Earlier this week we explored how left wing listener supported radio station KPFA in Berkeley is debating Republican libertarian candidate Ron Paul. Just to be bi-partisan, now let’s see how conservative talk radio guy Michael Savage is handling the Texas Congressional representative. Keep in mind that several months ago, Savage offered Newt Gingrich a million dollars to get out of the primary race, “for the sake of the nation.”

Savage: All right, let’s take the callers. Barbara in New York on WOR, go ahead please.

Barbara: Michael, it won’t make any difference if Obama wins or not, because all the Republican candidates are the same. And you know the only candidate, the “deranged” Ron Paul, is the only one who has spoken out against, not only NDAA, but SOPA, Stop Online Piracy Act . . . he spoke out against the Patriot Act years ago. He’s the only one warning about the fascism and oppression coming to America. And he’s been right.

Savage: Hold on. He is right, but he’s not electable.

Barbara: You supported John McCain four years ago, and who was the author of the . . .

Savage: Woah woah woah hold on a minute. Stop. You wanted me to support Obama?

Barbara: No. I want you to support the candidate that supports the constitution.

Savage: Wait. Don’t get hysterical. Please. It’s one thing to say the man has some good ideas and some crazy ideas. It’s another thing to be a realist and ask yourself ‘could he beat Obama.’ You don’t really believe that he could beat Obama, do you?

Barbara: That’s where you are wrong. You think nutcase Newt can beat Obama?

Savage: No. When did I say that? Ma’am. Ma’am. Stop. You sound like you are hysterical. You sound just like Ron Paul. Why are all the Ron Paul addicts so hysterical (I’d like to know)?

Barbara: Because they care about this country and they’re tired . . .

Savage: You mean only you care about the country? I don’t care about the country?

Barbara: Let me just say this: the Republicans are no different from the Democrats. Not one of them has spoken out against NDAA or SOPA or the Patriot Act; they’re all for going all over and bombing all over . . .

Savage: Well, you’re wrong. When you say ‘none of them have spoken out,’ you mean none of the Republican Senators?

Barbara: None of the Republican candidates have spoken out against NDAA, except for Ron Paul.

Savage: Ok. On this point you are correct. But this still does not make the crackpot electable.

Barbara: He’s not a crackpot, Michael. He’s been saying things that you agree with.

Savage: Really. He’s being saying things that I agree with? You mean I agree that Israel should be annihilated and disappeared off the planet like he does? . . . You want me to play the sound bite? . . . [a lengthy debate about Israel ensued; see update below]

Barbara: Michael, I’ve been voting since 1972. I voted for George McGovern because he was anti-war, so it’s not like I’m naive and—

Savage: So you’re confirming what I suspect. Most people who support Ron Paul are dyed-in-the-wool liberals.

Barbara: I’m not a liberal! . . . I’m an American!

[UPDATE - readers are complaining that I left out the part of the debate that focused on Israel. I just thought it was too long and involved, but due to popular demand, here goes]:

Savage: I will be happy to play the sound bit of Ron Paul basically calling for Israel’s non-existence.

Barbara: No he’s not. And he’s the only one, let me remind you, in 1980 or ’81, when Israel bombed the nuclear power plant in Iran [actually, it was Iraq], the only one who supported it was Ron Paul! Because Ron Paul believes that Israel should take care of herself, she should have the right to defend herself, without any kind of overseer by the United States.

Savage: That’s all well and good, but where is Israel supposed to get its arms from, since all of its weaponry is American. Other than the domestically manufactured material, where is Israel supposed to get its munitions from? The bunker busting bombs that it has come from the United States of America. So that’s a moot point to say that Israel should defend itself. Without weapons it can’t defend itself.

Barbara: It’s got plenty of weapons, Michael, and you know it. It’s got more weapons probably than we do by now. And they do a damn pretty good job of defending themselves. Remember the raid on Entebbe? They do very well.

Savage: Entebbe was a long time ago. That’s when they had real leadership in Israel, before the people with Saks Fifth Avenue charge accounts took over the country. That’s before the Russians came to Israel. That’s when Israel was still Israel. Israel is a shell of its former self.

Barbara: It’s up to Israel to get its own leadership, like its up to the United States to get its leadership that’s authorized by the constitution.

Berkeley, California based listener supported station KPFA did an interesting and informative program on the candidacy of libertarian Republican Ron Paul on Tuesday. KFPA talk show host, Mitch Jeserich, hosted the discussion on his Letters and Politics show as Republicans (including Paul) compete for favor in the Iowa Caucuses. [UPDATE 10:41 PM CST: Paul comes in close third in Iowa race].

The program began with Nation magazine correspondent John Nichols, who characterized the Iowa event as “a sort of Kabuki theater, where most of the people who go don’t actually participate in the delegate selection process, they just go to participate in a glorified straw poll.” But that poll result, “doesn’t have anything to do with delegate selection. So while it is said that this is the beginning of the [Republican] nominating process, it’s really sort of a false construct.”

The real beginning of the process comes next week in New Hampshire, Nichols noted, where a more traditional primary will take place. And Nichols doubted that the Republican “party bosses” will let Paul get very far.

Nonetheless, much of the progressive blogosophere has been engaged in a fierce debate over Paul, who insists that he did not author various racist statements famously identified in his Reagan/Clinton era newsletter. Despite this, and Paul’s opposition to right of women to choose, Medicare, the Civil Rights Act, and other 20th-century reforms, bloggers who offer qualified defenses of his campaign note his opposition to the war in Iraq and Afghanistan, the war on drugs, the Patriot Act, and Federal implementation of the death penalty.

“Ron Paul is the only major candidate from either party advocating crucial views on vital issues that need to be heard, and so his candidacy generates important benefits,” contends Salon writer Glen Greenwald. Ditto says Robert Scheer in The Nation, given Paul’s “devastating critique of crony capitalism and his equally trenchant challenge to imperial wars and the assault on our civil liberties that they engender.”

Other writers, such as Bill Weinberg of the World War 4 Report, don’t see it this way. “If we ever see a President Paul, he’ll be bringing the troops home from Iraq and Afghanistan, all right,” Weinberg warns “—to wage a race war in Los Angeles, New York, Chicago and Houston.”

Nichols told Jeserich that he thinks the Paul cause is “a very dangerous game.”

“I understand that there are people who are passionate supporters of civil rights, Medicare, and Medicaid, who simply want to send a message and this is a way to do it,” Nichols explained. “But Ron Paul is a pretty complex player, and he has a lot of history on these issues that is pretty unsettling—in some cases repulsive.”

The conversation then went to Glen Ford of the Black Agenda Report, who was asked for his opinion of Paul.

“I hope he does well,” Ford began. “I don’t like him, but it’s really a reflection on what’s happening in the Democratic Party, that the only conversation that the corporate media finds compelled to cover that has anything to do with empire . . . is coming from the Republican Party or from this libertarian within the Republican Party. So for those of us who would like to hear the term ‘empire’ uttered, Ron Paul is the only show among the two parties. He’s the only game in town.”

Jeserich asked Ford about the more controversial comments coming out of Paul’s newsletter.

“Paul comes from a cultural, political milieu that is totally saturated with racism,” Ford observed. “He is a hyper-American nationalist. And many people say how could that be, he is talking about the end of American empire; that’s not what we associate with hyper-American nationalists. But there has always been an American nationalism that was isolationist.”

Ford noted that isolationists have for a century opposed the integration of forcibly acquired nations like the Philippines and Cuba on racial grounds, citing fears of “mongrelization.”

“These strains have always been among us, and I think that Ron Paul actually is part of that older strain, very strong, that just doesn’t get talked about in the American political conversation.”

Jeserich asked Ford what he thought about progressives who see Paul as someone who could potentially make President Obama address issues that otherwise won’t be raised?

“Obviously they’re looking for the magic wand and some kind of way to oppose these corporatist policies of Obama that he shares, in fact, with the Republicans,” Ford replied. “They’d like a magic wand; some kind of button to push in the electoral arena, that would allow them to avoid the hard, hard work of grassroots movement building that is necessary.”

An interesting show, definitely worth podcasting or downloading.

The FCC is currently down one commissioner due to Republican Meredith Atwell Baker stepping aside last spring. Democrat Michael Copps is on an “extended term” that is set to end at the end of this Congressional term. So the FCC is due to be getting by on just three commissioners by the time the new year rolls around.

Surprising just about nobody inside the beltway, President Obama nominated two experienced policy wonks with prior commission experience to fill these vacancies, Democrat Jessica Rosenworcel and Republican Ajit Varadaraj Pai. Rosenworcel served for a time as an advisor to Copps, who has been the strongest advocate for the public interest on the FCC in the last decade.

Pai served as Deputy General Counsel to former FCC chairman Kevin Martin, who tried to balance out the boneheaded consolidation-happy tendencies of his predecessor, Michael Powell, but also exhibited his own brand of ham-handedness when it came to issues of ownership regulation and localism. That said, I don’t think we can necessarily use the positions of their former bosses to predict the likely stances of either of these nominees.

Putting aside Clear Channel’s recent begging to further erode ownership rules, I doubt that we’ll see much change in the FCC’s trajectory with regard to broadcast radio if they are both confirmed by the Senate. I’ll be surprised if we see much modification from the Commission’s current proceeding on balancing LPFM expansion with new translator licenses, and even more surprised if either new commission has much influence on the outcome. Provided Rosenworcel is confirmed, there will continue to be a Democratic majority, which will be friendly to LPFM.

The policies that will most affect radio and audio media have to do with the wired, wireless and mobile broadband. Our ability to listen to streaming online radio is utterly constrained by mobile broadband data limits, which in just the last couple of years have gone from unlimited to much more limited. Data caps also matter for home cable and DSL internet, although the smaller bitrates required for streaming audio aren’t as threatened as bandwidth-intensive streaming video.

This is all affected by network neutrality and whether or not broadband providers, wired or mobile, are permitted to determine how much data we use based upon what kind of data it is and who is providing it. Our ability to listen to hours of streaming radio might be encumbered if our broadband provider decides to impose stricter limits on stations or sites that it doesn’t have some kind of contract with.

These are the issues which the new FCC commissioners will have the most impact on. However, as Public Knowledge’s Harold Feld points out, neither Pai nor Rosenworcel have released much in the way of a public record indicating their stances on hot regulatory issues. Feld describes them as, “workhorse wonks – willing to put a lot of time and effort into understanding complex issued before making any kind of decision.”

However, Pai’s and Rosenworcel’s path to the FCC is already threatened, though not due to anything about the candidates themselves. Sen. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa) says he will object to their confirmation over the fact that the Commission has yet to turn over documents related to the wireless company Lightsquared. The company plans to launch a wholesale mobile broadband service, but is dealing with data that indicates its service interferes with GPS signals. Republic lawmakers are concerned that the Obama administration may be intervening to help Lightsquared overcome these technical roadblocks.

Sen. Grassley requested documents back in April, and he plans to place a hold on the confirmations until the information is turned over. In a July 26 letter to Grassley, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski said the Commission only responds to such requests coming from committee chairs.

Lisa Simeone

The good news is that Occupy DC participant Lisa Simeone will retain her job as host of NPR World of Opera. The This is NPR blog has a brief notice mentioning that World of Opera sponsor WDAV will keep Simeone on. She came under fire yesterday for her participation in the Occupy Wall Street related protests.

Simeone fared less well, however, when it came to holding onto her position as host for Soundprint. Here’s that program’s statement about her:

Soundprint and Lisa Simeone have ended their work together after fifteen years. Soundprint is a journalistic program and Lisa’s leadership role as a member of the steering committee and a spokesperson for the October 2011 protest activities, associated with the Occupy DC movement, conflicts with her role as the host of a documentary series. Soundprint adheres to the highest standards of journalism which include maintaining appropriate distance from marches, demonstrations and other political activity. These are standards held by many other journalism organizations, including National Public Radio.

Lisa has been a dynamic and engaging host for Soundprint, and we wish her well for the future.

Simone has been less sanguine about the termination. Here are her reactions, made to David Swanson of the WarisaCrime blog:

I find it puzzling that NPR objects to my exercising my rights as an American citizen—the right to free speech, the right to peaceable assembly—on my own time in my own life.  I’m not an NPR employee.  I’m a freelancer.  NPR doesn’t pay me.  I’m also not a news reporter.  I don’t cover politics.  I’ve never brought a whiff of my political activities into the work I’ve done for NPR World of Opera.  What is NPR afraid I’ll do—insert a seditious comment into a synopsis of Madame Butterfly?

This sudden concern with my political activities is also surprising in light of the fact that Mara Liaason reports on politics for NPR yet appears as a commentator on FoxTV, Scott Simon hosts an NPR news show yet writes political op-eds for national newspapers, Cokie Roberts reports on politics for NPR yet accepts large speaking fees from businesses.  Does NPR also send out ‘Communications Alerts’ about their activities?

Lisa Simeone

This just in from the This is NPR blog.

We recently learned of World of Opera host Lisa Simeone’s participation in an Occupy DC group. World of Opera is produced by WDAV, a music and arts station based in Davidson, North Carolina. The program is distributed by NPR. Lisa is not an employee of NPR or of WDAV; she is a freelancer with the station.

We’re in conversations with WDAV about how they intend to handle this. We of course take this issue very seriously.

The right wing Daily Caller is making hay over the connection, insisting that Simeone “appears to be breaking the taxpayer-subsidized network’s ethics rules by acting as a spokeswoman for Occupy DC,” and calling it a “possible ethics violation.” Earlier this month the Xinhua news service did post an article identifying her as a “spokesperson” for the group, which is loosely affiliated with the Occupy Wall Street demonstrations happening around the country. But if you’ve followed these demos so far, you know that these OWS events have about as many spokespersons as they have participants.

That’s only one reason why the brouhaha seems like pretty weak tea. The Caller cites NPR rules forbidding journalists from “engag[ing] in public relations work, paid or unpaid.”

Here’s the rest of the section:

Exceptions may be made for certain volunteer nonprofit, nonpartisan activities, such as participating in the work of a church, synagogue or other institution of worship, or a charitable organization, so long as this would not conflict with the interests of NPR in reporting on activities related to that institution or organization. When in doubt, employees should consult their supervisor.

Given that Occupy Wall Street is about as non-partisan as it gets (talk to them and you’ll find out that the Democrats suck; the Republicans suck; maybe Ralph Nader and Ron Paul don’t suck but they’re not sure yet), and given that OWS is as non-profit as its gets (no money; grubby sleeping bags; donations for take-out pizza anyone?), and given that Simeone spends her on-air time talking about mostly dead composers (last shows about Wagner, Puccini, and Mozart), it’s pretty hard to see how anyone’s ethics are being harmed here.

NPR should let the nice opera lady do her thing in peace.

Update

Lisa Simeone has kept her job with World of Opera, but lost her host gig with Soundprint. All details here.

It seems that NPR listeners are grumbling again about the network’s practice of calling President Obama “Mr. Obama,” rather than using “President” on a consistent basis.

“A number of listeners have written in recent weeks complaining that NPR reporters refer to President Obama as ‘Mr. Obama’,” notes NPR ombudsman Edward Schumacher-Matos. But “since the mid-1970s it has been NPR’s policy to refer to the president as ‘Mr.’ instead of ‘President’ on second reference.”

Actually, calling presidents “Mr.” is a good idea. The ordinary salutation removes the aura of royalty from our chief executive, which was sort of the point of the American Revolution, as I recall. Perhaps NPR could use both terms, as did  Marilyn Monroe on JFK’s 1962 birthday (“Happy birrrthday, Mr. President  . . . “)?

But all Camelot nostalgia aside, Schumacher-Matos cites NPR story instances of “Mr.” going back to “Mr.” Clinton and “Mr.” George H.W. Bush.

The post also notes that NPR listeners have been angry about this issue for several years, and some don’t care if the news service has always handled the matter this way.

“It has not been any more respectable to call Presidents Bush, Clinton, Ford, Carter or Reagan ‘Mr.’ than to call President Obama so,” wrote one listener back in 2009.

Then NPR senior vice president Ellen Weiss responded that the network maintains the practice to be consistent. “We think this policy is as appropriate for President Obama as it has been for previous presidents and don’t see any compelling reason to change it,” Weiss explained.

The Medium is our Message at Occupy Wall Street. Photo by Dan Patterson

Today, more than 10 years on from LPFM’s inception, unlicensed broadcasting remains alive and well, although the act is not as explicitly politicized as it once was.

This could change.

Last week, the Occupy Wall Street encampment established a microradio station at 107.1 FM. The station simulcasts the 24/7 live stream which provides coverage of life inside Zuccotti Park, as well as street-level reportage of daily protest actions in New York City’s financial district. The growth of the occupation has been impressive, and the establishment of a microradio station is another step in the action’s evolution.

One idea that’s been batted around involves integrating broadcasting into the occupation’s General Assembly, which functions as its governing body. City ordinances forbid the use of amplified sound systems in the park, which has resulted in the development of a “human microphone” system – speakers talk in sentence-fragments, which are repeated by the crowd so all can hear the dialogue. While it’s a very participatory method of group communication, it’s slow going and not necessarily scalable as the Assemblies grow.

In this instance, microradio could be employed to provide a non-amplified public address system – simply plug the speaker’s mic into a transmitter. Radios are cheap, and many smartphones have built-in FM reception capability. Some involved in the NYC action are brainstorming along these lines.

As more occupations are launched around the nation, their organizers have taken notes on how Occupy Wall Street has grown. Adding microradio to the tactical media mix makes lots of sense.

Radio still remains one of the most powerful tools of mass media available; one need look no further than the right-wing bastion of talk radio which has done so much to sully political discourse in this country. Microradio is easily accessible to a large audience and relatively uncomplicated to deploy. Unlike most other tools of protest-media, the critical infrastructure that makes radio work is pretty much self-contained, which adds to its reliability.

Microradio is also extremely useful as an outreach tool. The station in Zuccotti Park broadcasts to the occupation and immediate neighbors, which can be useful in the maintenance of good community relations. Microradio stations have been deployed in similar situations, such as festivals, farmer’s markets and picket lines, to extend the reach and impact of such events beyond their physical presence. In addition, opening up access to the airwaves in such a public manner helps to demystify the act of broadcasting and introduce folks to the notion that the airwaves, too, are a public space.

This leads to the final rationale for incorporating microradio into occupations – it’s an occupation of its own kind. One of the grievances expressed by Occupy Wall Street directly addresses corporate control of the media. There is no better way to address that grievance than by becoming the media directly, and unlicensed broadcasting has a long and storied history in the United States. Nothing signifies independent media quite like a microradio station.

Microradio is no more or less civilly disobedient than taking over and transforming a public space. Considering that the airwaves are ostensibly public property, they should be no less off limits in this context than a park or public right-of-way. Provided they do not interfere with other broadcasters, the addition of new signals to a local radio dial is materially non disruptive; what’s more, the FCC does not have police powers (and they also abhor confrontation).

Occupy Wall Street’s media team has been integral to sustaining the encampment, spreading the word, and inspiring others. New and future occupations are learning much from what’s happening in New York, where they’re heavily engaged in multi-platform citizen journalism, utilizing everything from the newest of new media forms to publishing their own newspaper and, of course, the human microphone. Microradio falls comfortably within this continuum and can help bootstrap more intensive media efforts.

The Future of Music Coalition is a more than decade-old organization that advocates for the interests of musicians and their livelihoods in the contemporary media and networked environment. At its upcoming annual policy summit the FMC will be honoring FCC Commissioner Michael Copps for his work on behalf of the music community. Commissioner Copps and the FMC have been generally united in their opposition to industry consolidation in radio as well as in their advocacy for network neutrality. Copps and the FMC have also been supporters of low-power FM radio.

The FMC Policy Summit runs Oct. 2 – 4 in Washington, D.C. In a stark indication of the times, there are no radio-specific sessions scheduled for the summit. However there are quite a few that take up issues related to online and mobile music services, as well as dealing with royalty collections agencies like SoundExchange and working with blanket licenses.

Note that while broadcast radio stations do not pay royalties to artists, all online and satellite services do, including broadcast stations that also have internet streams. So, it should be obvious why this issue would be of interest to artists hoping to be compensated for their work.

For those who can’t make it to DC for the summit, they have a “premium” live interactive webcast planned. I don’t know if “premium” means that it’s not free, but if you’re interested you can sign up and find out.

“Terror did not attack us on September 11th, terrorists did,” she wrote to NPR.

Terror does not have hands with which to use box cutters. Terrorists do. Terror is a feeling. Terrorists are human beings who make choices to kill innocent people. The phrase “terror attacks” takes the responsibility off the men who committed premeditated murder and puts it on a feeling. Please, use the phrase “terrorist attacks” to describe what happened that day.

NPR’s Ombudsman Edward Schumacher-Matos thinks this is a valid criticism. “Do you think the phrase ‘terror attack’ diffuses personal responsibility into a generalized feeling?” he asks. “Are we sliding into a form of political correctness, or language that is so neutral that it smacks of the inability to look a terrorist in the eye and call her what she is?”

With all due respect to NPR, one comes away from this exchange sensing an inclination to replace big difficult questions with little manageable ones. That’s understandable. The problem with anniversary journalism is that there isn’t any meaningful reason for revisiting the moment in question, save that we’ve decided that birthdays have meaning.

But since the media event is upon us, I thought I’d tackle two big questions for a spell. What did September 11, 2001 mean for the United States of America, and what does it mean for radio?

Paralysis

There’s no question in my mind that the vicious Al Qaeda criminals who killed thousands of innocent people on September 11, 2001 (including a member of my family) helped push  this country into a long period of paralysis and decline. The United States responded to the attacks with two wars. The Afghanistan war made superficial sense at the time. The Iraq war made no sense. Both failed.

Worse than failing, they subsumed our nation into a unilateral “war on terror” that never really identified its target. Instead, it distracted us from the precarious health of the United States itself, verging on economic collapse after years of massive and unmonitored corruption in its financial sector. When that corruption took its devastating toll in 2008, the country briefly rallied around a new president, then sank into a morass of ideological posturing and paranoia.

Consolidation and change

Within this ten year context, the media landscape dramatically changed. By 2001 the Clear Channel consolidation was in full swing—the network gobbling up about nine percent of the nation’s radio stations, and far more of its aggregate advertising revenue. Conventional local deejays disappeared, replaced by digitized national ones, skilled in the art of sounding like they lived next door.

Meanwhile, the Pandora Music Genome project had just begun to take off in 2001. It was followed by a variety of online radio experiments that allowed users an unprecedented degree of individual choice in online music listening and production.

The consequence was a marvelous period of online creativity: podcasts, Live365-casts, and radio aggregation applications galore. But the locally based radio station that struggled to bring everyone into a real time dialogue about the nation’s future became lost in the upheaval—its project seen as almost irrelevant. Attacks on the Corporation for Public Broadcasting further threatened its prospects, especially in rural areas.

It would be naive to imagine that open public dialogue is the only solution to our national dilemma, but it is part of the solution. Today, I experience as a precious national commodity every public, college, community, and commercial radio program that attempts to bring different people together into a civil real-time discussion.

Authentic radio is live. It is local. It is about the real time sharing of music, talk, and ideas. Although I write with admiration and excitement about the latest technological developments in online radio and audio, they will mean little for us as a people if they only encourage users to listen to or produce music and talk in fragmented cubicles or tribes, cut off from others or other groups by digital space and time.

We have had enough of that in this country. We need more real radio. We need public and market based strategies that bring real radio to our ears. This is my hope on the 10th anniversary of September 11, 2001.

Ira Glass of This American Life says he’s going to give his nephew’s high school class a seminar on podcasting. But he could use some advice, Glass writes:

Specifically: what topics seemed to work the best to energize the kids and to get nice stories? Should we go for personal stories? Stuff going on with their friends or families? Or turn them into reporters, interviewing interesting people around the neighborhood, doing oral history, stuff like that? What’s seemed to work best?

You can post your feedback over at the This American Life Facebook page or radio (at) thislife (dot) org.

The public stations that Glass broadcasts over are breathing a little easier today. The new Federal budget preserves funding for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting at $445 million for 2013.

But many programs that help public TV and public/community radio stations have been cut, among them most of the cash for a digital technologies fund and all of the Department of Commerce’s Public Telecommunications Facilities Program.

The latter fund has for years helped stations upgrade transmission towers, fund shelters for transmitters, and buy new control room equipment, console furniture, auxiliary power gear, and air conditioners to protect servers from hot weather.

Now it is gone, its entire budget zeroed out by Congress.

“The elimination of the Public Telecommunications Facilities Program (PTFP) presents real challenges to public broadcasting stations’ commitment to maintain reliable service to all Americans,” said the Association of Public Television Stations in a statement sent to Broadcasting and Cable.