Radio, Democracy, and Breaking the Law

In my weekly course session, I discussed a dilemma. Our options for local, community focused radio seem to be either or. Either we have great community programming that no one listens to, for lack of time and money. Or we have crappy commercial radio that everyone listens to, thanks to plenty of time and money being available at a commercial enterprise.

There is however, another option, and I have seen it. I WAS IMPRESSED!

I used to write Business Plans for a living. If someone wanted a small business loan, they would hire me to write their plan for them. The plan would be in my customer's head, and my job was to interview him or her and document their business strategy, as part of documenting the loan.

Which brings me to community radio. I was hired once by an immigrant who was relatively new to the states. His primary business was a retail store that catered to the local population from his country of origin. His side business, however, was to operate an unlicensed radio station. The local broadcast was very popular with the local population. He provided them important information that no one else would consider relevant, for free. It was commercial in the sense that advertisers paid him (well below market rates), and that was how he funded the site.

This is, of course, completely illegal. The FCC routinely caught up with him and shut him down. But he would simply wait a short time, then set up on a different frequency, and go right back into business.

Common sense dictates this is not a viable solution to community radio broadcasts being made available to low income immigrant communities. If everyone did it, where would we be? But I can't help admiring his entrepreneurial spirit and fearless disregard for FCC jail, or whatever the FCC does to broadcast miscreants.

I do believe it was the legendary economist Milton Freidman who said: America's strength lies in the ability of everyday Americans to ignore the government and break the law... or something to that effect.

Democracy & Public Access TV

"Public Access Television and the Struggle for Democracy" by Douglas Kellner was extremely thought provoking. It appears to be dated material, and we are presently living out the threats to Democracy that Kellner feared. Mass media news, for example, has now been completely transformed into a profit-centered commodity. What Kellner did not see coming, however, were two other major problems that accompanied this dramatic change.

First is that internet news would be free. But more importantly, internet news would become a bland, generic commodity.

Second is that mass media news would become internationalized. Mass media now serves up commodity news to the entire world. That of course leaves no room for old-fashioned patriotism where Americans are allowed to celebrate victories over our enemies, nor is there room for local community activists to highlight the ills produced by globalization.

I'm beginning to see for myself what Aufderheide stresses in his keynote address. (Daniels also alludes to this in his video interview.) There is great potential in public access television when it is distributed on the internet. In my mind, it solves many of the pressing issues. It would bypass today's mass media outlets: high circulation newspapers that amount to nothing more than junk mail delivery systems wrapped in Associated Press articles, sensationalist local TV newscasts that feature endless rapes, murders, and fires, and empty world newscasts that serve up more commercials than information.

While the internet does provide mass access for community based news, a way must be found to penetrate commodity news and silly YouTube videos. Work is being done on this, as shown by the PEGspace intitiative. Grand Rapids TV is tackling it head-on. They can now be found on MySpace. Lowell is creating a Web presence for itself, as described by Jason Daniels. He makes an excellent argument for Democracy when he says we need to get away from self reverential videos on the internet, and start paying attention to community driven efforts.

Local productions with worldwide distribution could overcome the constant drum of globalized everything; where everyone on the planet must respect everyone else on the planet. I believe globalizing our information outlets is a formula for us all becoming Stepford Earthlings and accomplishing absolutely nothing!