So, Miss Hillary and Miss Barbara are tired of that right wing radio
and are thinking about how to legislatively "fix" the problem. Okay,
their staffers are now saying that conversation never happened and we all know Mrs. Clinton doesn't lie to the help.
It seems the progressive left not only wants to muffle talk radio,
but boost their own voices and not have to worry that no one wants to
pay for their "product."
On the Friday June 22nd Democracy Now! television program, hostess Amy Goodman interviewed Hannah Sassaman of the Prometheus Radio Project,
which she hopes will help small, low-powered radio stations in urban
areas spring up, and get "information" out to the community. Sounds
like a good idea on its face, but when you consider what Clinton and
Boxer have planned for profitable talk radio programming, one need
examine what Ms. Sassaman and Prometheus really have up their sleeves.
Before we get to the interview, Hannah's bio from the Prometheus website….
"Hannah Sassaman
- For five years, Hannah Sassaman has led campaigns against Clear
Channel, the National Association of Broadcasters, and for responsible
limits on media consolidation in the United States. A key organizer of
major FCC localism hearings in San Antonio and Rapid City in 2004, as
well as in Nashville in 2006, Hannah is just back from building 3 radio
stations across Kenya with independent African journalists, community
organizations and educational groups. In 2005, she helped coordinate
the successful building of an FCC-licensed emergency radio station used
by families displaced by Hurricane Katrina. She has been featured in
segments on NPR's On the Media, Democracy Now, CNN, C-Span, and a
variety of other TV, radio, and print sources. Fresh to Prometheus from
the Philadelphia IMC and the University of Pennsylvania, Hannah is
banned from all official National Association of Broadcasters events."
Okay then….
AMY GOODMAN: As concern over media
consolidation intensifies, a series of developments have occurred in
Washington that could result in the creation of hundreds, if not
thousands, of new non-commercial radio stations. On Thursday,
Congressmembers Mike Doyle and Lee Terry introduced the Local Community
Radio Act of 2007 to allow the FCC to grant more licenses to low-power
FM stations. A similar bill is being introduced in the Senate.
Meanwhile, the FCC is opening the door for new noncommercial and
education full-power radio stations. The FCC has announced there will
be a weeklong window beginning in mid-October for applications to be
filed.
To talk more about these developments, Hannah Sassaman joins us
here in the firehouse studio. She's the program director of Prometheus
Radio Project. Welcome.
HANNAH SASSAMAN: Thank you so much.
AMY GOODMAN: So explain this bill.
HANNAH SASSAMAN: Well, it's really exciting.
And listening to the headlines that you just read just now, it really
makes me think how many communities out there, especially urban
communities, don't have their own news, aren't able to communicate the
diverse information that happens in their communities. Senators John
McCain and Maria Cantwell, as well as Congressmembers Mike Doyle and
Lee Terry — so these are bipartisan teams — just introduced the Local
Community Radio Act of 2007. What this bill will do, if passed, is it
will let the FCC grant hundreds, if not thousands of new community
radio stations in urban areas.
Is there any leftist cause McCain ISN'T involved in…?
HANNAH SASSAMAN: When
the FCC established the low-power FM radio service, low-power FM,
groups in cities like New Orleans, Minneapolis, Albuquerque, San
Francisco, would have been able to have their own community radio
stations. One fantastic group, the Hmong Community Art Center in
Minneapolis, was raring to go. They were about to build their station,
but because the National Association of Broadcasters, which is the
large lobbying agency that represents Clear Channel, Cumulus, ABC, all
the big broadcasters, worked together with NPR to convince Congress
that low-power FM, if you built these community stations —
100 watts — in big cities would interfere with large stations of 50,000
watts or higher. So Congress limited low-power FM to towns like
Opelousas, Louisiana, rather than New Orleans, and Oroville,
California, rather than San Francisco.
These bills would reverse that ban, taking into account
essential research conducted by the FCC that proves there's plenty of
room for these stations. Now is the time when we have to act to let
thousands of communities have their own community radio.
Okay, so it's starting to come out in drips and drabs. Corporate
radio is the bad guy. No one is willing to pay for liberal radio that
no one listens to, SO let's get the taxpayers to give us stations for
free! Ain't that always how it works with these people?
Let's continue….
AMY GOODMAN: How do people find out about it? How do people apply to get a community radio station?
HANNAH SASSAMAN: After Congress — well, first
of all, Congress needs to get these bills passed. And there are
thousands of community members and many, many strong organizations,
everyone from the Christian Coalition to Free Press to the Future of
Music Coalition to Consumers Union and many, many other groups, are
letting people know that these bills are on the table.
Mention the Christian Coalition to make her come off as fair and non-partisan….
Once these bills are passed, the FCC will announce a
licensing window, when any noncommercial group, whether you're a
community church, a department of transportation, a chamber of commerce
or a school, you can talk to the FCC, fill out your form and get a free
license, in order to serve your community with essential information.
One of the stories I really like to tell is of
WQRZ-LP in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi. When Hurricane Katrina made
landfall at ground zero, basically, in Waveland and in Bay St. Louis in
Hancock County, of the forty-one stations lining the Mississippi and
Louisiana Gulf Coast, only a handful stayed on the air, and WQRZ-LP,
this low-power noncommercial station, was one of them. When this
station was broadcasting about the storm, local volunteers swam across
the floodwaters with batteries strapped to their back to keep the
station on the air. It was the only source of local information for
forty-eight hours after the storm, and because it was so essential, the
Emergency Operations Center of Hancock County set up shop with that
station and became the FEMA headquarters, and it got a commendation
from the President.
Hurricane Katrina is always progressive code for "Black people."
Whenever using Black people, liberals love to cite Hurricane Katrina.
I'd be willing to bet that the majority of these new radio stations
will be owned and operated by liberal whites. Just watch….
HANNAH SASSAMAN: These
stations not only save lives, but are deeply relevant to their
communities. If you're a farmworker community and you speak Zapotec and
Quiche as your primary languages and Spanish as a second language, you
can't rely on Clear Channel, Viacom or Infinity for your news. In order
to connect to your community, to organize for rights in the fields, you
need your own community radio station, like Radio Consciencia of
WCTI-LP in Immokalee, Florida, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers'
station. These stations are tools for social justice, and if we don't
take this chance to build them now, we'll never forgive ourselves when
we turn around in twenty years and hear the same corporate drivel and
the same Christian right radio that we now have to abide by in our big
cities and our small communities.
"Stations are tools for social justice" and here's the money line, "… same Christian right radio that we now have to abide by."
So while the intentions may be veiled to be one of providing the
poor with community information communications opportunities, Hannaman
admits it's that damned Christian right radio that's bringing everyone
down and this is a way to level the playing field.
AMY GOODMAN: And then you have a window opening up in October for full-power FM radio stations.
HANNAH SASSAMAN: It's
very exciting. This is the last time in a generation that groups living
in primarily suburban and rural areas will get to apply for stations
like WBAI, which is the flagship for Democracy Now! — 50,000
watts, 100,000 watts — serving huge areas. The FCC is giving away these
licenses for free, but only for the week beginning October 12.
The Radio for People Coalition at radioforpeople.org,
which consists of the Pacifica Network, of groups like Free Press, the
Future of Music Coalition, many associated churches, schools, civil
rights organizations are doing their best to get the word out. If
listeners to this program care about building an infrastructure that
can talk about local peace issues, about local political issues, about
youth issues and about the diverse news that we need to survive, it is
everyone's responsibility to tell people that now is the chance to
build their own full-power stations, as well.
"Peace issues, diverse news that we need to survive." Sounds like good lefty stuff here.
AMY GOODMAN: So when that window opens for one week in October, what do people do?
HANNAH SASSAMAN: What people do is, is they
need to start now, because it's not just like low-power FM, where it's
actually quite a simple process to get a station, which we'll come to
after Congress passes these bills, but for full-power FM, you have to
prove to the FCC that there's plenty of room in your local community
for a 10,000- or 50,000-watt station.
The Prometheus Radio Project is a group that's been helping
people since 1998 to apply for their own stations. So us, the groups
like Public Radio Capital and the Radio for People Coalition can help
you connect with a lawyer and engineer to create the engineering
exhibits you need to prove that there's room to build an institution
for media democracy in your town.
The progressives almost always say Conservatives tell lies. People
like Ms. Hannaman try and come off as non-partisan compassionates, but
in the end, they are the same old shrill, screaming liberals that have
to deceive those they believe are intellectually inferior to get their
way.
The layers of the "Silence Dissent" onion are being peeled off one-by-one.