[Kzyxtalk] Minutes and public inspection file.

[Marco McClean]

To Jonathan Middlebrook, secretary, Mendocino County Public Broadcasting 
Corporation:

I'm just checking in to make sure you did as I asked and inserted the 
text of my eight-minute address to the board into the minutes of the 
July 16 meeting and then put it in the KZYX public inspection file. I'll 
expect to find it there next time I visit.

I read a three-minute version at the board meeting, and even so was cut 
off before I finished. You people act as though it's an inconvenience 
and a nuisance to deal with the public at all, and that's very sleazy of 
you. The three frequencies that MCPB squats on are a natural resource 
that belongs to everyone. Broadcast radio frequencies don't belong to 
any corporation; you're granted temporary use of them, that's all, and 
all dealings regarding them should be out in the open and be discussed 
in public. Keep that in mind. The way you have always done it, the only 
time the public can interact with the board is during board meetings, 
and restricting comments to barely enough time to blow one's nose is an 
insult. You refuse to put the board meetings on the air, and you refuse 
to engage in dialog on sensitive subjects, and in any case three minutes 
is not anywhere near enough. Your sour time-monitor guy growling at the 
old Native American woman who went thirty seconds over time, "So you 
don't want to play by the rules, eh!" when another person offered to 
give up her time so the woman could finish a sentence, is typical of 
your bad attitude as a board.

Transparency is a serious issue. I also want all the information that's 
come up in what Jeffrey Parker called in his report the "collaborative 
process" of the CPB audit so far. It's more than two months into the 
process; there must be something. Email it to me at your earliest 
convenience. Don't procrastinate about this. Putting little things off 
just means they don't get done. The public has a right to know now, not 
to be kept out for more months (or years) until you've cooked it into a 
positive message about yourselves. You don't have to even read it; just 
collect up all the related emails and files and send them. No-one has 
any right to keep secrets about this. There is no expectation of privacy.

Oh, right, other information I want is the exact nature of Stuart 
Campbell's current function at the station, in detail. I've heard him 
described as the Darth Vader of MCPB. I've seen and heard of him 
tiptoeing around behind the scenes, whispering in the ears of 
boardmembers and passing secret messages (or instructions?) to the 
moderator of election forums, and then yez all glace rather 
deferentially to him, and sheepishly, too, so I rather think of him as 
Grima Wormtongue. Anyway, shine a light there. And of course give all 
this information also to your crack news team so they can read it on the 
air, because that's definitely news.

I hope Jeffrey Parker is enjoying the paddleball toy I gave him. I 
imagine he might be getting bored during those long 
forty-dollars-an-hour hours with his feet up on the desk, watching a bee 
on the window, and I remember how energized Mel Brooks looked playing 
paddleball in the governor's chambers in /Blazing Saddles/ --you know: 
"We gotta save our phony-baloney /jobs/, gentlemen!" and when I saw the 
toy in the dollar store it just clicked; I knew who needed one of those.

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