(NAME-MCE) Independent radio reclaims the airwaves

[KispokoT at aol.com]

Independent  radio reclaims the airwaves 
"If you don't  have access and ownership and control of a media system, you 
really don't  exist," said Loris Taylor, of Native Public Media. 
Dateline: Tuesday, April 08, 2008  
by Michelle Chen  
[Editor's note: As the CBC public broadcasting system suffers the death of  a 
thousand cuts, Canadians should pay attention to what US communities have  
learned about the importance of radio, especially, for building communities,  
delivering local news, and providing public space for airing issues of vital  
public interest.]  
A mother's voice stretched over the air to a son spending the holidays in a  
Virginia prison: "Keep your head up. I love you. Just do what you gotta do to  
survive."  
The hushed message was one of dozens featured on Calls from Home, a  project 
of Mountain Community Radio in Kentucky. Each December, the call-in  program 
helps families of prisoners reconnect through holiday shout-outs, aired  on 
stations across the country.  
   
As broadcast  conglomerates narrow radio's political scope, activists are 
recasting the  medium to once again empower underserved  communities. 
Since the first mass broadcasts crackled over the country's airwaves in the  
1920s, radio has defined itself as a democratic medium, providing communities  
that have few resources — from inmates to immigrant workers — a conduit for 
news  and civic communication.  
But today, media activists say commercialism has reduced a vital institution  
to an industry of white noise. In response, alternative radio projects and  
media-justice movements have emerged to resuscitate a flagging public sphere.  
Jammed with shock jocks, manufactured gangstas and formulaic news bites, the  
FM dial allows scant room for critical thought. Activists say that's no  
accident. The broadcast industry has become heavily consolidated and  
commercialized since the 1990s, thanks to the dismantling of federal regulations  on 
corporate ownership. Those trends, critics argue, have systematically  silenced the 
voices of women, people of color, youth and other underrepresented  
communities in the public sphere.  
It wasn't always this way. A generation ago, radio was fueling activism in  
Black communities nationwide.  
Broadcast veteran Glen Ford, now editor of the online journal Black Agenda  
Report, recalled how Black radio news helped anchor civil rights movements  in 
the 1960s and '70s: "They would be the ones to cover the folks who were  
protesting police brutality or advocating cleanups of the Black community or  
speaking about Black issues in education."  
Today, mega-broadcasters like Clear Channel Communications, which controls  
more than 1,100 stations nationwide, are fixated on ad revenues and economies 
of  scale. Since it's more profitable to centralize content, local affiliates 
run  mass-marketed music and news, generally at the expense of independent 
artists  and community oriented programming.  
The homogenization of radio plays out in ownership patterns as well. A recent 
 study by the media reform group FreePress found that "ethnic minorities" and 
 people of color control less than 8 percent of full-scale commercial 
stations,  while making up about one-third of the population. Black radio ownership 
hovers  around 3.4 percent, while about 13 percent of Americans are Black.  
   
"The only real  way to make sure that there are diverse voices on the 
airwaves is by  really having stations that are committed to community  access." 
Paul Porter, a former radio producer who now leads the media think-tank  
Industry Ears, believes the issue goes beyond just the demographics of owners:  
even Radio One, the country's leading Black-owned broadcasting network, follows  
the standard corporate formula of commercial Black music and minimal news.  
Across the dial, Porter said, "Radio is shaped for stockholders instead of  
listeners."  
As broadcast conglomerates narrow radio's political scope, activists are  
recasting the medium to once again empower underserved communities.  
For decades, WMMT Mountain Community Radio has been the only progressive news 
 source covering the working-class coalfield communities of Kentucky, 
Virginia  and West Virginia. When two Supermax prisons moved into the area, the 
station  suddenly faced a new constituency: Black, male prisoners transplanted from 
 cities into mostly white Appalachian mining towns.  
WMMT's parent organization, the Appalshop arts center, turned the impending  
culture clash into an opportunity for dialogue.  
"We considered the prison audience as part of our community," said WMMT  
producer Nick Szuberla. "And then we began to figure out ways to use community  
radio to address what was happening and to make space on our station for their  
family and supporters."  
The station began investigating local prisoners' complaints of abuse in 1999  
and soon developed Holler to the Hood, a call-in program that explores  the 
viewpoints of inmates and their families, along with local community  members. 
In addition to reconnecting separated families, the program has helped  launch 
grassroots civil rights campaigns and musical collaborations between  hip-hop 
and country artists.  
Even in the so-called digital age, stations like WMMT remain a key resource  
for communities isolated from the technological grid.  
"We don't have broadband, WiFi, cable access," said Szuberla. "Community  
radio is a huge part of rural communities' civic discourse."  
For indigenous communities wrestling with poverty and social marginalization, 
 media access is a human rights issue.  
Loris Taylor, executive director of Native Public Media, which advocates on  
behalf of the country's 33 American Indian-owned public stations, said that  
tribe-run broadcasters are typically the sole source for community-based  
cultural programming and news.  
"If you don't have access and ownership and control of a media system, you  
really don't exist," she said. "You don't matter in terms of being citizens in 
a  democracy who are entitled to the ability to tell, and have a conversation  
about, your own stories."  
With its gritty do-it-yourself ethos, grassroots radio offers a platform for  
personal storytelling on a mass scale.  
Thandisizwe Chimurenga, cofounder and cohost of Some of Us Are Brave  on the 
California-based Pacifica network, approaches radio as a "mobilizing  medium." 
Since 2003, the weekly show has been a rare space for Black women of  diverse 
political backgrounds to reflect on topics such as domestic violence,  
immigration, mental health and imprisonment.  
   
"We're talking  about eliminating the structural oppression and racism at the 
core of  consolidation." 
"The show aims to be a resource for the communities that we come from," she  
said. "Black women's voices are so under-represented, so absent in media."  
To advance the show's mission, Chimurenga's organization, the Ida B Wells  
Institute, is developing a media program for young women of color. By giving  
youth opportunities to produce their own stories, she said, the training is  
designed to "demystify the workings of media for people — show them they can  
actually do this also."  
At Atlanta's Latin American and Caribbean Community Center, grassroots  
media-making has shone a spotlight on Latino perspectives that establishment  media 
routinely ignore. The group's Radio Diaspora project, broadcast in English  
and Spanish on WRFG Radio Free Georgia, covers the plight of African 
descendants  throughout the Americas who have long struggled for visibility.  
While corporate news often segregates coverage of "Latino" and "Black"  
issues, Radio Diaspora draws connections between different forms of oppression  and 
structural racism across the hemisphere. A recent trans-border call-in  
program examined internal displacement in the Black diaspora, linking Hurricane  
Katrina survivors with a community of African-descendant earthquake survivors in 
 Peru.  
Defying the foreign correspondent model, Radio Diaspora's unconventional  
press corps relays news straight from the source. Local community members and  
activists record and produce their own stories as they happen on the ground.  
"Our audience, and our participants they really dictate the shows that we  
do," said coordinator Janvieve Williams.  
The country is dotted with more than 9,000 full-scale FM stations, but fewer  
than a third are designated noncommercial and educational broadcasters. While 
 the Federal Communications Commission recently moved to grant some new  
non-commercial licenses, activists are looking beyond the standard radio  spectrum 
to carve out fresh broadcast venues.  
Some see promise in low-power FM radio, a new class of frequencies with a  
range of a few miles. The FCC has allotted a limited number of low-power  
licenses to community groups in recent years, though advocates say not nearly  
enough.  
One of the newest low-power ventures is WMXP in Greenville, South Carolina.  
The volunteer-based station launched last summer as a partnership between the  
South Carolina Affiliate of the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement, a national  
organizing network, and the media advocacy group Prometheus Radio Project.  
Engaging local youth as listeners and operators, WMXP works to counter the  
generic news and music that dominates local radio. "The only real way to make  
sure that there are diverse voices on the airwaves is by really having 
stations  that are committed to community access," said cofounder Efia Nwangaza.  
Local spoken-word poet Preston Walker is developing a free-form talk program  
inspired by the Black radio hosts and hip-hop artists who shaped his identity 
 growing up influences that have all but vanished in his community.  
"I'm looking forward to introducing them to something new, something  
different," he said, "something that they could grab hold of, and become a part  of." 
 
While alternative institutions like low-power FM encapsulate what grassroots  
organizing can accomplish, some radio activists focus on compelling broader  
changes within mainstream media.  
"We need to grab our people wherever they are," said Chimurenga. "In terms of 
 activists, in terms of people of color, we need to build alternative  
institutions, but we also need to fight where we are. And we need to hold these  
mainstream institutions accountable because they hold influence in our  
communities."  
FCC policies broadly mandate corporate broadcasters to serve community  
information and educational needs. But activists are skeptical about the  
regulatory system's will to uphold those standards. In December, topping years  of 
rollbacks to media-ownership rules, the FCC moved to further gut  anti-monopoly 
protections by unraveling a long-standing ban on ownership of both  a radio 
station and a daily newspaper within one market area.  
Activists in communities of color have meanwhile grown frustrated with the  
scope of the media reform debate. Groups like FreePress reflect their mostly  
white, liberal leadership, critics say, by focusing on regulatory changes and  
not grassroots outreach to communities shut out of corporate media.  
"When we talk about 'media diversity,' we're not simply talking about  
diversifying media choices or voices," said Malkia Cyril of the Oakland-based  Youth 
Media Council. "We're talking about eliminating the structural oppression  
and racism at the core of consolidation."  
Aiming to bridge grassroots activism with policy advocacy, Youth Media  
Council sees the media infrastructure as both a target and vehicle for activism.  
By training youth to frame their political messages and build media campaigns,  
the group has helped youth of color publicize their actions in mainstream  
outlets. The Council's media-accountability monitoring projects have scrutinized 
 local coverage of youth and social issues, pushing broadcasters like Clear  
Channel to provide more community-oriented programming.  
"Who has the right to participate in and regulate this media system is a  
question of citizenship," Cyril said. "And the question of civil enfranchisement  
is an issue for everybody."  
Michelle Chen has written for the NewStandard and In These  Times and has 
been sighted carousing with migrant workers in Shanghai,  painting houses in 
Egypt and checking coats at a West Village jazz club.  
This story was originally published in ColorLines, the national  newsmagazine 
on race and politics. For more, go to the sites linked below  
Related addresses:  
URL 1: _www.colorlines.com_ (http://www.colorlines.com/)  
URL 2: _racewire.org_ (http://racewire.org/)  




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