A Center for Public Integrity look at how industry funding impacts the telecom policy positions presented in DC by a prominent minority media access organization: The MMTC (Minority Media Telecommunications Council)

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When the chairman of the Federal Communications Commission pitched a plan to allow more media mergers earlier this year, he received support from a curious source: the Minority Media and Telecommunications Council, once an ardent critic of industry consolidation.

Julius Genachowski wanted backing for a proposed loosening of a rule that bars the same company from owning a newspaper and a radio or television broadcast station in a top media market.

MMTC and its executive director, David Honig, have historically opposed relaxing ownership restrictions, saying they protect minority interests. Yet last week, the group released a key study arguing the opposite position.

So why the change of heart?

Critics say MMTC’s position may have something to do with its extensive industry funding. This includes more than $440,000 in luncheon sponsorships since 2010 from broadcast giants who favor the rule change.

In an 18-page response to questions for this article, Honig says the support does not influence the group’s positions.

“The most valuable asset that a nonprofit organization has is its integrity, and to imply that donations and fees influence our positions on issues is to suggest that we lack integrity, something we do not take lightly,” he wrote.

MMTC, which acts as a pro bono law firm on FCC issues for civil rights groups like the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, was vital if Genachowski was to get his plan approved.

Two previous attempts to change the rule were slapped down by the courts, in part because of concern that greater media consolidation would reduce the number of minority media owners.

MMTC offered to commission the study in February, after voicing its support for Genachowski’s proposal.

Once a shoestring operation dependent almost solely on the volunteer efforts of Honig, MMTC has evolved in recent years into a potent organization that exercises much influence on the commission through its ability to shape the positions of large civil rights organizations on relatively obscure FCC issues.

The media ownership rules passed in the 1970s stemmed in part from the FCC’s failure to take action against TV stations in the South that blacked out coverage of the civil rights movement. They were also inspired by the perceived failures of large media outlets to report on grievances of inner cities that led to the race riots of the late 1960s.

It was believed that restrictions on ownership would lead to greater competition, more locally focused programming and more opportunities for minority ownership.

Consolidation has long been favored by many large broadcasters and newspaper companies, which seek savings by combining advertising and newsroom operations.

After years of defending the rules, Honig, wrote in a blog post in December that the cross-ownership ban should be relaxed, citing concern in minority communities about the decline of newspapers.

What he didn't disclose was the hundreds of thousands of dollars his group had received from CBS Corp., radio giant Clear Channel Communications Inc., Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. and the National Association of Broadcasters, an industry lobby group. All four have previously gone to court in an effort to end the ban. News Corp., which Los Angeles Times and a rule-change would clear the way for such a deal.

Clear Channel and News Corp. did not respond to questions for this article. Spokesmen for the NAB and CBS say their organization’s donations weren’t intended to change MMTC’s positions on cross-ownership or other matters.

Honig said the Center’s calculation of sponsorship totals — which were taken from MMTC materials — were “inaccurate.” He said the group may bump up the level of sponsorship of donors “for good will purposes.”

He did not provide alternate figures.

MMTC took in just under $2 million in 2011. Of that, $1.7 million was derived from sponsorships, donations and fees from companies, lobbyists, lawyers and religious broadcasters with interests before the FCC, according to an IRS filing.

“It is important to look at David’s source of funding to determine who David really represents,” says Mark Lloyd, a former associate general counsel and chief diversity officer at the FCC from 2009 until last year. “I think that would tell you a great deal.”

The MMTC ownership study, released last week, concluded the impact of greater consolidation in media ownership on women and minority ownership can’t be a “material justification for tightening or retaining the rules.”

Critics argue that other studies have shown that more media concentration harms small broadcasters, and that most women- and minority-owned broadcasting companies control just a few stations each.

Net neutrality position raises eyebrows

MMTC has also received support from telecommunications and cable firms and its position on broadband regulation and other issues has dovetailed with theirs.

“He’s making arguments that are no different than those made by the big companies and yet they’re presented as those of the civil rights community,” says Craig Aaron, the executive director of Free Press, a group that opposes media consolidation. “Those are his views, but it’s curious how often they’re in line with the filings of Comcast and AT&T.”

Honig says MMTC aims to promote equal opportunity in broadcasting, telecommunications and broadband and that its positions are often in conflict with those of its donors. He pointed to a letter accompanying the ownership study which noted there was "an indication that an especially extensive" cross-media merger could hurt minority ownership in smaller markets."

MMTC’s position on “network neutrality” early in President Barack Obama’s first term angered consumer groups and many technology companies that wanted the government to force Internet service providers to treat all traffic equally.

Proponents of an open Web were concerned that without strong network neutrality rules, broadband providers would be free to offer preferential treatment to deep-pocketed media outlets.

Honig sided with the Internet service providers, arguing that new rules would hurt the ability of cable and telecommunications companies to expand broadband in poor, minority neighborhoods.

"We think that closing the digital divide should be the top priority and that net neutrality should be second," he told the Los Angeles Times.

From 2009 through 2011 MMTC received at least $725,000 in contributions and sponsorships from network neutrality foes including Verizon, Time Warner, and the National Cable and Telecommunications Association, according to MMTC tax filings and sponsorship lists.

MMTC’s relationship with Verizon demonstrates the group’s various methods of obtaining industry revenue. In 2009, at the height of the net neutrality debate, Verizon made a direct $40,000 contribution to MMTC. From 2010 to 2013, MMTC documents list Verizon as funding at least $160,000 in MMTC conference sponsorships.

Additionally, MMTC worked with Verizon on a $189 million sale of wireless spectrum licenses to minority-owned Grain Management this year — a deal announced in conjunction with a larger $1.9 billion license sale to AT&T. A spokesman for Verizon says money paid to MMTC wasn’t intended to influence its policies but to support its mission of promoting inclusion in the industry.

Some saw Honig playing a key role in organizing traditional civil rights groups like the National Urban League and the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC) to sign on to anti-network neutrality filings with the FCC.

Honig is “the nerve center for much of the action we've seen on the part of the civil rights groups,” blogged James Rucker, then the executive director of ColorOfChange.org, a technology-oriented civil rights group that supported network neutrality.

“In my opinion, Honig is leading many of the respected civil rights groups he is advising off of the digital cliff,” he added.

Rucker isn’t alone in the view that Honig uses his credibility with civil rights organizations and expertise in communications law to influence them to take positions on complex issues that primarily benefit industry players.

Honig “undermines trust in his organization’s legacy” when he urges groups to join his advocacy campaign and they later find out the issues aren’t quite what they expected, says Cheryl Leanza, co-chairwoman of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights’ media and telecommunications task force.

“He does a disservice to his past work when other organizations take his advice and they don’t know the consequences or implications of that advice.”

Leanza says her views are her own, not those of the LCCR.

Civil rights activist

Honig began his civil rights activism in the 1960s as a high school student, when he became a youth leader of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in Rochester, New York.

He earned a law degree from Georgetown in 1983, and after the FCC under President Ronald Reagan suspended key minority broadcast ownership rules, he co-founded MMTC on a shoestring budget.

He mixed MMTC’s advocacy with litigation on behalf of civil rights groups. In the 1990s he led a high profile but unsuccessful legal battle representing the N.A.A.C.P. in its effort to prevent Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp., the parent of Fox Broadcasting Co. and the owner of a New York City television station, from gaining a waiver from the cross-ownership rule to buy the New York Post—the same rule Honig now favors eliminating.

In 1991, on behalf of LULAC, the N.A.A.C.P. and other civil rights groups, his legal work helped spur an FCC investigation and long-running legal fight with the country’s largest Christian television network, Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN).

Known for its broadcasts of televangelists like Jimmy Swaggart and network founders Paul and Jan Crouch, Honig accused TBN of setting up a sham minority corporation to win additional FCC broadcast licenses.

Honig helped spur the FCC to restore equal employment rules to the cable and broadcast industry in 2002 and pass a 2007 rule preventing advertisers from instructing their agencies not to place spots on radio stations with large black and Hispanic audiences.

By the late 1990s, Honig had also found a way to successfully fund MMTC. In 1998, MMTC began collecting fees from broadcasters in return for helping them sell stations to minority buyers — earning $450,000 that year alone by helping Clear Channel sell a Boston station for $5 million, according to a report in the trade newspaper Broadcasting & Cable. The story noted that Honig was able to begin paying himself a $41,125 salary.

The report also said that rival brokers were complaining that one MMTC client, CBS Corp., did not typically use brokers and had retained Honig “only to curry favor with the diversity-minded FCC.”

In 2002, the group added an annual “Access to Capital” fundraising luncheon, which helped net it $22,806. Honig’s compensation had risen to $161,000, according to tax filings.

By 2006, the luncheon had become so successful at attracting industry interest it had been expanded to two days and was addressed by three of the FCC’s five sitting commissioners — MMTC raised $291,334.

Station donations

Additionally, the non-profit MMTC began accepting donated broadcast properties.

In 2008, Mega Communications, a Spanish radio network owned by New York art collector Adam Lindemann, donated a Tampa Bay area AM station to MMTC. Honig says the station was used to train women and minorities. MMTC sold the station for $1.15 million last year to Christian broadcaster Salem Communications.

In 2010, Trinity Broadcasting Network donated 147 low-power television stations to MMTC. That year MMTC awarded TBN, along with Clear Channel, its “Extraordinary Service Award,” an annual prize given for those “who have far exceeded the call of duty in the service of the civil rights cause,” according to MMTC’s website.

The FCC soon reclaimed the licenses of many of the TBN stations, but in 2011 MMTC sold 78 of the stations for $390,000 to a Tennessee company run by broadcast entrepreneur Henry Luken, whose holdings include The Nashville Network and the male-oriented Tuff TV.

TBN declined to comment on the donation. Honig says MMTC did not solicit the donation from TBN, and that Luken has pledged to enact a training program for women and minorities as part of the deal.

By the time of the sale of the former TBN stations, MMTC had grown substantially. In 2011, the last year for which tax forms are available, it reported almost $2.8 million in net assets.

Honig’s salary had also increased to $212,072. His addresses included a waterfront home on Maryland’s Eastern Shore assessed at $856,700, according to Maryland property records.

Today its website lists eight lawyers, two researchers and a communications director. Its brokerage team includes three others, two of whom are former Clear Channel staffers. MMTC ranked as the seventh-largest broadcast broker in the U.S. in 2011, and has worked on deals valued at $1.8 billion over the past 15 years. Honig, 63, says he plans to semi-retire next year.

Comcast and AT&T

Among the group’s most generous donors is cable giant Comcast, which, according to MMTC documents has spent at least $375,000 on fundraising luncheons and conferences in Washington hosted by MMTC between 2009 and this year.

In addition to taking Comcast's side on Net Neutrality, Honig publicly hailed its 2011 buyout of NBC Universal.

Honig publicly hailed Comcast’s 2011 buyout of NBC Universal saying the $16.7 billion merger was “a win for all Americans, especially minority and low-income consumers who have largely been left out of the digital equation.” The deal required Comcast to expand broadband to low-income Americans and create 10 new television channels in partnership with minorities.

NBC Universal contributed $150,000 to MMTC in 2010, and retained MMTC’s brokerage arm to help it sell a Los Angeles TV station as required under terms of the deal.

“We supported MMTC's work for years prior to the NBC Universal transaction,” said Sena Fitzmaurice, a spokeswoman for Comcast, in an email response to questions about the relationship. “We support a wide variety of organizations and they don't always support all of our policy positions just as we don't always support all of their policy positions.”

MMTC also supported a failed attempt by AT&T to buy T-Mobile in 2011 for $39 billion, the group’s first endorsement of a media and telecom merger in its 25-year history. The combination would benefit minority broadband consumers by allowing AT&T to expand service to more than 97 percent of consumers, Honig wrote in a brief to the FCC.

Groups such as the National Hispanic Media Center and the Center for Media Justice disagreed, arguing that T-Mobile was the low-cost carrier and that its elimination would not only harm consumers but disproportionately affect minority customers.

In 2010 and 2011, AT&T and T-Mobile provided $240,000 in sponsorships to MMTC fundraising events, according to MMTC documents. A number of other civil rights groups such as the NAACP and Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation also backed the proposed merger and also received AT&T funding.

At the time the chairman of MMTC’s board, former FCC Commissioner Henry Rivera, worked at law firm Wiley Rein, which represented T-Mobile in the merger. Julia Johnson, then MMTC’s treasurer and its current board president, runs a public relations firm whose clients have included AT&T, according to the Tampa Bay Times.

Ari Fitzgerald, a communications lawyer at Hogan Lovells and secretary of the board at MMTC, has done FCC work for T-Mobile both before and after the failed merger proposal.

AT&T relayed questions about the relationship to Honig, who defends MMTC’s stance in the merger, citing AT&T’s record of hiring minority staff and suppliers. Johnson, Fitzgerald and Rivera recused themselves from voting on MMTC’s position on the merger, he said.

“MMTC’s officers and directors are highly skilled, experienced individuals, and they all serve pro bono,” said Honig, adding: “No MMTC officer or director would tolerate attempts at ‘purse-string advocacy.’”

Growing Entity

Long-time public interest lawyer and MMTC board member Andrew Schwartzman says a turning point for the group came when it entered telecom advocacy. He says Honig is “well-motivated” but on some telecom issues “misguided rather than improperly influenced.”

Schwartzman’s own organization, the Media Access Project, closed its doors last year due to a lack of funds. He does not see MMTC’s positions as being “dictated by specific corporate contributions.”

“I don’t see these as a sudden transactional relationship but something longstanding,” he added, in reference to the donations.

Alex Nogales, the director of the National Hispanic Media Coalition, is less forgiving.

"We're disappointed in David," said Nogales. "He's gotten a bit too chummy with the industry and he's tried to drag us into those machinations and I don't appreciate it."

He says he resigned his spot as a member of MMTC’s board because of concerns about its growing corporate ties.

Whether the MMTC’s cross-media ownership study will lead to a relaxation of media ownership rules is a matter that will be decided under its next chairman.

Either way, the MMTC is looking to remain a key player at the FCC under the new regime.

President Obama’s pick for the spot, Tom Wheeler, a former cable and wireless industry lobbyist, was endorsed by the group just hours after news of his selection was leaked to the media.

A short documentary film on the years of protests against military-training academy that has seeded a half a century of militaristic imperialism in Central and South America.

A blog on the distance between mainstream media anti-bullying campaigns and the "hatertainment" broadcast all too regularly from Emily Long at The Lamp in NYC.

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In the years since the issue of bullying has garnered national attention and increasing concern, most big media companies have created campaigns designed to prevent bullying or to otherwise give people an opportunity to speak against it and raise awareness.

MTV has A Thin Line, ABC Family has Delete Digital Drama, NBC airs anti-bullying spots via its public service campaign The More You Know, Nickelodeon has anti-bullying activities on The Big Help, and Cartoon Network has a Stop Bullying Speak Up campaign.

With efforts like these, it would seem as though big media has truly taken a step forward in reaching young people to stop the bullying epidemic.

That is, until you turn on the TV. On ABC’s The Bachelor, women snipe at each other as they compete for one man’s heart. All of these insults are captured on the Smack Tracker, thus cataloging an episode-by-episode breakdown of who said what about whom. In spin-off specials like The Bachelor: Women Tell All, snarky tweets from fans of the show are broadcast live, courting a dangerous game of one-upmanship as to which members of the viewing public can be the cruelest. All of this comes courtesy of the same company that puts stars from its scripted shows front-and-center in PSAs saying that it’s time to delete digital drama.

Tune into any one of The Real Housewives series on Bravo, and you’ll see more fighting and backstabbing. Check out Teen Mom or Jersey Shore on MTV for more of the same; perhaps you’ll also catch spots for A Thin Line. Watch E! or Access Hollywood for celebrity gossip, and ESPN for occasional glorification of athletes behaving badly. In the case of some of these shows, the connection to big media’s Astroturf anti-bullying campaigns might be harder to find, but they’re all there. Bravo is owned by NBC Universal, which also owns E! and Access Hollywood. Both ABC and ESPN are owned by The Walt Disney Company, whose Friends for Change celebrity ambassadors want you to become an ‘accountabili-buddy’ and report bullying.

Big media profits from shows that promote hateful messages disguised as entertainment, also called ‘hatertainment.’ Their various attempts at ending bullying are moot when their own networks glorify, normalize, and reward the same type of behavior that most of us recognize as bullying and destructive. We cannot count big media as an ally when these companies are responsible for messages that can be so harmful for kids: in a 2011 study, the Girl Scout Research Institute found that 78 percent of girls who watch reality television believe that “gossiping is a normal part of a relationship between girls,” while only 54 percent of girls who do not watch reality TV agree.

In far too many documentaries and news stories, the blame for bullying has fallen squarely on the shoulders of parents, teachers, and school administrators, who are frequently accused of not taking enough preventative action. Big media companies need to also be held accountable for their role in fostering bullying behavior, and we must teach the basic media literacy concept of media as construction and an industry with a bottom line.

When watching reality television, ask your kids about what might have been left out, or how producers decide which portions of footage to use for a show. Talk to them about news, and why there is an entire industry devoted to reporting on celebrity gossip. Perhaps most importantly, ask them how they feel when they watch these shows. Moderating screen time is also a good step, as is being a positive role model—adults are not immune to hatertainment. Much like second-hand smoke has an indirect but powerful effect on our family’s health, hateful media also pollute homes in ways that may not be immediately recognizable. Yes, big media companies are powerful, but the real power lies in our own ability to filter their product.

Emily Long is Director of Communications and Development for The LAMP (Learning About Multimedia Project), a nonprofit organization bringing critical media fluency education to youth, parents and educators in New York City. For more on this subject, click here.


Additional Resources on Media Literacy

Center for Social Media at American University is an excellent place to learn more about public media, and especially the fair use of media.

Media Education Foundation is a nonprofit organization producing media and study guides to help people of all ages increase their media literacy skills.

Media Education Lab at Temple University is a great place to start learning more about media literacy.

ParentingTeensOnline is a great resource aimed specifically for parents of adolescents.

The Smart Television Alliance is a group of national nonprofit organizations committed to improving what children see on television. (Disclaimer: this site is funded by Tivo.)

Common Sense Media is a nonprofit that rates current movies and television shows based on content appropriate for a given age group.

The Media Literacy Clearinghouse is Frank W. Baker’s treasure trove of resources about K-12 media literacy and state education standards.

A look at the sad state of of Internet service in the Sandy hurricane zone ... six months later:

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I'm sitting in a high ceiling parlor in an aged brownstone at the E.9th Street Block Association meeting. People are telling me, somewhat muting their anger, that some have had no phone service since Sandy, October 28th 2012 ---- over 6 months, over half a year. Some had their service restored over the last month, only being out for about 5 months.

I’m in a roomful of people in the middle of Manhattan, New York City, and I can't believe my ears. I've been a telecom analyst for 31 years and thought I’d heard everything before - but this?

Mayor Bloomberg, with claims that New York City is a world center for technology announced his new campaign, “We Are Made in NY” in 2013, stating we’re “strengthening the city as a global hub for innovation.”

Being out of service is only one of the Manhattenites’ problems. Almost all of those without Verizon service have continued to be billed for services that THEY DO NOT RECEIVE.

But over the last few weeks we find that other places throughout the tri-state areas, such as Fire Island in New York or Mantoloking in New Jersey are simply being abandoned and Verizon telling customers that they're not fixing the copper and they are being offered wireless services.

What’s the problem – how could this be happening in America?

The problem started when Sandy took out Verizon’s network equipment and network wiring, including the copper wiring. Verizon decided that it wouldn’t replace its copper infrastructure since it’s being replaced with fiber optics as part of their FiOS deployment; fiber carries phone, broadband, Internet and cable television service.

So folks were told to go to FiOS, Verizon's fiber optic solution, except that some residences on the block aren’t even wired with FiOS yet so, for many, FiOS isn’t even an option. Others were offered a wireless substitute.

One woman said that she was a Verizon DSL and phone service customer and both were out since Sandy. (DSL uses the copper wires to offer broadband and Internet.) Verizon sent her a wireless box to use -- but the box didn't have Internet broadband connectivity. So it was not a substitute.

Moreover, as I explained, if she did decide to get the Verizon Wireless ‘Home Fusion' box, which is a wireless service to replace wired broadband, it would cost her extra since wireless broadband service has bandwidth caps.

DSL on copper lines costs about $40 a month and doesn't have the same caps. Thus, using Verizon’s Home Fusion wireless Internet service could cost hundreds of dollars extra a month.

Some of the group’s stories were of small businesses that lost income as they depended on their phone and fax lines for orders.

Forget the storm damage to their homes and lives; this was an ongoing telecom nightmare.

While some customer service representatives were nice and attempted to be helpful, others were not sympathetic and threatened disconnection, which means in Verizon internal customer jargon that the resident’s phone account would be permanently terminated and the customer would have to pay additional fees for reconnection.

Customers electing not to pay for no service – odd as this sounds -- ran the risk of losing long held phone numbers, and could even end up in collections, thus harming their credit rating, to boot. Verizon expects its customers to continue to keep their accounts open and pay for services, just for the privilege of keeping their phone number, avoiding reconnection fees and protecting credit ratings while still not receiving service.

Worse, after being on hold for hours, over the course of a few months; and spending days on the phone to fix problems, Verizon repeatedly misled almost all of them about when service would be restored.

As I pointed out during the meeting, the customer service staff is simply reading scripts and following procedures set by the company. Reps have little, if any control, over what would happen to service. But, what is clear is that the reps were not trained to solve these customers’ problems. Customer service reps claimed to have submitted an internal company ‘trouble ticket’ to fix the problem, which was then never acted on or resolved.

And as the meeting continued, I asked questions:

“Why didn't you just leave Verizon?” Because a number of them had been told by Verizon that service would fixed soon. One woman even had the dates on a piece of paper, which she handed out.

Why didn’t they go to the cable company? Some had cable in the area and it had service problems as well. Some didn’t know that the cable company even offered phone as a stand alone service. They certainly don’t advertise it. And some hated the cable company more than the phone company, though by this time it was clear they’d be hard pressed to pick which one was worse.

Moreover, like anything else – some people prefer Pepsi, some prefer Coke – but in this case, there isn’t a choice. There aren’t any other providers. Private companies have total, unregulated control over the wires. Now phone and cable companies have created a monopoly for Internet and even stand alone, local telephone service.

Competitors? One woman said she was going to go to Vonage but when I explained that it still required a broadband connection she was pissed. “Why didn’t they say that in their advertisement?”

Another problem is that wireless reception in the city can be problematic. A number of the people spoke of not being able to use mobile phones in their apartments or that it just didn’t sound as good. “I have to stand by my window and hold it just right.”

The Regulators and Politicians -- Shame on You.

Where's the state public utility commission in all of this? Where is the Mayor’s Office or the other politicians? Under state law customers are supposed to have their service repaired, even after a disaster. Being without service for almost 6 months is unconscionable.

In April 2012, the State Attorney General petitioned the New York State Board of Public Service to ”modify the Verizon Service Quality Improvement Plan” as the State had relaxed its quality of service requirements, an abdication of regulatory oversight which allowed the company to provide “below standard service to 92% of customers”.

As the AG wrote:

“Despite receiving this substantial deregulation of its service quality requirements, Verizon nevertheless failed to meet four repair service measurements in 2011, the first year of the plan. Moreover, by limiting the scope of Verizon’s performance measurements to the 8% of all New York customers defined as Core, the Commission allowed the company to provide below standard service to 92% of its customers with impunity.”

In January 2013, the State, after reviewing the AG’s complaint, issued a notice for comments claiming that “We find that Verizon’s service quality performance needs to be improved going forward, and to propose modifications to the existing regulatory regime”. Verizon’s response: “No modification of the Commission’s current regulatory framework is… necessary to ensure the continuing provision of high quality service by Verizon New York” and “requiring Verizon to implement those changes would be both unlawful and bad public policy.” And in February, 2013, Verizon has also filed for a waiver of any quality of service issues surrounding Sandy.

I need to stress -- this isn't some rural area or some mountain top. This is NEW YORK CITY.

One thing is clear – No one is tracking the problems experienced by un-connected customers. Each customer ends up having to deal individually with the phone companies, engaging in months long series of conversations without getting any resolution.

Meanwhile, the union guys we spoke to said that Verizon is ‘declining to fix the copper’ and that they’ve cut back staff so far that it’s hard for them to do the normal work.

Although, this is could be construed as typical, uncaring phone company behavior –I was surprised it was still a problem for such an unusual length of time. WNYC radio ran a story and developed a map showing areas of Manhattan where customers that were either still out of service or having problems post-Sandy. But this coverage was generated by only one radio station collecting data for Manhattan. In February, 2013, Huffington Post also ran something about small businesses also being out of service because of Sandy.

All of this also brings up an interesting question – Verizon has a cable franchise to have 100% of New York City upgraded to FiOS by July 2014. Did Verizon claim that these areas were already properly upgraded even though it’s clear that the deployment is spotty at best?

Or is this more sinister? Is Verizon, instead of dealing with emergency outages, waiting to give these people a FiOS option in New York – and not repairing these customers’s lines which are copper

Stay Tuned -- This article and the unserved resident’s letter will be sent to every official until service is restored.

A Foreboding Glimpse into Your Future Communications Service.

I’ve written about AT&T and Verizon’s plans to turn half of the country into digital dead zones, -- where there are no requirements to fix phone lines or upgrade them. We’re not talking sparsely populated rural areas. I’m predicting that people throughout the entire U.S of A will be impacted by rogue telecom companies.

In state after state, Verizon, AT&T and Centurylink, working with the American Legislative Exchange Council, (ALEC) are attempting to remove any oversight by the public utility commissions—their goal is to eliminate requirements for quality of service, or worse, remove any obligations to provide service to people who have no communications carriers at all. Twenty six states have passed ALEC-based bills, gutting customer protections (though it varies in degree, state by state)

On the federal level, AT&T petitioned the FCC, using the same ALEC-based principles, to close down whole areas of their 22 state territories.

Besides this legislative maneuvering to eliminate government guarantees that everyone is able to communicate, Verizon and AT&T have announced that they are going to stop maintaining copper wire plant, even though AT&T’s entire 22 state U-Verse is based on copper wires;

Verizon has stopped upgrading FiOS – so entire areas of the country will not be upgraded All this denial of landline service has a subplot, which is to push customers onto purchasing exorbitantly, expensive, usage priced wireless services. What this means is that American’s ability to speak and communicate in the 21st Century will depend exclusively on how much money people have.

Fire Island, in New York, which got hit heavily by the storm, has been told that Verizon is going to abandon their copper wire plant, and will not deploy FiOS. Instead all of Fire Island will be forced to use wireless networks.

The irony in New York is that all of these wired customers received multiple rate increases for upgrades to the utility plant over the last two decades. In June 2009 the NY State Department of Public Service specifically points out that the ‘fiber optic’ services are being paid for by rate increases.

“We are always concerned about the impacts on ratepayers of any rate increase, especially in times of economic stress,” said Commission Chairman Garry Brown. “Nevertheless, there are certain increases in Verizon’s costs that have to be recognized. This is especially important given the magnitude of the company's capital investment program, including its massive deployment of fiber optics in New York. We encourage Verizon to make appropriate investments in New York, and these minor rate increases will allow those investments to continue.”

And, as we’ve written, almost every state had requirements to upgrade telecommunications networks as customers paid for these upgrades. In New Jersey, Verizon was required, by law, to have 100% of the state upgraded with a fiber optic service capable of 45 Mbps in both directions and completed by 2010. Two small communities, Greenwich and Stow Creek, complained and the State issued a ‘show cause order’ to explain why they were not upgraded, and why even their basic phone service had quality of service issues.

And in New Jersey, Verizon appears to be doing the same thing as Fire Island and has decided to not fix the Sandy damage of Mantoloking but give them a wireless substitute. They, too, never got FiOS or upgraded.

The writing is on the wall. What’s happening in New York City to these customers is a failure of the entire telecommunications regulatory system to care about customers. It’s going to get worse if the FCC and states continue to favor Verizon, AT&T et al over those they are supposed to be serving and who are paying for the companies capital investments.

Let these customers’ stories of people who are still waiting for service for six months be a clarion call to reverse direction and bring back real competition, quality of service requirements, and to make sure someone is not only watching but holding our communications companies responsible to their customers – you, your family and your business.

One day you may wake up to find your service not working. Don’t say we didn’t warn you.

A sharp critique of President Obama's appointment of former telecom lobbyist Tom Wheeler as FCC Chair by former FCC commissioner Nicholas Johnson, who served from 1966-1973 and was appointed by Lyndon Johnson. From Canada's Real News Network.

Kaiser archivist Lincoln Cushing sends this story about KFOG and Kaiser: once an owner and now a sponsor. A little Bay Area radio history on the album rock station of many people's youths.

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Radio listeners in the San Francisco Bay Area can tune into KFOG-FM every Friday evening beginning at 6 for Kaiser Permanente-sponsored Thrive Time, a commercial-free hour intended “to take the stress out of your Friday commute.” They can also enjoy “Acoustic Sunrise” on Sunday mornings for more Thriving goodness.

Thrive Time seems like a great new pop culture connection for Kaiser Permanente; in fact, the Health Plan’s link with KFOG (104.5) was first forged a half century ago.

Although Henry J. Kaiser’s longest-lasting legacy is Kaiser Permanente, he was at the helm of a giant complex of industries from the late 1930s until his death in 1967. That empire included the Kaiser Broadcasting Corporation, which developed a string of radio and TV stations starting in 1957 with KHVH-TV 13 and KHVH AM 1040 in Honolulu.


Kaiser Broadcasting studios in San Francisco.

The Hawaii stations were built from scratch at Henry J. Kaiser’s Hawaiian Village Hotel, thus the “HVH” in the call signs. The next year Kaiser Broadcasting dropped KHVH-TV to buy KULA-TV 4, which was an ABC affiliate and included extended island service through Maui’s KMVI-TV, channel 12.

Kaiser begins in SF Bay Area in 1963
Kaiser’s media ownership in the San Francisco Bay Area, Kaiser Permanente’s initial home base, began when the broadcasting corporation acquired the former KBAY radio station and renamed it KFOG.

On March 1, 1963, with its foghorn blaring, KFOG hit the airwaves with a soothing format consisting of soft middle-of-the road music during the day and periods of block programming at night aimed at particular audiences.


Pete Taylor, KFOG-FM, head disc jockey in the 1960s. Kaiser Permanente Heritage Resources Archives photo.

Dick Block was Kaiser Broadcasting’s vice president and general manager, and Pete Taylor was the head disc jockey. Taylor left for Boston in 1966 to work at Kaiser-owned WJIB-FM radio station, which had a format similar to KFOG’s and WCAS-AM, a “hyper-local” station serving the Boston-area communities of Watertown, Cambridge, Arlington, and Somerville.

In 1975 Kaiser Broadcasting sold KFOG and Boston radio station WJIB to General Electric. The sale of the two stations set a record, estimated at well over $2 million.

UHF approval broadens TV markets
In the early 1960s, Kaiser took advantage of a new wave of television broadcasting.

During the first decade of television, TV sets only received VHF (very-high frequency band) signals, and the existing airwaves became saturated with stations. The Federal Communications Commission recognized the problem and endorsed legislation to broaden TV broadcasting to include UHF (ultra-high frequency band).

“We have concluded that the public interest clearly requires expanded use of the 70 UHF channels for television broadcasting; receiver incompatibility is a major factor inhibiting such expanded use,” the FCC stated in a letter to the House of Representatives. “. . . we have earnestly recommended enactment of this legislation as being of utmost importance to the national welfare.”[i]

In 1962, Congress passed House Bill 8031, the All-Channel Receiver Act, which required TV manufacturers to equip new sets to receive UHF channels. UHF was a major breakthrough in expanding television access.

An internal Kaiser Broadcasting film explained the challenge – and opportunity – this way:

“In 1962 only 15 American cities have more than three TV stations . . . At Kaiser world headquarters the passage of the All-Channel Bill set a plan into motion that (will) result in one of the largest programs for the construction and operation of new TV stations in the history of the industry.”[ii]

Kaiser Broadcasting expands reach across nation
Under Dick Block, Kaiser Broadcasting’s first mainland television foray involved licenses for the newly-opened UHF market. The corporation started two UHF stations in 1965 – WKBD-TV in Detroit and WKBS-TV in Philadelphia.

In the next three years, Kaiser’s corporation added television stations in Los Angeles, KBSC, and Cleveland, WKBF, and radio and television stations in Boston, WKBG, and San Francisco, KBHK, channel 44, which originally carried the KHJK moniker that reflected Henry Kaiser’s initials.[iii]

Chicago came into the fold in 1974 when Field Communications partnered with Kaiser to create WFLD-TV. In most markets, Kaiser Broadcasting was among the first to start an independent station; the Bay Area was the exception. By this time the corporation’s holdings included seven TV stations - San Francisco, Los Angeles, Boston, Detroit, Cleveland, Philadelphia, and Chicago.

When Kaiser Industries split up in 1977, all the media holdings were liquidated as part of what was described as “the largest voluntary corporate dismantling in U.S. history.”[iv]

Today, KFOG listeners can request via email a song that makes them feel good – in keeping with the Kaiser Permanente advertising “Thrive” campaign. The station selects one suggested song and plays it along with similar music during the commercial-free hours.

The Kaiser Broadcasting Corporation no longer exists, but the current Kaiser Permanente-KFOG connection restores a link established 50 years ago.

Enjoy this fun article on a pioneer in low-power formerly "pirate" radio from the Illinois Times.

*****

Mbanna Kantako is on a roll.

From his rental house just off North Grand Avenue in Enos Park, the 54-year-old blind man talks about the advent of spring and the need to till the soil. He speaks of pollution, the Great Spirit, expectations that people gain responsibility with age and the Boston Marathon bombing, not knowing how many people might be listening via a radio signal that covers just a tiny portion of the city.

“You know the government set this shit up,” he intones. “It’s the government. They the ones that did 9/11. They the ones that did the Oklahoma City bombing. You have every reason not to believe what the government says.”

The program segment Kantako calls Notes On The Devil’s News continues with a tape of Springfield police tasing a pregnant woman in the parking lot, a recent in-broad-daylight incident that police say was justified because the woman had inserted herself into a physical altercation between an officer and her boyfriend while a bystander videotaped everything. Then it’s back to the bombing.

“And you’re going to believe what happened in Boston?” he asks sarcastically at the conclusion of the tasing tape. “You’re out of your damn mind. For real, these devils have issues.”

Moving right along, Kantako delves robotic surgery, which some say is no improvement over work performed by human surgeons and might actually be worse in some circumstances.

“Ain’t no medicine better than the Lord,” Kantako says.

In the space of less than 15 minutes, Kantako covers all of this and more in stream-of-consciousness style. He doesn’t sound a bit winded. He’s been doing this more than quarter-century, and this broadcast last Saturday marks his 8,697th show “from the criminal enterprise that is Springfield, Illinois, located in the criminal enterprise that is the United States.” Or so says Kantako from the far end of your FM dial, much to the consternation of the Federal Communications Commission that wants him to get a license or shut up. The signal reaches barely a mile. By the time you travel south to city hall or the federal building or downtown law firms, it fades considerably. In more ways than one.

“Is he still around?” asks Bruce Stratton, an attorney and former Kantako nemesis who knew the man decades ago when he was still known by his birth name, Dewayne Readus. “I haven’t thought about him for years. Mostly, I remember that he was some kind of activist.”

Indeed.

Back in the day, Kantako was a fixture in the pages of the State Journal-Register and a leading figure in the long-since-demolished John Hay Homes, where the city’s black population was concentrated in a crumbling 600-unit public housing project. He had a zest for organizing, and if he didn’t always get his way, the activist who became a broadcaster certainly made a lot of noise.

Nearly 30 years ago, he pushed for the Springfield School District to bus children from the Hay Homes to school instead of making them walk. He was a controversial figure even within the projects, where he formed the John Hay Tenants Rights Association after resigning from the existing resident council over a spat about the busing issue. Some resident council leaders thought him too radical.

He fought against both sides in the late 1980s when the city, after being sued under the federal Voting Rights Act, reluctantly changed its form of government, establishing 10 wards and replacing commissioners with aldermen to help ensure black representation on the city council. He led marches to protest police brutality. He was a constant at Springfield Housing Authority board meetings when Stratton was board chairman.

“He would have banners and placards,” Stratton recalls. “There was one large one I wish I’d kept. It was a placard with a picture of me dressed up as some sort of banana republic dictator. It was really well done. In many ways, he was kind of the perfect activist and the perfect advocate. He could get a lot of attention and yet he was a really nice guy.”

Engaging. Charming. Pleasant. Not the sort of adjectives one would expect from a man whom Kantako painted as the enemy. But Stratton says that Kantako never got under his skin. He remembers off-the-record conversations outside the limelight when Kantako would outline plans for future protests and ask for thoughts.

“He just infuriated lots of people,” Stratton says. “I wasn’t among them. I liked the guy. I really did.”

Black, poor and blind

For an archetypical angry black man, Mbanna Kantako is a great conversationalist.

He easily recalls his childhood, saying he can remember the car ride up from Memphis where he was born to Springfield when he was less than three years old in the early 1960s. He has five brothers, ten sisters and no clue as to why his family ended up here.

“I think a lot of people really believe in that Lincoln stuff, and I think that might have been why,” he guesses. “Nobody in my family has ever made it clear why they chose Springfield. Maybe someone got paroled here. I don’t know. It doesn’t seem like it makes a lot of sense to stop here.”

Kantako was nine when he transferred from Springfield public schools to the Illinois School for the Visually Impaired in Jacksonville. He could still see, but just barely, owing to congenital glaucoma. But he knew black from white. His first day at the school for the blind, he befriended a student from Collinsville. Both Cardinals fans, they were swapping baseball cards at bedtime when he heard a staff member outside the room say that his new friend’s father wouldn’t appreciate his son being in the same room with a nigger.

“Nine years old, night time, you know – it was a hell of a thing to think about,” Kantako says. “I think I was about the nicest cat they’d probably ever met the next morning. I didn’t want to piss off nobody. There was nothing I could do. I couldn’t run home.”

Kantako became an athlete at the Jacksonville school, setting a national record in the high jump by clearing five-foot-eight-inches with a two-step approach. He also wrestled at 112 pounds. Initially, he professes that there was nothing he liked about being a wrestler, having to spend hours in the gym while his friends goofed off. He is not convincing.

“It really helped me shape my attitude about different things,” he allows. “It had a big influence on me. … There’s a confidence I think it gives you. Once you get a joker in your hands, your hands are like your eyes. You can tell by grabbing a person by the wrist what’s going on – you grab them by the arm, you can tell, once you learn a few techniques. That was, in fact, my way of evening the playing field with the sighted world. OK, you can outrun me, you can definitely outdrive me, but let’s go to the ground. Let’s see what we can do down here.”

After graduation, Kantako returned to Springfield. He studied computers at Lincoln Land Community College, then switched to courses aimed at becoming a probation officer, a short-lived plan that ended, he says, when he was beaten by police and lost his remaining eyesight. He next tried communications, but the classes didn’t make sense.

“I went out there (to Lincoln Land) and they were trying to make me listen to Beethoven and shit,” he says. “I didn’t feel that was very important for me to be learning that stuff. That’s when I drifted away from school.”

He was young, living in the projects and very much sure of himself. He DJ’d at parties and rapped a bit: Reagan economics won’t you stand aside/Because there’s unemployed people trying to stay alive. His first brush with political activism was born from ulterior motive: One of his sisters had promised him $2 if he would attend a neighborhood meeting at the Hay Homes the night before a city council meeting. He doesn’t recall the issue.

“I’ll be honest with you: I went to get $2 so I could get me a beer,” Kantako recalls. “And she wouldn’t give me the $2 until the meeting was over. I was just agreeing with everything to get the meeting over – ‘Oh, yeah, that’s a great idea, that’s a good idea, sounds good to me.’ Finally, one of the older ladies there who was a real good friend of my mom said to me ‘Wayne, you know how to talk on the microphone, you-all go with us.’”

The thirsty young man agreed, having no intention of actually following through, but he was in the audience at the next day’s city council meeting. He says he went because he didn’t want his mother to find out that he hadn’t kept a promise. He didn’t plan on going back.

“I heard the way the mayor was talking to people – Mike Houston, he’s the same mayor today,” Kantako recalls. “He’s crazy. He was just talking down to these people like they was stupid and shit like that, you know. I guess that’s when my time in the gym kind of got to me. In the gym, you just don’t do that. You’ve got someone that’s on your level, bang with him. But he was just tossing up weak people. So I got up and said something to him. He started off the same way with me. So I just said, ‘First of all, I’m not your nigger.’”

For Kantako, it was a point of no return, even if Houston today says that he doesn’t recall ever talking to the man who became the face of black radicalism in Springfield. The mayor, however, does recall the man.

“He was against whatever we were doing,” Houston says.

Exactly right.

A proud rabble rouser

Springfield was deeply torn as Kantako turned radical during the Reagan Revolution.

The city gained national attention when a lawsuit filed under the federal Voting Rights Act, the first of its kind north of the Mason-Dixon Line, sought to change the form of government in a town where no black had been elected to the city council for 75 years. The case laid bare backroom dealings in a place where Democratic and Republican leaders agreed on who should run for mayor and how jobs should be filled. Blacks had no chance.

At first, Kantako tried working within the system, running for Democratic precinct committeeman. He lost, and badly. He says the election was rigged.

“I went over to the Democratic headquarters that night, Dick Durbin was there,” Kantako says. “He comes over to me and says ‘Are you ready to play?’ Me, being a little cocky fool, I said, ‘Play? Man, we got the votes. We don’t play with you motherfuckers.’ Shit, I got fifth place.”

After that, Kantako and others who supported his views began picketing polling places, urging blacks to boycott elections and passing out fliers headlined, “Have You Ever Felt More Like A Nigger?” The voting rights lawsuit, he decided, was a “pacification program.” The plaintiffs were educated black males, not anyone who represented the average Springfield black resident. And so Kantako became a thorn, intent on embarrassing the powers that be by any means necessary.

He came to relish city council meetings and led protestors from the Hay Homes to 26 consecutive council meetings, recalls Michael Townsend, a retired University of Illinois Springfield professor of social work.

“It was absolutely amazing that he could get anyone to go down there,” Townsend says. “Trying to organize anyone in public housing is practically an impossible task.”

Townsend recalls Kantako once sitting a four-year-old girl in the front row of a council meeting with a sign reading “Pat Ward Is A Big Fat Slob,” right in front of Ward, who served on the council as the city’s public safety commissioner. Kantako smiles at the memory.

“It became a game with us,” Kantako says. “We would ask (former Mayor Ossie) Langfelder if racism was a mortal or venal sin. … After awhile, it got to be fun to go down there and send the streets commissioner up, make him jump up and slam his shit down on the table. Boy, they would get so mad.”

The point, he says, was to prove that city fathers had clay feet.

“I wanted to show people that they weren’t like the Wizard of Oz – people go down there and they’re like, ‘These guys breathe fire and shit,’” Kantako says. “I wanted to show them that they’re not that tough.”

So far as Kantako was concerned, neither the plaintiffs nor the defendants in the voting rights lawsuit had the best interests of black people in mind and so he skewered both sides. His vitriol for James and Don Craven, the father-and-son legal team that handled the voting-rights case for the plaintiffs, matches his disdain for Houston.

The printer who created the fliers with the n-word had charged a considerable amount, Kantako says, and an old copying machine at the Craven law office represented a chance to save money in the future. A new machine was being delivered, with the vendor offering the Cravens a $100 discount if they turned in the old one, recalls Kantako, who initially supported the lawsuit and was attending meetings with the plaintiffs at the law office. He says that he and his supporters offered to buy the old machine for $100.

“They wouldn’t give us that machine for nothing in the world,” Kantako says. “That’s when the shit hit the fan, right there. I went from East Side activist family man to radical, all that shit. After that copying machine thing, we just broke off from everything.”

Don Craven says he doesn’t remember anything about a copying machine, nor does his father.

“Trust me on that,” Craven says. “But if it was that event that propelled him into his activist-radical days, I am proud to have been a part of it.”

Going live

The idea for a do-it-yourself radio station generated with Townsend, who suggested that Kantako start an underground newspaper.

“I can’t read, first of all, so I’m not very enthusiastic about it,” Kantako says. “Half the people I know can’t read, so that was just not viable.”

Given his experience as a DJ, Kantako decided a radio station would be better than a newspaper, so, with Townsend’s help, he got a mail-order transmitter for a few hundred bucks and plugged in. Some money for equipment came from the Catholic church, which had given a grant to the tenants rights association.

They could not have picked a better time than the fall of 1987.

With a substantial percentage of the city’s black population clustered in the Hay Homes, Kantako’s audience was within reach of the tiny transmitter. There were few, if any, radio stations that catered to a black audience, and certainly none that played uncensored songs by Ice T, NWA, Public Enemy and other then-controversial hip-hop groups that spiced messages of defiance with plenty of four-letter words. Over-the-air television with just a few stations was still dominant, and there was no Internet. And so Kantako’s pirate radio station became popular in the projects as much for jams that couldn’t be heard anywhere else as for the political proselytizing.

It wasn’t long before Kantako was in the headlines for a new reason.

Shortly after Kantako took to the airwaves, Springfield police complained to the Federal Communications Commission. They insisted they weren’t motivated by Kantako’s near-constant criticism and use of the word “pigs.” Rather, they were simply passing along complaints from citizens upset by naughty words.

“There were people in the Hay Homes complaining about him,” recalls former police chief Mike Walton, who now works for the Sangamon County sheriff’s office. “It’s his right to broadcast. He just shouldn’t use language that’s not acceptable to children.”

In 1989, police and an FCC official paid a visit and ordered him to unplug. He did, but only for a week. Then he sent a statement to the press and invited reporters to attend the reopening of his radio station.

“Mr. Readus will make a statement to the press and will respond to questions prior to his being taken into police custody,” reads the press release typed on tenants rights association stationary.

After speaking to reporters, Kantako went back on the air and called police, with a tape recorder rolling. Come and arrest me, he told an officer. He was put on hold, then told that local police didn’t have jurisdiction over violations of federal law. So he went to the federal building and tried to surrender himself, but no one was interested in locking him up. He has been daring authorities to arrest him ever since.

“On several occasions, I’ve tried to set them up, but they won’t go for it – ‘Nah, you have a nice day, sir,’” says Kantako, who dropped his birth name in the early 1990s and made it official by having a judge sign paperwork in 2003.

A letter campaign aimed at building support after his first confrontation with the FCC met with mixed results. The NAACP said no thanks, as did Bill Cosby. Noam Chomsky, however, provided advice and wrote a check for $50. The Catholic church held back the final check of a grant awarded to the tenants rights association after expressing concerns about illegal broadcasts.

But Kantako became a darling of the underground, with articles appearing in alternative newspapers as far away as Germany. Major newspapers such as the Los Angeles Times and the St. Louis Post-Dispatch sent reporters to Springfield to write about the blind man who defied the FCC and proved an inspiration to other pirate radio broadcasters throughout the nation. Pump Up The Volume, a 1990 movie starring Christian Slater as a high school student who starts his own radio station, fueled interest, and there were mentions of Kantako in Playboy, Spin, Mother Jones and The Utne Reader. He even made mainstream airwaves with a segment on All Things Considered broadcast on National Public Radio. Dozens of people around the country wrote letters voicing support and asking Kantako for advice on how to set up pirate radio stations.

“He started a whole movement that’s never been acknowledged or recognized in Springfield,” Townsend said.

He has proven unstoppable. Federal agents seized his equipment in 2000 after air traffic controllers at Abraham Lincoln Capital Airport said that his signals were reaching pilots who could, potentially, believe that Kantako was providing directions. No planes fell from the sky, however, and Kantako has refused to pay fines levied by the FCC.

Interest and controversy has faded with the advent of the Internet. Now, anyone with a laptop can say most anything they want, and the message goes considerably farther than a mile or so. But there are still sprouts of celebrity in unexpected places. In 2011, a Danish hip-hop group with anarchist appeal released Viva Kantako Destroy Sony, an album anchored by a track called “Mbanna Kantako Radio” that features clips from Kantako broadcasts.

While pirate radio might seem a throwback, Kantako isn’t about to quit. Perhaps he is stubborn – he and his wife were, after all, the last people to move out of the Hay Homes before they were demolished in 1997.

Has he made a difference?

That’s hard to measure, Stratton says. It is hard to point out a concrete accomplishment, the former housing authority board chairman says, but Kantako raised awareness about important issues.

“I think he was effective in that,” Stratton allows.

Kantako wouldn’t necessarily disagree. We’re better off than we were 25 years ago, he says – if nothing else, people today cannot hide from the truth, and he hopes that he has helped educate people.

“I think we’re better off because that gives us a chance to get our act together,” he states.

Kantako still gets threatening letters from the FCC, most recently in 2011. But he is most proud of a 2000 restraining order signed by former U.S. District Court Judge Jeanne Scott, who commanded him to get a license or get off the air. He has it framed, hanging at the entrance to his living room.

“It says I will ‘cause immediate and irreparable damage to the United States,’” Kantako says. “I thought that was so cool.”

Actor Ed Asner weighs in on the loss of public access in television in Los Angeles in this video by the Full Disclosure Network.

What connects Al-Jazeera and Chicago Public Media? This essay by Chicago Media Action Co-founder Scott Sanders connects dots between the uproar after CPM cancelled the Cornel/West show, the incoming Al-Jazeera America network and what all this means about the state of US public media.

**

Thousands of jubilant news professionals are tossing their hats into the air and their resumes into Al Jazeera’s inbox because Al Jazeera America, a new international cable news channel, is launching this summer. But while they celebrate, Tavis Smiley, Cornel West and Amy Goodman call for a democratic revolution to transform public media.

The new channel is the result of the $500 million sale of Current TV and its 40 million U.S. cable households to the Emir of Qatar, a fossil-fuel monarch who also controls a $100 billion “sovereign wealth fund”. Current TV co-founder Al Gore engineered the deal, and has been its main cheerleader in media interviews {39:30 - 42:30} lately. But Tony Burman, the previous head of Al Jazeera English, Al Jazeera America’s model, cautions us to understand that the elite who fund the network also control it to their benefit: “My sense of Al Jazeera today is that it is becoming a more ‘top-down,’ centrally driven news operation than ever before. All news programs and most editorial decisions now come out of Qatar.”

That’s funny. Not too long ago, Tavis Smiley voiced something similar about another award-winning, public service news outlet -- WBEZ Chicago Public Media: “Something is wrong when even public media has become the playground of the 1%, when public media has become a wholly owned subsidiary of the 1% rather than speaking to the trouble and travail and tribulation of the 99.” Smiley was speaking at a media and democracy forum entitled “Poverty, Power, and the Public Airwaves: Post-election analysis and commentary from Tavis Smiley, Cornel West & Amy Goodman in Chicago". The event came about as a result of public opposition to WBEZ’s decision to cease airings of “Smiley & West”, perhaps the only program consistently advocating for the poor and marginalized on over 70 public radio stations. A few scattered stations had dropped the show previously. The controversy mushroomed when Smiley responded to WBEZ and CEO Torey Malatia in turn called the show “crap”.

WBEZ’s decisions forced “Smiley & West” onto two local commercial niche stations with a combined average audience one third smaller than WBEZ’s. How should this be interpreted by marginalized groups the station is supposed to serve? Smiley declared, “(I)t is easier for an African American to be president of the United States than it is to host a primetime radio program on Chicago Public Radio.” In classic Orwellian newspeak, WBEZ claimed it was acting in the interest of “inclusiveness”. (See also Steve Rendall, Feb. 2013 FAIR “Extra!”, [subscription required].) This type of thing is old news to WBEZ; Malatia was also in charge back in 2003 when Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting cited WBEZ for having no daytime weekday programs with non-white hosts. Similarly, how ought WBEZ’s purchase of WRTE-FM, the only low power Latino radio station in the Chicago area, be understood?

In fact, Congress founded both PBS and NPR via legislative acts in response to a famous 1967 Carnegie Commission report that called for broadcasting service to "provide a voice for groups in the community that may otherwise be unheard” and “help us see America whole in all its diversity.” Current TV spokespersons recently claimed that Al Jazeera would also follow that path, “Al Jazeera shares Current TV's mission to give voice to those who are not typically heard, to speak truth to power, to provide independent and diverse points of view.”

Al Jazeera and WBEZ are guided by lofty ideals, but only sometimes. What can be done to hold them to account to those ideals? I took a closer look at both WBEZ Chicago Public Media and Al Jazeera America and what I found confirms the need for an in-depth examination of the governance of U.S. public media -- and the need for a wide distribution of the findings.

How is Al Jazeera funded and controlled? Qatar is the host of immense natural gas reserves, much U.S. investment, and key forward U.S. military bases. It is best not to view Qatar as a country with a government, but instead as a royal family’s business interests and a massive guest worker program; the “sovereign wealth fund” includes the Treasury. Qatar provides very little public data on the finances and governance of the privately held corporate parent Al Jazeera Media Network and its 20 or so channels. Al Jazeera’s news channels air very few ads and that is a BIG problem for the U.S. cable distributors and Al Jazeera America -- even though these same cable companies pass domestic public tv through their wires without feeling the need to interrupt programming. Al Jazeera says “the plan is to work quickly toward a self-sustaining business model.” In a little-reported 2011 decree, the Emir said Al Jazeera Network, a public institution, would become Al Jazeera Media Network, “a private institution of public utility”. That year, its advisory "International Board of Visitors" consisted of a range of professional journalists and a few financial and political elites with media ties, but no representatives of working or low-income persons or other marginalized groups. The network’s current director-general is a member of the country's royal family and has no background in journalism.

What do those knowledgeable about news and propaganda think about the new Al Jazeera? Adel Iskandar, Georgetown University lecturer and co-author of the book “Al-jazeera: The Story of the Network that is Rattling Governments and Redefining Modern Journalism” said, “The Al Jazeera of 2010 is not the Al Jazeera of 2013… We’ve seen the departure of various people at the network who claim that it no longer practices independent journalism.” Former BBC reporter Ali Hashem resigned his post at Al Jazeera Arabic saying, “The Qataris… are forcing Al Jazeera to commit suicide.” Tellingly, Iraq invasion co-architect and former U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld told David Frost on Al Jazeera English in September of 2011 that he was “delighted” by the new Al Jazeera.

Today’s Al Jazeera English is basically like some previous version of the mediocre and flawed CNN but with more emphasis on the global south. U.S embassy cables released by Wikileaks say the U.S. Embassy in Doha, Qatar and officials from Washington have been using a variety of direct and indirect methods to increase Al Jazeera’s compliance. Perhaps surprising to advocates of impartial professional journalism, the primary tool to restrain critical reporting on the Qatar network is repeated monitoring and training.

In Maximilian C. Fortes’ in-depth article “Al Jazeera and U.S. Foreign Policy: What WikiLeaks' U.S. Embassy Cables Reveal about U.S. Pressure and Propaganda”, Fortes explains how journalism’s professional norms are used to block and obfuscate the truth: "When it comes to the substance of U.S. relations with Al Jazeera, the questions that should come to mind are: What does responsible mean? Responsible for what? Responsible to whom? What is balance, and how is the truth balanced when the idea itself implies that something else must be a lie? Why is balance important, when airing long-suppressed & regularly marginalized voices? What is objectivity, when one is subject to pressure and made to fear for his/her career? What is professionalism and why does it always seemingly resolve to a default position of not upsetting the status quo?" (For more concerning these questions, see also James E. Owens, master’s dissertation, University of Illinois at Chicago, 2008.)

Closer to home, WBEZ Chicago Public Media, like Al Jazeera, also relies on claims of professionalism to discipline journalists and police the politics it broadcasts.

In late September of 2012, deep in the election season, WBEZ cancelled “Smiley & West” without bothering to call Smiley to talk about it first. Station officials cited ratings as a cause but argued, “more importantly, the show had developed much more of an ‘advocacy’ identity” and on this point, station CEO Malatia compared “Smiley & West” to the Pacifica Radio program “Democracy Now!” -- a daily independent broadcast news and discussion show hosted by Amy Goodman that airs on over a thousand public and community stations. Malatia then also compared “Democracy Now!” to “The Rush Limbaugh Show”, a choice that lead to a sharp public response by the democratically-elected Pacifica radio governing board.

When WBEZ first announced the cancellation, I created the Facebook page, “Smiley & West dumped by WBEZ Chicago Public Media: Take Action." That page contributed to public pressure and discussion of the events. Smiley publicly addressed that discussion in his uncompromising open letter to Malatia. Smiley’s letter charged that there are systemic problems at U.S. public media’s core, particularly regarding problems with race and class exclusions on station governing boards. In the face of this growing public criticism, Malatia called the Smiley & West show, “crap.” The growing public debate won mainstream and independent news coverage, adding to interest in the November 8th forum at Northwestern University Law School's Thorne Auditorium. Over “a thooouusand” (as Amy Goodman might intone) attended. Including this writer.

In the lead up to the Chicago event, mainstream media provided space rarely accorded to question the politics shaping public media. For example, the Tribune Company-owned WGN-TV and WGN-AM interviewed Smiley. On WGN-AM, he stated: “There’s an orthodoxy even inside public radio. . . I've had to fight an uphill battle in public radio trying to. . . create a democratic space for some ideological diversity and some ethnic diversity." Similarly, in Current, the magazine for public media professionals, Smiley asked: "How can people organize to ensure that public media outlets like WBEZ are responsible, representative, and responsive?. . . How do we ensure that the public media treats our airwaves as the vital resource that they are?”

At the public forum, Smiley called Chicago “ground zero” in the fight for democratic accountability over public media. He also joined West and Goodman to call for grassroots action to democratically transform public media right now. "We ain't got but a couple of years. . . to let our voices be heard and I don't want us to wait too long to figure that out. . . Public media is going to have to be pushed. . . [Y]ou can get a conversation started about how we democratize and bring some diversity to public media."

Goodman made it clear that the role of an active public is necessary to win programming that challenges corporate and political power. "These are your public airwaves and you have a right to determine how they're used. . . What are you going to do about it?” Goodman also pointed out that corporate employed or funded professional stations depend on and enable their corporate backers. Later that same night on PBS Goodman stated, “I can’t think of a greater group of advocacy journalists than those in the corporate media."

"John Dewey [said] Show me a democracy that has a impoverished public life and I'll show you one that is dominated by oligarchs and plutocrats driven by profit maximization,” said Cornel West as he connected the problem of elite control of media to the crippling of democracy, “There's no way. . . we’ll ever be able to reinvigorate and rejuvenate our public life unless we have (as Socrates told us) Parrhesia. Parrhesia is fearless speech, plain speech, frank speech, unintimidated speech. . . There’s too much mendacity and lyin' going on in the corporate, truncated, multiplex.” West made it clear

that the fight over media is not merely over truth but over a fundamental recognition of the right of people outside of elite circles to shape media to defend their legitimacy as democratic actors and their material interests in social life: “We need a revolutionary change that shifts from the power of oligarchs to the power of everyday people. And you do that democratically, step by step."

The citation of John Dewey is strikingly appropriate. His scholarship recognized that participation in communication and education are necessary to create and keep a vibrant democratic commons. In Chicago, as elsewhere, the commons of public media and public education are besieged as never before by an epidemic of corporate engineered privatization. Part of that attack is to de-legitimize any role of regular people in shaping the media and education systems that they rely on. West and Goodman gave shout-outs to the Chicago Teachers Union and its President Karen Lewis, who was in attendance. The CTU is organized using direct democratic practices and pursues the return to public election of the Trustees of the Chicago Board of Education, a franchise lost over fifteen years ago.

In my observation, journalists at WBEZ rarely initiated discussion of public school governance. WBEZ coverage seemed to find the notion that regular people could participate in shaping public policies unthinkable (or insulting). In fact, the public also has no direct say in the selection of WBEZ Chicago Public Media’s Trustees.

The late comedian and social critic George Carlin argued that the singular reason that education and journalism suffers is that an educated critical populace is what the rich corporate elites simply do not want: “The big wealthy business interests that control things and make all the important decisions. . . they own all the big media companies, so they control just about all of the news and information you get to hear. They got you by the balls. . . They don’t want well informed, well educated people capable of critical thinking. They’re not interested in that. That doesn’t help them. That’s against their interests.”

The “Smiley & West” incident in Chicago created a ruckus in corporate and independent media and new public discussions emerged outside traditional media that put the public media establishment on notice. But the incident failed to create some kind of member or publicly elected WBEZ governing Board. Nor did we see the birth of a mass movement to create such a body or win the right to participate in shaping the media we need to defend other public treasures, like our schools. The fact that Smiley, West, and Goodman called for such a revolution was hardly noticed by the broader debate in alternative or mainstream media. But such a revolution is what is needed to create the public commons.

Almost every other model to "save journalism" fails to interrogate professional claims of impartiality and winds up reproducing the old chain of command that separates disadvantaged communities -- people of color, the poor and working classes, political dissidents, LGBT communities, and other groups -- from decision making. Synergizing community and other public media producers into a new, publicly controlled, radically reorganized, public media system could enable social justice movements to change social conditions for the better.

At the November 8th event, I asked a certain famous Chicago advocate for community controlled public education, reparations, the late Mayor Harold Washington, and fancy hats, if she thought most average people believe that the Trustees on the boards of large public media outlets are all friendly and nice -- like Big Bird. She said she wasn't sure. Had I asked her if she thinks the average person knows the rules by which these Trustees make decisions, she might have offered the same response. We need to expose those rules so that people understand the means by which the rich corporate class controls the development and content of public broadcast systems and in-progress digital public online networks. The shape, and politics, of those networks will be powerfully affected by the National Broadband Plan (NBP).

The force of federal law, through the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA), mandates the NBP to provide for the transformation of the 20th-century U.S. public broadcasting system into a digital public media network, ubiquitous in access, promoting innovation, competition, and free expression, and supporting the growth of accountability journalism. Subsidies for a variety of anchor institutions and other community-based entities are actually crucial for reaching these NBP goals. But, with scarce exception (i.e. stations controlled by local tribal governments and the five Pacifica radio stations), the recipients of these Corporation for Public Broadcasting subsidies charged with the creation of those networks are not grassroots community anchor institutions and they are not led by the principles of direct democracy. The governing boards of the CPB stations will make the decisions and set the conditions under which community organizations get to participate in creating those necessary networks.

Increasing public knowledge of the political forces controlling development of publicly funded digital networks could offer advocates a pro-active opportunity to shift public and policy debate from a narrow focus on station budgets to a larger question: Should federal policy enable the same corporate and affluent sectors culpable for the recent economic crisis to also shape development of new public communication resources needed by communities disproportionately hurt by that crisis? Important research on public media policy is already out there (New America Foundation, Center for Social Media, Victor Pickard et al, Ellen P. Goodman and Anne Chen). But the fact is we also need research into the political relationships enabled by the new networks: will corporate connected elites again manage the money and make the decisions? Above all we need a social movement to raise hell and win the right to shape public media to meet the needs of regular people.

As our very good friend Tavis Smiley said in The Chicago Defender: "Now is the time to ask and answer the hard questions on how the public media space can better serve fellow citizens who have traditionally been politically, economically, socially, and culturally disenfranchised." The clock is ticking. We cannot -- we must not -- rely on the largesse of royalty and the “corporate, truncated multiplex” for the connections, communications, and news needed for a public commons and a living democracy.

_____

James Owens made invaluable contributions to this article.

Scott Sanders, a 2011 winner of the Nelson Algren Committee award, has co-founded a number of media activist organizations, including Chicago Media Action, and led efforts to constitute public community media centers with member-elected boards and to increase diversity on non-elected public media boards. He also led campaigns resulting in the only FCC fine of a major public TV station concerning commercialism. He has a number of years of experience working as a video documentarian and as a periodicals and technology librarian. Scott has produced social science research for MMTC, MAP, and, for the last four years, for the University of Chicago. He is responsible for the Trustee research in the CMA study “Chicago Tonight: Elites, Affluence, and Advertising” starting on p.18 here. He is the author or co-author of articles for Truthout, Extra!, Counterpunch, Z magazine, and a number of daily newspapers.

In memory of Jan and Robert Sanders.

A fun video about radio, where it's been and what LPFM means.

Coming soon ...

Author and journalist David Cay Johnston on cableco monopolies and how they distort economic development on Gigabit Nation

It probably looks like we're picking on Google, but after 38 states filed suit to protect user privacy after Google's Street View mapping project randomly scooped up passwords, email account info and other data, privacy advocates had reason to be concerned.

From NY Times coverage of the settlement:

****

SAN FRANCISCO — Google on Tuesday acknowledged to state officials that it had violated people’s privacy during its Street View mapping project when it casually scooped up passwords, e-mail and other personal information from unsuspecting computer users.

In agreeing to settle a case brought by 38 states involving the project, the search company for the first time is required to aggressively police its own employees on privacy issues and to explicitly tell the public how to fend off privacy violations like this one.

While the settlement also included a tiny — for Google — fine of $7 million, privacy advocates and Google critics characterized the overall agreement as a breakthrough for a company they say has become a serial violator of privacy.

Complaints have led to multiple enforcement actions in recent years and a spate of worldwide investigations into the way the mapping project also collected the personal data of private computer users.

“Google puts innovation ahead of everything and resists asking permission,” said Scott Cleland, a consultant for Google’s competitors and a consumer watchdog whose blog maintains a close watch on Google’s privacy issues. “But the states are throwing down a marker that they are watching and there is a line the company shouldn’t cross.”

The agreement paves the way for a major privacy battle over Google Glass, the heavily promoted wearable computer in the form of glasses, Mr. Cleland said. “If you use Google Glass to record a couple whispering to each other in Starbucks, have you violated their privacy?” he asked. “Well, 38 states just said they have a problem with the unauthorized collection of people’s data.”

George Jepsen, the Connecticut attorney general who led the states’ investigation, said that he was hopeful the settlement would produce a new Google.

“This is the industry giant,” he said. “It is committing to change its corporate culture to encourage sensitivity to issues of personal data privacy.”

The applause was not universal, however. Consumer Watchdog, another privacy monitor and frequent Google critic, said that “asking Google to educate consumers about privacy is like asking the fox to teach the chickens how to ensure the security of their coop.”

Niki Fenwick, a Google spokeswoman, said on Tuesday that “we work hard to get privacy right at Google, but in this case we didn’t, which is why we quickly tightened up our systems to address the issue.”

Last summer, the Federal Trade Commission fined Google $22.5 million for bypassing privacy settings in the Safari browser, the largest civil penalty ever levied by the F.T.C. In 2011, Google agreed to be audited for 20 years by the F.T.C. after it admitted to using deceptive tactics when starting its Buzz social network. That agreement included several rather vague privacy provisions.

The new settlement, which requires Google to set up a privacy program within six months, is more specific. Among its requirements, Google must hold an annual privacy week event for employees. It also must make privacy certification programs available to select employees, provide refresher training for its lawyers overseeing new products and train its employees who deal with privacy matters.

Several provisions involve outreach. Google must create a video for YouTube explaining how people can easily encrypt their data on their wireless networks and run a daily online ad promoting it for two years. It must run educational ads in the biggest newspapers in the 38 participating states, which besides Connecticut also include New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, California, Ohio and Texas.

“There are minimum benchmarks Google has to meet,” said Matthew Fitzsimmons, an assistant Connecticut attorney general who negotiated with the company. “This will impact how Google rolls out products and services in the future.”

Marc Rotenberg of the Electronic Privacy Information Center said the agreement was “a significant privacy decision by the state attorneys general,” adding that “it shows the ongoing importance of the states’ A.G.’s in protecting the privacy rights of Internet users.”

The Street View case arose out of Google’s deployment of special vehicles to photograph the houses and offices lining the world’s avenues and boulevards and lanes. For several years, the company also secretly collected personal information — e-mail, medical and financial records, passwords — as it cruised by. It was data-scooping from millions of unencrypted wireless networks.

A worldwide uproar and investigations in at least a dozen countries ensued. An Australian regulator, Stephen Conroy, called it “probably the single greatest breach in the history of privacy.” Google initially denied any data had been collected from unknowing individuals, then sought to play down what data had been collected and fought with regulators who wanted to examine it. Google said the data had been destroyed, although it turned out some had not been. Some data was purged, but Google is holding the rest until several private lawsuits are resolved.

The company blamed a rogue engineer for the operation. But the Federal Communications Commission said the engineer had worked with others and had tried to tell his superiors what he was doing. He was less a rogue than simply unsupervised, the agency said. The F.C.C. last spring fined Google $25,000 for obstructing its investigation.

In the last several years, Google has repeatedly said it was strengthening its privacy monitoring, adding layers of oversight and controls. For the states, however, those assurances were not quite enough.

“We obviously thought there was more they could do,” said Mr. Fitzsimmons, the assistant Connecticut attorney general. An executive committee of attorneys general will monitor Google for compliance. The $7 million fine is pocket change for Google, which has a net income of about $32 million a day.

“It is the public opprobrium, not the money, that counts in these cases,” said David Vladeck, a professor of law at Georgetown University who formerly directed the F.T.C.’s Bureau of Consumer Protection. “And I think people were rightly unhappy with Google’s collecting the information in the first place and then Google’s lame explanation.”

Regulators in Germany pursued Google aggressively in the case, but closed their investigation in November without bringing charges. That seemed to end the matter until this week. Few outside observers expected the states’ efforts to amount to much.

The inquiry began in June 2010. Richard Blumenthal, then Connecticut’s attorney general, said his office would lead a multistate investigation into what he called “Google’s deeply disturbing invasion of personal privacy.” In December 2010, Mr. Blumenthal — about to become Connecticut’s junior senator — issued a civil investigative demand, equivalent to a subpoena, to get the data. Google never provided it. “That issue was resolved by their admission they had gathered the kinds of data we had alleged they were gathering,” said Mr. Jepsen, the attorney general.

In any case, he said, “what mattered was Google admitted they weren’t just taking pictures.”

Saturday: April 6 at 2:00pm at the Denver Sheraton with Nan Rubin, Danielle Chynoweth, Steve Ranieri, Sylvia Strobel and Tracy Rosenberg:

What do independent and community media makers need from their government? What kinds of policies will protect us and enable our work to reach people?

In this interactive workshop, led by independent and community media leaders, we will brainstorm solutions and work collaboratively on shaping a shared policy agenda. How can media makers work to own our infrastructure? What approaching opportunities do we need to prepare for now? If you care about the future of community media, you need to be part of this discussion.

More on NCMR: http://conference.freepress.net/session/it%E2%80%99s-our-time-community-media%E2%80%99s-new-policy-agenda-starts-now

Chris Mitchell on Democracy Now: How the telcos prevent affordable and accessible internet services to preserve the oligopoly.

The A/P Stylebook has removed homophobia as an approved word for the dislike, hatred and fear of gay and lesbian sexuality. Chuck Colbert reports for Press Pass Q.

***


In a move that generated considerable pushback in LGBT media, the Associated Press announced recently that its stylebook would no longer use the word “homophobia” in political or social contexts.

The AP stylebook is one of the nation’s most influential and is widely used by newspapers, including LGBT outlets.

As AP Deputy Standards Editor Dave Minthorn told Politico on Nov. 26, 2012, the term is “just off the mark” and “seems inaccurate.”

“It's ascribing a mental disability to someone, and suggests a knowledge that we don't have. It seems inaccurate,” said Minthorn. “Instead, we would use something more neutral: anti-gay, or some such, if we had reason to believe that was the case. We want to be precise and accurate and neutral in our phrasing.”

But the man who coined the term “homophobia” strongly disagreed, as the Milwaukee-based Wisconsin Gazette noted.

“This is a major mistake and an injustice to gay people everywhere,” Dr. George Weinberg said, writing in an op-ed for New York-based Gay City News.

“Gay people must never forget that those who condemn them — and not they themselves — have an emotional problem. If you are condemned for being inferior, depraved, or dangerous and you aren’t, it is invaluable to know that the psychological problem is theirs, not yours,” he added. “In the case of homophobia, this was a hard-earned discovery and truth. It must never be forgotten.”

Weinberg, a Manhattan-based psychologist with a doctorate in clinical psychology from Columbia University, first used the word in his influential 1972 book “Society and the Healthy Homosexual.”

Some LGBT outlets simply reported news of the changes. For example, EDGE publications ran a story under the headline “AP’s new stylebook bans the word ‘homophobia.’” The Washington Blade ran a brief under the headline, “AP ban on ‘homophobia’ causes uproar.”

In commentaries, other LGBT media offered pointed critiques. Here is a sampling of the concerns:

The San Diego Gay and Lesbian News “will continue to use the words ‘homophobia,’ ‘homophobic’ and ‘homophobes’ as long as mistruths, lies, hatred, bias, discrimination and propaganda are used by anti-gay activists to demonize the LGBT community,” wrote Ken Williams, the newspaper’s editor in chief. “While those words may anger the Religious Right and the anti-gay activists, who have lobbied against their usage, the words do adequately describe the types of people who hold irrational and illogical hate or mistrust of LGBT people, or incite discrimination or violence against LGBT people, or remain adamantly against equality for all Americans even though those rights are enshrined in the U.S. Constitution.”

The San Francisco-based Bay Area Reporter faulted AP’s equating homophobia with mental illness. “There are a lot of anti-gay people in this country who have an irrational fear of LGBTs. That doesn’t mean they have a mental illness [though some might), just as a person who’s afraid of spiders [arachnophobia) does not necessarily suffer from mental illness,” wrote Editor Cynthia Laird.

For veteran journalist Rex Wockner, the meaning of “homophobia” is clear enough, and its usage has a history. “The AP Stylebook gurus' inexplicable focus solely on the medical definition of the word 'phobia' is weird and ignores how the long-established word 'homophobia' is used in American English, as well as the definition of 'homophobia' in the official dictionary of the Associated Press — Webster's New World College Dictionary, Fourth Edition — which says homophobia is fear or hatred of homosexuals.”

The Advocate and the Milwaukee-based Wisconsin Gazette reported that they would continue to use “homophobia.” In fact, editors at all LGBT publications contacted by Press Pass Q said they, too, would continue to use the term, including Washington, D.C.-based Metro Weekly, South Florida Gay News, Philadelphia Gay News [PGN), Atlanta’s GA Voice, Dallas Voice, Gay City News, Windy City Times and the Washington Blade.

However, PGN publisher Mark Segal said, “The word would always be used as a news quote or as opinion by a columnist.”

“As for mental illness,” he quipped, “please refer to The Family Research Council.”

In a similar vein, a Q Syndicate editorial cartoon poked fun at AP’s nixing of homophobia: “What word are we using instead?” an Associated Press reporter asks his editor. “’Gaytred?’ Lesbianimus?’”

Why are so many editors sticking with “homophobia”?

“It is undeniable that ‘homophobia’ and ‘homophobic’ have entered our language as broader descriptors for people who are openly and avidly opposed to LGBT civil rights,” said GA Voice Editor Laura Douglas-Brown.

And why not use a more neutral term like “anti-gay” instead of “homophobia”?

“While they are similar in nature,” said Jason Parsley, editor of South Florida Gay News, “there are differences.

“For one thing, homophobia is a much more powerful word,” he explained, citing the case of Matthew Shepard. “The two men that tortured and killed him were not just anti-gay, they were homophobic. And there is no other word that accurately describes their action.”

Managing Editor Will O’Bryan said Metro Weekly “prefers ‘anti-gay,’ or something similar” but “is not willing to abandon the term [‘homophobia’] altogether.”

“There are times when ‘homophobia’ strikes us as accurate,” he explained. “We expect our readers to know that we’re not trying to offer a medical diagnosis, but that sometimes an irrational fear of gay people, or transgender people, is just too obvious to ignore. If the Westboro nuts, for example, hold a ‘God hates fags’ rally, that might actually be rational. They believe in a wrathful, gay-hating God who’s going to take out his anti-gay hatred on America, so they’re simply trying to sound the alarm. They’re following a sort of logical path, based on their beliefs. Then you’ve got somebody who might go out of his way to viciously beat some gay guy just for sharing the sidewalk. We’re okay calling that ‘homophobic,’ even without getting a note from the attacker’s therapist.”

And yet there is by no means full agreement that the AP’s decision is entirely off the mark.

“The AP’s finding on homophobia is not so troubling to me as it is to others,” said Bob Witeck, president of Witeck Communications, a public relations firm based in Washington, D.C. “I read the usage recommendations with care. As I understand the AP point of view, they are not banning the usage, but guiding their own writers about its proper application. I think the term ‘homophobia’ can be over-applied or generalized in ways that are not always helpful, and it can be a simplistic way to label some thoughts, words, and deeds as irrational when they may be rational in context.”

During a discussion on Sirius XM Radio’s “The Michelangelo Signorile Show,” some callers voiced similar concerns, arguing “homophobia” should be used sparingly.

But in a subsequent Huffington Post Gay Voice posting, Signorile weighed in on the politics of the AP’s decision.

“The problem with banning ‘homophobia’ after 40 years is how it plays out in the debate on the issue of gay rights,” he wrote. “Those who are anti-gay have been railing against the use of the word by journalists and others for years and are cheering the AP for banning it.”

National Lesbian and Gay Journalists president Michael Triplett told the Poynter organization for professional journalists, “The AP’s decision to discourage use of the term ‘homophobia’ has set off some interesting conversations among NLJGA members. The general sense is that the AP is probably correct in terms of the literalism of the word ‘homophobia’ and that is not the best way to describe anti-gay actions or motives. On the other hand, it leaves writers without a term — like racism or sexism — that describe anti-gay sentiment.” [Triplett passed away soon after this interview. See story, “Newly elected president of National Lesbian and Gay Journalists Association dies,” below.)

The NLGJA stylebook defines homophobia as “fear, hatred or dislike of homosexuality, gay men and lesbians. Restrict to germane usage, such as in quotations or opinions. Use ‘LGBT right opponents’ or a similar phrase instead of ‘homophobes’ when describing people who disagree with LGBT rights activism.”

“At this point, I am not sure whether NLGJA will change its stylebook or not given the AP’s pronouncement,” Triplett said.

Triplett’s concerns are shared by Susan Horowitz, publisher and editor in chief of Between the Lines, based just outside Detroit. “I’m not ready to abandon the concept anymore than I would agree to no longer use anti-Semitism,” she said. “Both [‘homophobia’ and ‘anti-Semitism’] are succinct and powerful and capture the truth of the situation most of the time. It is interesting that it comes up right now. For me, [homophobia] is a powerful word that should be used with discretion. However, it is hardly true that we are in a post-homophobic period.”

For his part, Dallas Voice Editor John Wright said, “I think we should focus on whether AP is doing a good job covering LGBT issues and not get too hung up on whether [their reporters] are using one word or another."

Veteran journalist Lisa Keen of Keen News Service offered an assessment. “’Homophobia’ is not well-defined enou gh in our current cultural language that it is helpful to news reports for the general population. I would also argue that while we can report on things people do which are hostile to gay people, we can’t know for sure, and therefore cannot report, the inner motivations of those actions — whether it be fear, phobia, ignorance or subterfuge. To the extent possible, I think we should illustrate the person’s attitude about gays simply by reporting his or her statements, actions and affiliations.”

Nobody is surprised by now. But it does kind've make you wake up and take notice when FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski's former Chief of Staff takes the job as counsel for Tribune Co, right after securing cross-ownership waivers from the agency.

Craig Aaron of Free Press writes about it at the Huffington Post.

********************

A lot of things don't work at the Federal Communications Commission. Consumer complaints disappear for years into seemingly bottomless file drawers. The wonky proceedings are hard to decipher if you're not a telecom lawyer. Even the website is clunky.

But at least one thing at the FCC always runs at full speed: the revolving door.

The latest FCC official to get a job in the industry he used to regulate is Edward Lazarus, Chairman Julius Genachowski's former chief of staff. The Los Angeles Times reported on Tuesday that Lazarus is the new general counsel of Tribune Co.

Now it just so happens that Tribune Co. -- which emerged from bankruptcy at the end of 2012 -- is at the center of a major dispute at the FCC over whether the agency will trash longstanding rules on how much media one company can own in a single market.

Tribune Co., which owns 12 daily newspapers and 23 TV stations, has long pushed the agency to remove any limits on media ownership.

The company operates both the major daily paper and broadcast outlets in Chicago and Los Angeles under waivers from the FCC, but those waivers won't automatically carry over if the properties are sold.

Numerous reports also indicate that Tribune would like to get out of the newspaper business altogether.

But the potential buyer with the deepest pockets -- News Corp.'s Rupert Murdoch -- is prohibited from buying the flagship Chicago paper or the Los Angeles Times under current FCC rules because he already owns TV stations in those markets.

This is where the Tribune Co.'s desire to boost its sales price collides with the public interest. And where the FCC comes in.

We know media concentration raises the barriers for entry for new and diverse voices. Consolidation is bad for journalism -- and bad for business, too. (Exhibit A: Tribune Co.)

The idea of giving more power to the Fox News-backing, phone-hacking Murdoch is only the most obvious and immediate threat to a healthy media landscape.

But new rules now reportedly circulating among the five FCC commissioners for a vote will result in just that kind of big media giveaway. The FCC chairman has proposed lifting the ban in the top 20 markets on one company owning both the daily newspapers and a TV or radio station.

Now, who came up with the idea to deliver this priceless gift to Murdoch? Could it have been... Eddie Lazarus?

It was during his time as Genachowski's consigliere, after all, that the FCC decided to defend the previous administration's failed media ownership policies in court rather than scrap them altogether. The FCC lost that case.

Undeterred, and under Lazarus' guidance, the FCC continued to push against the Obama administration's stated policies -- and for more consolidation. The current proceeding was prepared when Lazarus was still at the agency and launched in December 2011, just a few days after Lazarus had announced his resignation but before he actually left the building.

Now one year later, just as his temporary ban on lobbying his old colleagues expires, Lazarus shows up near the top of Tribune Co., one of the companies that stands to benefit most from the FCC's proposed changes -- changes that Lazarus worked to put back on the table while he was still at the FCC.

What a coincidence.

Lazarus' new job may help explain why Chairman Genachowski seems so determined to buck not just President Obama (who opposed these exact same rules when the Republicans pushed them) but more than 60 members of Congress, the federal courts, every major civil rights organization and 99 percent of the public.

Or maybe it's all just one big fluke, and Lazarus is just another regulator cashing in at a company he was once supposed to regulate.

And that's how official Washington is sure to treat this news -- with a shrug.

Lazarus isn't the first to tread this path. Former FCC Commissioner Meredith Atwell Baker quit her job at the agency to become a Comcast-NBC lobbyist -- right after voting to approve the mega-merger that united those companies. Former FCC Chairman Michael Powell is now the cable industry's top lobbyist.

Other top advisers to the current FCC chairman now work for the National Association of Broadcasters, Google and Microsoft. It's rumored that both Genachowski and his Republican colleague, Commissioner Robert McDowell, are actively looking for their next gigs.

All of this is business as usual at the FCC -- and that's the problem. The corruption at the agency is so entrenched that selling out is the new normal. Too many people go to work for the FCC with the expectation of cashing in on their public service. The few who don't -- like former commissioners Michael Copps and Gloria Tristani -- are the exceptions.

You can't just blame the companies: They hire insiders like Lazarus because it gets results -- for them. But the deep-seated industry capture at places like the FCC is the biggest obstacle to making policies that would actually benefit the public.

That's why we need to start treating the hiring of people like Lazarus as the scandal it is. Until we slow the revolving door between government and industry, the public will always be left out in the cold

Upholding the public's right to know about government policies and actions and their underlying reasons is critical to democracy. And it is strongly tied to the right of journalists to do their job without risking government reprisal (such as the U.S. Justice Department's transgression against The Associated Press) and corporate attempts (such as "ag gag" laws) to muzzle them.

Sharing their experiences and perspectives on these issues will be: Larry Bush, San Francisco political ethics and open-government activist and journalist. Reese Erlich, award-winning journalist and author who chronicles the corporate media's complicity in Washington's saber-rattling. Peter Phillips, president, Media Freedom Foundation/Project Censored. Tracy Rosenberg, executive director of the Media Alliance Josh Wolf, freelance videographer/journalist jailed for 226 days for refusing to comply with a federal subpoena for testimony and unedited video footage. And maybe you. Audience participation will be encouraged.

Location:
ILWU 34
801 2nd Street
San Francisco, CA
7:00pm

Sponsored By:
The event is being sponsored by the Labor Video Project, and is endorsed by the Society of Professional Journalists, Northern California Chapter; the First Amendment Coalition; and MapLight (which tracks political money trails).

An interesting academic free speech case in Washington State now in the Court of Appeals pits tenured faculty free speech rights against employer rights. Here is a detailed summary of the case and what is at stake by the journalism professor who is the main plaintiff.

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WSU J-Professor Predicts U.S. Appeals Court Will Deny Faculty Right to Criticize Administrators

A journalism professor who filed a free-speech lawsuit against four administrators at Washington State University is predicting the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals will deny university professors, as employees, the right to criticize administrators and their policies.

“If I am right, it means the balance of power at universities in Washington state and six other western states will be radically altered,” said David Demers, an associate professor of communication in The Edward R. Murrow College of Communication at WSU. “The decision will undermine shared governance, a century-old principle in which professors share power with administrators when it comes to making decisions that affect university budgets and programs.”

Demers filed the lawsuit (Demers v. Austin, et al.) in 2010 when he was a tenured professor at WSU. He asserted that administrators associated with the Murrow program punished him in his annual reviews after he submitted a 7-Step Plan to improve the quality of the Murrow program and pledged to donate $100,000 of his own money if the university implemented it. The plan, which recommended a major restructuring of the program including the goal of seeking national accreditation, angered many administrators and faculty.

The four defendants, represented by the Washington state attorney general’s office, argued that tenured faculty like Demers, as employees, do not deserve free-speech protection. The AG’s legal position has unwittingly pitted the Murrow journalism program against two free-speech organizations. The American Association of University Professors and the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Expression wrote a joint amicus curiae brief in support of plaintiff Demers.

“Win or lose, the legal position that faculty do not deserve First Amendment rights forever taints the good name of broadcaster Ed Murrow as well as the College that bears his name,” Demers said. “This could have been avoided if the state attorneys had fought the case on its merits. But administrative bureaucracies don’t always act on principle.”

In June 2011, a U.S. District Court judge in Spokane agreed with the defendants that faculty do not deserve free-speech protection. Judge Robert H. Whaley cited as precedent a 2006 U.S. Supreme Court case, Garcetti v. Ceballos, which held that public employees do not have First Amendment protection for speech connected to their jobs. Public employees only have protection when they speak as private citizens.

The high court left open the door of whether professors, as teachers or researchers, have more free speech protection than other government employees. However, the court did not address the issue of whether professors deserve protection when they speak in their service roles, which often involves criticizing administrators when it comes to making decisions that affect university budgets and programs.

Demers appealed the district court decision, arguing that faculty should not be punished for criticizing administrators.

But in Seattle on November 7, 2012, two of the three appeals court judges who heard oral arguments in the case expressed doubts about whether Demers’ 7-Step Plan was private speech, even though the cover letter identified him as a private citizen.

“I have trouble — speaking only for myself — treating that 7-Step Plan as cleanly private speech,” said William A. Fletcher. “I understand that Dr. Demers sets it up that way. On the other hand, it originates when he is a member of a committee. It's clearly undertaken in tight relationship to his job and the things that he cares about in his job. He is suggesting an important restructuring of two departments. I mean, I have trouble seeing that as purely private speech.”

Demers’ attorney, Judy Endejan of Graham & Dunn of Seattle, disagreed.

“Well, first of all, your honor, the question of whether it is part of his job duties, as this court has said in at least five cases, is a mixed question of fact and law that should be reserved for the trier of fact. In this case, the district court basically accepted all of the evidence that the university put forth and did not consider the evidence that Dr. Demers put forth ... . The 7-Step Plan as one component recommended a splitting of the mass comm[unication] and comm[unication] studies. The rest of it is not covered anywhere by any connection with his work in connection with the structure committee.”

“You know, I disagree with that,” Fletcher responded. “The 7-Step Plan ... is a thoughtful proposition for restructuring how journalism is taught, how the faculty is organized, how money is raised — all of that has to do with running of the institution in a very important way.”

Demers said the issue of shared governance never came up during the hearing.

“I’m not sure whether the judges are aware of the consequences of a ruling which denies professors free-speech protection when they offer alternative plans for structuring a university or when they criticize administrators. Such a decision will have tremendous adverse consequences for the balance of power at universities. No professor will feel secure in criticizing her or his university administrators.”

A ruling from the appeals court is expected in January or February 2013.