[Kzyxtalk] Participate, boardmember. Be a person.

[Marco McClean]

Participate, boardmember. Be a person.


To the board of MCPB (KZYX):


When I said that you're using the same consistently idiotic management 
model, I meant that everything at KZYX has been and is constructed to 
limit freedom and creativity. You start out from a standpoint that 
people are /not/ free in every area of their show, until a single aspect 
of one of these restrictions catches the public's attention and of 
course you get a flood of complaints, and then you reluctantly allow a 
little freedom in that narrow case, say, /See? Look how free everything 
is! And give us a chance! And give us a break! And shame on people for 
making a fuss! We've only been here for two months! (Then six months, 
then six years, and so on.)/ and then you shuffle backward into the 
shadows again. It's not one step forward, one step back; it's never even 
a single full step forward. So nothing can change for the better. And 
that's what I meant by saying you've just put a friendlier-seeming color 
of paint over your systemic problems, not improved things, not 
progressed. It's what you've been doing and not doing since 1989.


Here's something that's never talked about: Whose show it is? When a 
local person does a show on KZYX, he's denied the freedom to speak his 
opinions. And you justify that by saying that the airperson is 
representing KZYX, and you (suddenly, inexplicably) want to be (falsely) 
fair. But when a person whose show you're paying for, someone far away 
--say, Amy Goodman-- expresses an opinion or presents an entire hour of 
only one side of an issue, that's fine with you, because that's 
her/their show. Why is one situation grounds for losing or restricting 
or threatening the show and the other just fine with you?


I've heard airperson after airperson on KZYX down through the years 
nervously stutter on the air about how he's not supposed to, or can't, 
weigh in on this or that issue that comes up, and that's what I'm 
talking about. That's what the /chilling effect on freedom of speech/ means.


My show is my show, no matter what radio station runs it. Two are 
running it now, soon a third one. And when my show, which addresses all 
sides of hundreds of nuanced issues each time --and has done since 
February of 1997-- is on KZYX I won't stand for any unconstitutional 
interference in what I and writers and callers express. Because this is 
still America, despite its being encumbered by organizations of people 
like you.


And I'm still waiting for any response at all from your so-called 
program director to my weeks and weeks of emails to pd at kzyx.org, the 
address he said over and over on the air to use, as his own is somehow a 
secret (as was the process of hiring him, and hiring Lorraine, for that 
matter) as I'm also waiting for any substantial response from the 
individual boardmembers I was told by Meg that I'm writing to when I use 
this one-way web widget buried deep in your byzantine website. How can 
anyone trust that you're considering the concerns of writers when it 
just vanishes into a black hole from which no information emerges? And 
how is adding a layer of committees entirely chosen by you to run 
interference on information to and from you going to help?


Each of you MCPB boardmembers should participate daily as individuals in 
a forum open to everyone. If you won't put the forum on your webpage 
--and Meg Courtney has written (privately to people who angered her by 
sharing it) that you will never do that because, she says, "It would be 
a free for all," then at least subscribe to kzyxtalk at lists.mcn.org and 
participate daily in the harmless but at least public free-for-all 
there. At least you would be leaning forward, you know, preparing to step.


Again, if you don't feel like engaging the public in any timely way on 
the subject of a public radio station, what business do you have 
squatting on the board of a public radio station? If you want board 
elections in future to seem free and open and trustworthy, as the ones 
so far have not been, you have to do more than just read aloud, on a 
single show before the board election, your half-page happyface campaign 
statements about transparency and caring about radio and how much you 
like jazz.


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