[Kzyxtalk] [MCN-Announce]- censoring letters to the editor

[Marco McClean]

On 12/29/2016 11:38 AM, Mark Slafkes wrote:
 > ...Our Seniors are hungry, housed in awful living conditions, and are 
being abandoned to God only knows what.  To me, *these* are the shameful 
acts and not the failure of the Advocate to publish a letter, unedited.
 >
 > Folks, please focus on the real tragedies that are taking place every 
day.
 >
 > This one woman's experience of the death of an elder is only 
scratching the surface of what we are doing to elders on the coast.
 >
 > Rather than focus on the Advocate's failure to provide a desired 
forum for someone's distress, how about actually helping the Senior 
Center to support our elders.  How about forcing the Mendocino County 
Health Department to...


     Exactly, dude, and Joe had to go /around/ the absentee-owned 
pretend-local rag's censorship of his mother's letter to bring you to 
comment so. He had to go to /real publications to announce the censorship./

     A newspaper's chief duty is to provide "a forum for someone's 
distress." The other places Joe informed-- MendocinoSportsPlus, and the 
listserv, and the Anderson Valley Advertiser, and KNYO-- are at least 
trying to perform that service, where the so-called Fort Bragg Advocate 
never reliably has.

     I can't count the times people have told me they wrote a letter to 
the Advocate/Beacon and the editors refused to publish it because they 
were afraid of pissing off advertisers and the city administration, or 
they were afraid of being sued. A /real/ local newspaper's letters 
column is a common carrier. My paper was. My teevee show was. My radio 
show is.


     Speaking of which, I'll be doing my radio show by live remote from 
away this Friday night, so if you were planning to come to the 
storefront and play your musical instrument(s) or talk about your 
project, let that be next week (Jan. 6) when I'll be back in town. It's 
325 N. Franklin, next to the Tip Top bar. Just walk in and head for the 
lighted room at the back and get my attention. I'll leave a microphone 
on for you.

     Whether here or there I'm always happy to read aloud on the air 
whatever you send me. That's the main reason I do the show; everything 
else is filler. Just email it to me by about 5pm Friday.

     Memo of the Air: Good Night Radio, 9pm to about 4am every Friday 
night on 107.7fm KNYO-LP in or near Fort Bragg, and midnight to 3am on 
105.1fm KMEC-LP in or near Ukiah. And http://knyo.org everywhere.

     By the way, speaking of censorship, it's coming up on five years 
I've been waiting for the people who run KZYX to schedule my show there. 
And they still don't pay their airpeople, while they pay just a handful 
of people in the office a quarter of a million dollars a year, enough to 
entirely fund KNYO for twenty years.


--
Marco McClean
memo at mcn.org
http://MemoOfTheAir.wordpress.com