MyKRCC Community Forum Welcome Guest | Login or Register

What wonderful news! DEMOCRACY NOW is now on the KRCC line-up at 7pm every weekday!

Tune in, and if you like what you hear, let KRCC know what time of day would be more convenient for you to get your news!

February 21, 2006 Delivered by hand & by email

Mario Valdes, General Manager
KRCC-FM
912 North Weber St.
Colorado Springs, CO 80903

Dear Mario,
I just returned from a successful town hall meeting with a hall full of community members asking for Democracy Now on KRCC.

More pertinent to you perhaps, earlier in the day I was finally able to meet personally with Colorado College President Richard Celeste. He assured me that indeed, as manager of KRCC, you have finally authority over the programming at KRCC.

This is at odds with what you’ve been telling us, but there it is, the decision is yours. Can we have Democracy Now on KRCC?

You told us it would require special equipment. It turns out it requires the same equipment you already have. And Democracy Now is free for a year.

You told us that the Democracy Now people insist on a specific time slot, and you resent being dictated to. It turns out they do not, any time slot will do.

You told us that Democracy Now is “advocacy journalism.” It turns out it is not. You are referring to a rhetorical argument Amy Goodman once made in a documentary. She is as much an advocate as MSM or NPR are advocates for their corporate underwriters.

You told us there are only five NPR member stations who carry Democracy Now. It turns out there are 25 NPR affiliates who carry Democracy Now, among 400 radio stations nationwide including 18 Colorado communities, but not Colorado Springs.

You told us you are concerned about potential loss of support from conservative donors. It turns out your donors are 1/3 conservative, 1/3 independent and 1/3 liberal. It looks like you have to respect all sides. On radio stations which carry both Democracy Now and NPR programs, the former often outperforms the latter in popularity and fund-raising.

You told us you don’t believe Democracy Now is news. You likened it to Rush Limbaugh. It turns out Democracy Now has won prestigious journalism awards and is universally respected by media watchdog groups, very unlike Rush.

You told us that you don’t like the manner in which you were asked to consider Democracy Now, otherwise you say you might have added it years ago. It turns out then that your previous arguments against airing Democracy Now were simply not about the cost or slant or content at all.

Thus, if we know now that it is entirely your decision to make, and that your stated objections have been shown to be answered, and that had you been asked more politely you would have agreed sooner, may we offer our sincerest apologies, and ask with all due gratitude in advance for your very gracious reprieve: Mario, by your hand, may Colorado Springs, La Junta, Westcliffe, Gardner, Limon, Trinidad, Buena Vista, Villa Grove, Cañon City and Raton, please hear Democracy Now on KRCC?

(Other suggestions to come out of the Feb 20 forum, respectfully submitted:
1. Western Skies could expand its coverage to daily news, every weekday.
2. PSA announcements could be permitted for more activities of community
interest, and may be political in nature.
3. A community interview talk show, like that of Jeanne Sauer.
4. Underwriting sponsorships, as well as station memberships, could be
available in smaller, more accessible increments.
5. More visibility could be given to underwriters, in place of
over-exposed spots like website playlist, paperless newsletter,
car donation, etc.
6. A community advisory board, to hold forums and make recommendations.
These are just some ideas.)

We’re sorry you missed the meeting, we wish you a speedy and complete recovery, and we do thank you Mario for considering our appeal.

Yours,

Eric Verlo
PPMA Feb 20 town hall forum consensus

cc. Richard Celeste, President, Colorado College
Community members who submitted petitions December 2005
Colorado College students who signed petitions December 2005
Attendees of Feb 20, 2006 town hall forum

Thank you all who attended the town hall meeting. Except that neither Colorado College nor KRCC were in attendance, the forum was a great success. 88 community members came to speak their mind. The expert panel was almost superfluous to the later discussion because there appeared to have been so many pent-up ideas which people came to express.

The Pikes Peak Media Alliance was started three years ago to try to raise awareness about media literacy. We recognize that the media landscape is, and has been, slanted against the little guy, the average American actually, and we’ve undertaken the challenge to change that imbalance.

PPMA has been fighting to try to bring more of a community voice to the local public radio station, our own KRCC. The effort is going to culminate -thus far- into a town-hall public forum which we’ve scheduled for Monday night at All Souls Unitarian Church. We’re hoping to see as big a turn-out as possible of course. This will be a chance for Joe and Jane Public to express something of the direction they hope to see from KRCC, to express it directly to its regents, its owners, Colorado College.

This effort to seek community input into KRCC programming arose from a more specific attempt to lobby KRCC to air the news program Democracy Now. If you haven’t heard of it, ask the person beside you, it’s an award winning news program whose popularity is growing station by station all over this country, it’s on 400 radio stations nation wide, including more than a dozen communities in Colorado, all the big ones, except Colorado Springs and Pueblo, because it’s not on KRCC.

For three years we’ve been trying to petition Colorado College to overrule KRCC’s decision not to carry Democracy Now. For years before that, individuals had been calling KRCC to request it, only to be turned down flat. That went on so long, we decided we had to go over the station manager’s head.

You may have signed one of our petitions. Did you hear anything back? No one did. Well a friend of mine submitted his letter directly. He did receive an answer to his request for Democracy Now: a hand written note saying “Thank you for your thoughts on Democracy.”

We tried it several times and this year we made a concerted effort and gathered over 250 petition letters, individual letters signed and personalized by members of our community. A number of times people told us, “I signed one of those a couple years ago. What, they still haven’t given us Democracy Now?” That statement reflects not just their incredulousness, but it reflects a disconnect about what’s happening on KRCC. A lot of the community -on our side of the issues- is no longer listening to KRCC.

This year we delivered those 250 petition letters, along with another 200 Colorado College student signatures to Colorado College on our knees. On our knees! Yes it was a dumb idea, we got the idea because we were starting from Camp Casey and it was only a short distance to the college president’s office. Well on your knees that distance becomes quite a bit more than a little! We did it for the publicity of course, but ideologically we did it to represent the desperate urgency we felt for the people of the world who are not represented by or in the media, the suffering majority whose voices go unheard, whose plight goes unabated in large part because the media ignores their fate, a media who is on the side of their oppressors, who is owned after all by their oppressors.

And so we made this impassioned public plea, we handed over our petitions, and heard nothing. Not a thing. No one who signed any of those letter received a reply. We heard through the grapevine that Colorado College was basically standing in support of the KRCC station manager’s decision. Only just a week ago or so, we all saw in the Independent, the article about KRCC and some confusion about its funding, where on the issue of Democracy Now, the college declared that it considered the request to have come from only a “small faction.”

So the meeting tomorrow night, excuse me, Monday night is going to be the showdown between the community represented by its small faction, and Colorado College. We’ve dropped the explicit request for Democracy Now in hope that the meeting will represent more voices from the community about what its concerns may be about KRCC. The issue isn’t so much about Democracy Now, it’s about how does a community express itself to one of its representatives, in this case a station manager who insists that Colorado Springs is populated by nothing but conservatives and easily-offended Luddites.

One of the ideas which could come up at Monday’s meeting will be the popular local news show Western Skies. Some thought by the recent funding disinformation circulated by KRCC, that Western Skies is on the chopping block. Nothing could be further from the truth, as attested by Colorado College president Dick Celeste’s letters to both the Gazette and the Independent. Western Skies puts together a half-hour news show twice a week. It’s very popular. Let’s hear how many of you like Western Skies! Well why not have that show on every day? Can you imagine the kind of coverage we could get for local happenings, local non-profit efforts, partisan efforts, even locally owned businesses, if we had local news on a daily basis?
Please bring your voice to the meeting on Monday. Colorado College is looking to see how serious we are about speaking as a community. We’ve got to show them on Monday night.

I believe that the political battle begins with the media. We’ve got to reclaim the media if we are to achieve even a portion of our political goals this year, or ever. And by political goals, I’m talking about saving our country of course, about an agenda to tackle social inequality, to provide a safety net, to save our civil rights, to rescue really is what I mean, to rescue our right to elect a government which represents us. All those things. We are not going to win on those issues if we cannot take our case to the American people. It doesn’t matter how much money we raise to pay the media to carry our message, if the media wants to spin our message in the favor of its owners, of the upper business corporate class, there’s nothing of our message that is going to get through to the people.

A friend of mine was telling me, she’s not very political. She doesn’t see much point to political parties. They’re divisive she says. She would prefer that politicians would brush aside political affiliations and sit down together to work out solutions for the American people.

Now you being fairly active, or activated, political Democrats probably see the idealism of her argument. Let me explain why I think she’s being idealistic and I’d like to see if you agree with me.

If politicians were civil servants indeed sitting down to work out solutions, that would be one thing. But we know that’s not the case. With the division of Republicans and Democrats are two groups sitting down, one of whom has their hands at the levers, making the trouble, and the other side, our side, is trying to undo it. Am I right on this point? The Republican, let’s call them the corporate cheap-labor, landowner party is trying to get away with whatever it can, and the Democratic party is left to try to to fight for the diminishing power of the rest of the world’s population. Is that right? Do I have that right?

Now accusations can be made that a number of the Democrats are fighting on the side of the landowners. And frankly I believe it. I know just enough about how politics does not work, to ask the silly question, can’t we get rid of those Democrats? Can’t we just expel them? Let ‘em be Republicans if they want to so badly. We don’t need to be putting our grassroots efforts into backing their turncoat behavior. Anyway, that’s my opinion. I feel that way about torture, about the war, about health care, about the environment, about civil rights, about judicial review and the balance of power keeping the executive branch from acting like a dictatorship.

Now I will assert that we need a media which will reflect this battle for what it is. If we want to preserve this democracy, we have to have a democracy. We have to reach the American public, and we need to reach them with a level, balanced message.

Have I represented an objective concern for where this country is going? We need a media which will do that.

We have to reclaim this media, and we can start with the only place we have even a toehold and that’s public radio. Please come on Monday night to speak out for the reform we need. The airwaves belong to us. They’re like the public libraries, like the public lands set aside to preserve -in England they’re called the Public Trust. The public airwaves belong to us, and they need to speak for us. Please come!

Reasons provided by Mario Valdes and Constance Dudgeon for refusing DEMOCRACY NOW programming in a February 2, 2006 meeting with community members.

REASON #1:
There would be infrastructure costs involved in bringing Democracy Now’s feed to KRCC, specifically new satellite equipment.

RESPONSE: KRCC can pick up the live feed on the same system from which it pulls NPR content, PRSS (Public Radio Satellite System), at channel A67.7. If not broadcast live, the show is available in broadcast quality MP3 (a 27MB download).

In addition, Democracy Now is FREE for the first year. After that, on a sliding scale, the show would cost $1,000-7-000 per year (about 1-5% of a typical cost for NPR programming).

A strong favorite among listeners, and based on its performance at other stations, there is a high confidence factor that Democracy Now would actually outperform in fund-raising any costs associated with carrying the program, and would be a good fund-raising asset.

REASON #2:
Democracy Now is arrogant and demands prime time slots for airing. Mario will not be told by any content provider how to schedule his programming.

RESPONSE: Democracy Now representatives say that they will be very happy with any time slot. The only time concern they brought up is that if the show is aired at 5 am, the news would be aged 23 hours (they are live at 6 am MT).

REASON #3:
Democracy Now is “advocacy journalism.” Amy Goodman has said that she is an advocacy journalist and it says so on her business card.

RESPONSE: Democracy Now representatives say that they have heard this before. Extensive information is provided at their site in the interest of dispelling this label. The specific reference to “advocacy journalism” is in the video INDEPENDENT MEDIA IN A TIME OF WAR. Ms. Goodman answers a question regarding Democracy Now and advocacy journalism with a sarcastic remark that “the establishment reporters are my model.” Her implication was that corporate media is advocacy journalism.

[Aside: According to Democracy Now representatives, Amy Goodman has never carried a business card with an “advocacy journalist” moniker.]

REASON #4:
There are “only 5 stations” with NPR affiliation which carry Democracy Now. There is a prevailing view among NPR affiliate station managers that Democracy Now is arrogant and pushy (see Reason #2) and these station managers, on principle, will not carry the programming.

RESPONSE: In fact there are 25 NPR stations carrying Democracy Now, including KDNK in Aspen and KUNK at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque, among over 350 radio stations nationwide. Democracy Now is heard in Denver, Boulder, Fort Collins, Alamosa, Aspen, Carbondale, Cortez, Crested Butte, Durango, Gunnison, Paonia, Salida, Silverton and Telluride.

REASON #5:
Concern from the college administration over potential loss of significant conservative donor money.

RESPONSE: Has such significant donor attrition resulted from the airing of THIS WAY OUT?

Mario stated that 2/3 of the donors are either independent or conservative, and that 1/3 are independent. This could have just as easily been stated as 2/3 of the donors are either independent or liberal.

Perhaps we could look at the leanings of the underwriters. Could it be expected that many underwriters would pull their funding if Democracy Now is aired? The question can also be asked, how would members and underwriters react to KRCC’s immovability on the issue?

REASON #6:
Not enough people have expressed interest in hearing Democracy Now. It is “way down on the list” of programs mentioned in the listener polls taken during the fund drives.

RESPONSE: Democracy Now falls lower on the list of listener favorites when compared to programs already airing on KRCC. Among programs which listeners mention they would like to hear, it is at the very top. Petition signatures have been gathered from hundreds of community members and students.

REASON #7:
A confrontational relationship exists between Mario and some proponents of the community campaign who wish to bring Democracy Now to KRCC and to bring more community voice and influence to KRCC programming. Mario said that if it were not for this, we might already have Democracy Now programming.

RESPONSE: Taken on its own merit, the above statement implies that there is no objection to the program content, but that the obstacle is an unhealthy relationship between Mario and some community members. This would hardly seem to justify denying southern Colorado access to such high-quality programming. As a media outlet in the tradition of college radio, KRCC has a responsibility to serve the community in which it is a citizen with an every-broadening news menu. Democracy Now is an ideal channel for bringing news to southern Colorado that goes otherwise uncovered by radio broadcast programming. This should be the emphasis of KRCC, and not any of Mario’s perceived community relations issues or attitude problems with content providers (see Reason #4).

Airing Democracy Now should therefore be a simple matter of repairing the relationship. However, taken in context of the other reasons provided to us, Reason #7 contradicts Reason #1-6. [Aside: It can be noted that none of the reasons provided to us address the concept of
community responsibility by KRCC.]

From our experience in the February 2 meeting and in researching these responses, we are inclined to conclude that there is only one reason for the refusal to air Democracy Now on KRCC.

REASON #8:
Mario Valdes doesn’t want it. “It will never happen… not by petition or by election… the horse is quite dead.” He explains: “I don’t believe it’s a news program.” He likens Democracy Now to Rush Limbaugh.

RESPONSE: Democracy Now has won prestigious news awards. Host Amy Goodman filled Shove Chapel when she last visited Colorado College in 2004.

A digital recording of the Feb 2 meeting can be found on file at KRCC. It contains many more colorful statements than are referenced here.

Democracy Now! is a two hour-long daily news broadcast covering domestic and international affairs. Offered via KU-band satellite and as broadcast quality MP3 computer files, this program easily fits into any available time slot.
Democracy Now! offers a six month free trial period, during which KRCC can gather feedback from community members. Listener demand for Democracy Now! will prove that it deserves a prime time slot.

Aired by over 270 radio stations nationwide including KGNU in Boulder and KDUR in Durango, the program is the recipient of awards such as the George Polk award and the 2003 NFCB Golden Reel for the Best National News Story.

The next step, will be to remember our objective.

The students are being courted with the usual calls for understanding the process, for effecting change within the system, for using the system’s mechanisms to bring about reform. Examining all sides of the issue apparently. Looking at the station’s sources of funding, for example, to see if the effect of upsetting conservative donors can be countered elsewhere.

But this isn’t about how Colorado College or KRCC can afford to do this, this is about doing the right thing!

As a community seeking media reform, we know this isn’t just about DEMOCRACY NOW on the radio, this isn’t about a “left-leaning” voice on the radio, this isn’t about a political adgenda on the radio. This is about truth on the radio. This is about objectivity on the radio to counter everyday media disinformation.

And this is where the college and KRCC are making a very condescending assumption: that Colorado Springs is too ignorant to appreciate objective news reporting, that conservatives are by definition ignorant.

Americans in general have been coming to see that the media has been lying to them. That mistrust is being felt particularly hard by conservatives whose fiscal ideals have been betrayed by their politicians, while the press has looked on uncritically.

We’ll be scheduling a brain-storming meeting to plan for the next round of this fight. The fight to make people in the right places do the right thing.

Dear President Celeste,
We ask that you receive these well-intentioned letters of petition asking for you to consider airing the news program DEMOCRACY NOW on the public community radio station operated by your college.

We ask that you consider these attached letters in addition to the other petitions you’ve received:

1. The similar petition letters which have already been mailed to you directly.

2. Those letters from past years and seasons, making the same request.

3. Those community members who’ve left notes on the mykrcc.org website.

4. Those community members who’ve written letters to the editors in the local media.

5. Those who’ve left notes on KRCC’s official website, notes which have repeatedly been deleted.

6. Those who’ve called KRCC, during each fund drive, and between fund drives.

7. Those CC students who’ve submitted letters to you in the past years and semester blocks.

8. Those students who’ve signed the current student petition.

9. For all those students whose signatures are on petitions yet to find their way to your office.

10. And for all the letters to be arriving late from further community members and KRCC listeners!

Please accept all these voices in making your decision to improve the quality and level of responsibility to which we want to hold our local media.

Thank you,
Eric Verlo
Representative
PIKES PEAK MEDIA ALLIANCE

KRCC has for several years opposed airing DEMOCRACY NOW. Here are some CAMP CASEY talking points to counter KRCC’s usual palabum.

“Can’t afford it.”
No, it’s free. DEMOCRACY NOW is free for the first six months, after which it will have the support of the listeners or it won’t. Plus, it will replace something that costs money now. So cost is not relevant.

“Don’t want ADVOCACY JOURNALISM.”
Amy Goodman describes her show DEMOCRACY NOW as “advocacy journalism.” It advocates OBJECTIVITY and TRUTHFUL journalism. Similarly, NPR advocates an agenda if its own: ALL THINGS [which the corporate/globalization/oil/military underwriters don’t mind being] CONSIDERED.
A one hour format is not enough time for DEMOCRACY NOW to consider all things in the news, it’s hardly even time time to consider everything NPR is censoring!

“No room in the line-up.”
Of course something will have to go, and the stricken program will have its disappointed fans. A bad teacher’s dismissal will always be met with objections from whatever students were enjoying the teacher’s shortcomings.
A likely candidate for expulsion from the KRCC line-up might be PRI’s THE WORLD. THE WORLD is wide-eyed, sentimental, ethnocentricity passing for international news. Its rush-hour time slot is an enormous waste considering THE WORLD clearly panders to people well below driving age.

“Our community is too conservative.”
Nonsense. Our community is what we make it. A teacher doesn’t say “my pupils are too ignorant to teach!” No, you teach them. KRCC is responsible for the community it serves.

“We’ll be seen as too liberal.”
Why would objective journalism be mistaken for having a political slant at all? KRCC might be surprised by the magnitude of listener interest which will come from all sides of the political spectrum. Colorado is full of military families which yearn to hear unadulterated news from Iraq. More and more conservatives have come to see that the current cabal in Washington does not represent them, and they see that the media is conspicuously uncritical.

“Don’t want to.”
Well boys, pony up. When this war is finally unraveled, when the Neocons are dethroned and held accountable for their profiteering and war crimes and attacks on our civil liberties, their propagandists too will be judged.

Please join us at 1pm on Monday, December 5th as a we deliver this year’s KRCC DEMOCRACY NOW PETITIONS to Colorado College. There will be a procession of VOICES UNHEARD, (except on Democracy Now!):

1. From CAMP CASEY to the CC WORNER CENTER: north on Nevada Ave, across Cache Le Poudre, then west.

2. Come as your choice of oppressed voice. Represent people who suffer without reprieve as a result of a media which ignores their plight.

a) Kneeling supplicants can represent the downtrodden, the world poor forced to its knees: those born into indentured servitude, those imprisoned, those indiginous peoples at the mercy of globalization.

b) Participants who prefer to walk can represent other unheard voices: the infirm who rely on social services, our nation’s invisible poor, the outsourced jobless, the working poor, the injured vets, etc. Causes or identities can be depicted in posters or photos.

c) A coffin will be be dragged along to symbolize the ignored dead: the under-reported genocide, aids, state terrorism, uncounted war casualties.

d) Others still can march not as representatives of the victims but as themselves: the ignored vast population who stand in solidarity. The peace movement for example!

e) Invisible participants can represent the uncounted voters.

3. We could welcome (or provide our own) counter-protesters to attend as representatives of those who are not under-represented by NPR: fat cat Americans, Iraqi kids kissing American soldiers, an earth not suffering under global warming.

4. Those walking on their knees will use walking staffs which will trail a long red banner which reads WE WANT DEMOCRACY NOW!

5. A delegation of Colorado College students will petition President Celeste in his office at 1pm, IN ADVANCE of the arrival of the community procession.