanks to a Freedom of Information Act request, I obtained a copy. All the transcripts below are verbatim. And I've now included the audio clips in this posting so you can hear them for yourself.
The mayor didn’t waste any time. As soon as discussion started, he was first in line:
(Mayor Todd Satterthwaite): "What kind of precedent are we setting? Um, you know, who is gonna be next to ask for this kind of programming? Is it going to be the National Rifle Association lined up to put a dish on our roof and broadcasting? Is it the KKK? Is it Matt Hale and his supporters? I mean, once you open the door, you have to welcome whoever walks through it."
Audio clip from the meeting:  clip 1.mp3 (81 k) Looming Censorship of “Democracy Now!” by Urbana Mayor (and How You Can Stop It)
OK, let’s think about this for a minute. Matt Hale, the notorious white supremacist, is not a resident of Champaign/Urbana, so he wouldn’t be allowed on UPTV. Also, the NRA and the KKK couldn’t get on UPTV because organizations have to be tax-exempt non-profit organizations registered in Illinois and serving Urbana residents to get time on UPTV. If the mayor paused for just a minute to review the plausibility of his premise, he would’ve dismissed it as preposterous. I think it’s telling that he chose not to.
That’s actually just a minor quibble, though, because the real issue here is that the mayor of Urbana, in uttering these first few sentences on the matter, had just presented an argument in favor of universal censorship. He’s suggesting that since we wouldn’t want to give airtime to views that might be offensive, we shouldn’t give airtime to anything else, including “Democracy Now!”.
To me, this opening salvo came off as a cynical, specious, calculated and rehearsed scare tactic, and also a cloaked and disturbingly dangerous attack on free speech. Thankfully, the Commission was not swayed.
But to my mind, this first comment alone already exposed the mayor as intending to obstruct the broadcast of “Democracy Now!” on UPTV. Indeed, he had just obliquely suggested it be censored. All this despite the substantial documented support for it in the form of over 500 petition signatures sitting in front of him on the conference room table.
But the discussion had only just begun.
In an attempt to address the mayor’s stated “KKK” objection (dubious though it was), commission member Peter Resnick suggested that instead of approving my proposal as the request of a UPTV member, that the commission take it on as an initiative of its own. That way, the issue of precedence is avoided. The UPTV Commission would thus choose to establish “Democracy Now!” programming by satellite in the same way that it established Annenberg Channel programming (which is also received with a satellite dish that UPTV installed for that purpose) and if “KKK Satellite TV” was ever proposed, they could just turn it down…
(Commissioner Peter Resnick): "Right now, we've got Randy coming to us and saying 'I'd like a change in the public access rules such that I can give you this dish and broadcast this five days a week, you know, as a member of UPTV.' And I guess, all I'm saying is: Let's, as a commission, talk about putting “Democracy Now!” on in the morning, not worry about those rule changes. Randall's request brought this to our attention in the same way that Chris going to this conference brought Annenberg to our attention, and we decided that 'Hey, that seems like interesting programming - let's do that.' And, yeah, if some other, you know, if some person comes and says 'I want to put on White Supremacy TV' or and we say 'you can do that during your public access time, but the Commission chooses not to put that on as a regular program, um, you know, that's not something we're interested in putting on as a regular program.' I don't see how that sets a particular precedent."
Audio clip from the meeting: clip 2.mp3 (252 k) Looming Censorship of “Democracy Now!” by Urbana Mayor (and How You Can Stop It)
That neatly takes care of the mayor’s fear that something like “KKK TV” will somehow wind up being beamed in via satellite for broadcast on UPTV, and you might think all was well. But the mayor immediately responded with a different objection to this new idea.
He now tried to make the argument that it was somehow improper for the Commission to take a suggestion from the public on programming that they recommend for UPTV. Instead, the mayor firmly pressured the commission to respond to this collective public plea for “Democracy Now!” by conducting a comprehensive study of all programming available and deciding within the commission, by themselves, without public input or influence, what to recommend for broadcast.
(Mayor Todd Satterthwaite) : “What the commission should do is, is say ‘OK, What kind of programming is out there and what kind of programming is our first choice to have on our station’. You run a TV station! And so decide amongst yourselves what's most important to have on there. Now if “Democracy Now!” rates as the first and you go through a process that says out of all the programming on the airwaves, this is the first, our first choice as most important, then it's a commission decision - it's not a UPTV member coming to you making a request and getting special consideration with a dish on the roof and everything else. But if you act based on a member request, no matter which member that is, then it - it's not an unbiased process.”
Audio clip from the meeting: clip 3.mp3 (167 k) Looming Censorship of “Democracy Now!” by Urbana Mayor (and How You Can Stop It)
Well, God forbid public-access TV would ever be biased toward public requests!
Let’s review. Over 500 citizens request broadcast of “Democracy Now!” on UPTV. The commission, in response to that request, conducts a study of all available programming, disregarding the public’s original request. It then goes through some internal decision process and possibly chooses to broadcast something other than the original request.
Once again: Over 500 citizens request “Democracy Now!”, and the mayor argues that the commission respond by possibly broadcasting something else of their own choosing instead.
In a bizarre, mind-twisting display of pretzel logic, the mayor is claiming that the Commission, a public body advising Urbana’s public-access cable station, should not accept suggestions from the public when considering what public programming to recommend for Urbana Public Television. Even if over 500 of them are asking for the same thing. And instead, in response, they should take that opportunity to put on a new program of their own choice.
It’s interesting to note the mayor’s tone and phrasing as delivered in his argument above. He is almost giving orders to the commission. He says “What the commission should do is…” and “And so decide amongst yourselves…”. There is no prevarication here – this is overt pressure. Keep in mind that every one of the commission members are appointed by the mayor. Though the mayor can’t unilaterally remove them from the commission, he can choose not to recommend them for an additional term. Some of them deal with the mayor in other areas of the government as well (for example, Jim Hayes is a City Councilman, Peter Resnick serves on the Human Relations Commission). And after all, he is the mayor and does wield considerable power.
In another portion of the meeting, he uses a different pressure tactic - speaking to the commission as if he was their leader, telling them how they will proceed, perhaps hoping that everyone will just run along behind him…
(Mayor Todd Satterthwaite): “Internally, you know, if we want to do that - um, if we want to figure out what is, what kind of programming we would like to have, we're gonna look at the whole landscape, ya know. And not just look at, OK, we've been presented with Democracy Now!, but what else is out there? What kind of programming would we like to see on and then we're gonna evaluate all the options and say some other kind of documentary or informational programming may, may be a higher priority.”
Audio clip from the meeting: clip 4.mp3 (113 k) Looming Censorship of “Democracy Now!” by Urbana Mayor (and How You Can Stop It)
As a whole, though, the commission was still not knuckling under to the mayor’s pressure or his specious logic. At one point, Commissioner Peter Resnick tactfully tried to point out one of the flaws in the mayor’s argument…
(Commissioner Peter Resnick): “Absolutely, but again, you know, in the same way with Annenberg - we discovered it in a particular way - we didn't at that point, I assume, stop and say ‘Oh well, do we want Annenberg or, you know - there may be other programs - let's go research those first.’ It came to us, we said that looks like interesting programming for our purposes. Let's go ahead and put that on.”
Audio clip from the meeting: clip 5.mp3 (80 k) Looming Censorship of “Democracy Now!” by Urbana Mayor (and How You Can Stop It)
Perhaps predictably, the mayor was unfazed.
Train wreck ahead.
The meeting dragged on far past its scheduled time, the mayor’s arguments didn’t appear to be convincing anyone, so Commission Resnick put forth a motion in favor of going forth with the broadcast of “Democracy Now!”. Five of the six commission members present immediately voted in favor. But it turns out the mayor’s pressure perhaps just barely swayed one of the commission members, Kevin Maxson…
(Commissioner Peter Resnick): “I'll go ahead and move to, um, put “Democracy Now!” on as City Programming as UPTV Programming, um, with decisions about the dish and whatever to be decided later.”
(unknown commissioner): “Second.”
(Commissioner Barb Gladney – chair): “Second? All in favor?”
(5 of the 6 commission members present): “Aye.”
(Commissioner Pete Resnick to Commissioner Kevin Maxson): “Or, would you like some discussion?”
(Commissioner Barb Gladney – chair): “I'm sorry - we had so much discussion.”
(Commissioner Kevin Maxson): “I would like just a brief discussion. I don't think, I don't think that's exactly what we were discussing. Um, It's not what I was discussing. I think that what we need to do, if we want to expand the material that we're putting on UPTV, that we're sponsoring, we need to, like Todd said, review the available material. One of which is going to be Free Speech TV and “Democracy Now!” and determine what that material we want to sponsor and I think that resolving to do that is a uh, I don't know how to say it - less, less partisan resolution than resolving to sponsor “Democracy Now!”.
Audio clip from the meeting: clip 6.mp3 (298 k) Looming Censorship of “Democracy Now!” by Urbana Mayor (and How You Can Stop It)
Maxson, who sat next to the mayor during the meeting, was apparently swayed by the mayor’s pressure, specifically citing the mayors flawed argument that the commission shouldn’t entertain such a programming request from the public.
At this point, there was considerable disarray. Another commission member calls for further discussion, but then it’s pointed out that they’re way over time and they can’t discuss this any more. Peter Resnick’s motion to go ahead with “Democracy Now!” peters out. Perhaps in an effort to try and have some semblance of resolution, Kevin Maxson suggests postponing the issue (and in the meantime, going ahead with the mayor’s idea of a study of all available programming)…
(Commissioner Kevin Maxson): “I would move that we hold this request for Free Speech TV in abeyance for the moment and that, as a commission, we investigate what additional programming other than Annenberg we would like to sponsor on UPTV. One of the things we'll investigate is Free Speech TV. We would make a list and then decide what top items on that list we are able to deliver over UPTV.”
(Commissioner Barb Gladney - chair): “Can you get an idea, Chris, do you think you can do that?”
(UPTV Coordinator, Chris Foster): “I can, I'll bring a report of anything I can find to the next commission meeting.”
(Commissioner Barb Gladney - chair): “OK. OK.”
Audio clip from the meeting: clip 7.mp3 (140 k) Looming Censorship of “Democracy Now!” by Urbana Mayor (and How You Can Stop It)
Some commission members seemed unsatisfied with how things were unfolding. One commission member tried to clarify the reasoning behind the study…
(Commissioner Greg Boozell): “I just wanted to know - the reason for doing some overview of available programming before we act on this is... we're afraid we're gonna accept it and then not have room for other things?”
(Commissioner Kevin Maxson): “We're being a responsible public body and investigating what we think is the best value in the community to put on the station rather than just having a knee-jerk reaction to a citizen bringing us something like this.”
Audio clip from the meeting: clip 8.mp3 (104 k) Looming Censorship of “Democracy Now!” by Urbana Mayor (and How You Can Stop It)
Again, the twisted logic here is that of the mayor – programming requests from the public, even if they come from 500 citizens all wanting the same thing, should not be heeded by the Commission (though somehow it’s proper to make use of that request as justification for putting on a program which the commission internally decides is the “best value”).
One almost has to conclude that if the mayor had not forcefully intervened the way he did, “Democracy Now!” would already be on UPTV today. If you’ve read carefully up to this point, I imagine you’re as convinced as I am.
To summarize, I maintain that Mayor Todd Satterthwaite, through the combination of specious argument, scare tactics and overt pressure described above, single-handedly succeeded in swaying the UPTV commission, as a whole, from voting in favor of broadcasting “Democracy Now!” on UPTV as requested by over 500 citizens of the Champaign/Urbana area (that petition has now grown to well over 1000 signatures).
In that sense, Mayor Satterthwaite has already succeeded in censoring “Democracy Now!” from UPTV, at least temporarily.
And he may have been hard at work since that meeting two months ago, continuing to pressure Commission members to oppose the public’s will and make that censorship permanent. Are YOU going to let this happen?
Get on board!
Fight censorship! The next meeting of the UPTV Commission is on Monday, September 13th at noon. The meeting will take place in the Urbana City Council Chambers (first floor) at the Urbana City Building, 400 S. Vine Street. The best (and perhaps the ONLY) way for the public to stop this looming censorship is to show up in person at this meeting to demonstrate your opposition to censorship or to voice your support for ““Democracy Now!” on UPTV. The presence of legions of citizens could give the Commission enough backbone to stand up to the mayor and do the right thing.
And if you have any remaining doubt at this point that the mayor’s intent is outright censorship, consider this: at one point in the meeting, the mayor actually suggested that an acceptable way to get “Democracy Now!” broadcasts going on UPTV would be to avoid the satellite dish issue by having people tape “Democracy Now!” each weekday (through some unidentified method) and then bring the tape in to UPTV for broadcast.
Every weekday.
All the time.
This way, he reasons, it can just be treated like locally produced public-access shows and there’s no “precedent” problem. He actually advocated this idea during the Commission meeting…
(Mayor Todd Satterthwaite:) “If the people on these petitions wanted to do it, then each one of them could bring in one a month, um, or you know once every two years... Um, but you could certainly do it that way and not have to deal with the issue at all.”
(Commissioner Dana Mancuso): “Remember to bring your tape on Thursday, May 17, 2005? I don't think so.” (chuckles and laughs).
(Commissioner Greg Boozell): “Make sure your name's on the tape!” (more laughs)
Audio clip from the meeting: clip 9.mp3 (105 k) Looming Censorship of “Democracy Now!” by Urbana Mayor (and How You Can Stop It)
At this point, the whole commission was laughing at the idea. But in what was a truly surreal moment, the mayor actually had suggested this with a straight-face. He was dead serious. And he later again promoted this suggestion as a legitimate solution to at least one Urbana citizen a few days later. It’s hard to see what motivation he could have for actually encouraging this other than as a truly cynical strategy, ringing with contempt, insisting on a demeaning, utterly preposterous scheme, so unnecessarily labor-intensive as to guarantee its failure, when it could be entirely automated using a satellite feed without any cost to UPTV. He couldn’t possibly be so dim as to not realize the abject impracticality of this, could he? |
See also:
http://www.democracynow.org
http://www.freespeech.org
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This work is in the public domain |
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