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Open Letter to the NAB
Drafted by FAIR and signed by media activists including Noam Chomsky, Bob McChesney & Ben Bagdikian, this letter reminds the NAB that the airwaves belong to the people.
Below is an open letter to the president of the NAB from FAIR and several notable media activists and organizations, including Noam Chomsky, Ben Bagdikian, Robert McChesney, Media Alliance, Global Exchange, and others.
If you\'d like to write to Mr. Fritts yourself, he can be reached at efritts [at] nab.org, or 202-429-5300 (NAB general phone), 202-775-3520 (NAB fax). FAIR always advises that polite letters are taken more seriously.
http://www.fair.org/nab.html
******
Edward O. Fritts
President and CEO
National Association of Broadcasters
1771 N Street, NW
Washington, DC 20036
September 18, 2000
Dear Mr. Fritts,
We are writing to remind the NAB that this country\'s airwaves are the property of the American people. Independent, critical and genuinely representative media are crucial to a healthy democracy; without them, citizens lose the means to control and participate in the public debate that sets the nation\'s political agenda.
As it stands today, the broadcasting industry is failing to serve the public. Dissenting political viewpoints are routinely marginalized in national mainstream media, and the interests and perspectives of women, people of color, labor, local communities, and lesbians, gays and bisexuals are consistently underrepresented. Across the country, programming that addresses local concerns is almost non-existent: A study by the Benton Foundation and the Media Access Project recently found that local public affairs shows made up less than one half of one percent of the fare offered by commercial broadcasters. Thirty-five percent of the stations surveyed had no local news, and 25 percent had no local public affairs programming whatsoever.
The broadcasters represented by the NAB get free access to our airwaves
If you\'d like to write to Mr. Fritts yourself, he can be reached at efritts [at] nab.org, or 202-429-5300 (NAB general phone), 202-775-3520 (NAB fax). FAIR always advises that polite letters are taken more seriously.
http://www.fair.org/nab.html
******
Edward O. Fritts
President and CEO
National Association of Broadcasters
1771 N Street, NW
Washington, DC 20036
September 18, 2000
Dear Mr. Fritts,
We are writing to remind the NAB that this country\'s airwaves are the property of the American people. Independent, critical and genuinely representative media are crucial to a healthy democracy; without them, citizens lose the means to control and participate in the public debate that sets the nation\'s political agenda.
As it stands today, the broadcasting industry is failing to serve the public. Dissenting political viewpoints are routinely marginalized in national mainstream media, and the interests and perspectives of women, people of color, labor, local communities, and lesbians, gays and bisexuals are consistently underrepresented. Across the country, programming that addresses local concerns is almost non-existent: A study by the Benton Foundation and the Media Access Project recently found that local public affairs shows made up less than one half of one percent of the fare offered by commercial broadcasters. Thirty-five percent of the stations surveyed had no local news, and 25 percent had no local public affairs programming whatsoever.
The broadcasters represented by the NAB get free access to our airwaves
For more information:
http://www.fair.org/nab.html
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What also should be pointed out is that CPB and Ford Foundation-sponsored media, like the media controlled by NAB members, also deny free speech rights to politically radical U.S. working-class people. Some of the same folks who sit on the board of the corporate media conglomerates also sit on the board of trustees of Establishment Foundations. And the CPB and Establishment Foundation-sponsored PBS, NPR and Pacifica media stations have become increasingly corporatized in recent years and tend to deny equal access to anti-corporate/anti-CPB/anti-Establishment populist left political perspectives. One finds a gag rule still in place at the CPB-sponsored Pacifica Radio stations, as well as at the various CPB & Establishment Foundation-sponsored (and increasingly corporate-sponsored) PBS and NPR affiliates. In addition, many Establishment Foundation-sponsored alternative media institutions seem to deny free speech rights to the anti-corporate Movement critics of the for-profit Working Assets Inc. telecommunications company. So on a certain level one might say that both commercial media and "non-commercial" "public" radio and tv are really just two forms of corporate media and we live in a media world of corporate totalirianism.
don't forget our friends at the Pew Foundation, who make "grants" to mainstream print media reporters to churn out copy critical of public transit.
or how about our very good friends at the Heritage Foundation (gotta love that name, 'Heritage'. sorta reminds one of 'Fatherland'.), who supplied our liberal-fascist leaders with the "broken windows" theory of law-enforcement and paved the way for "quality of life'" repression against poor and homeless people in urban areas?
or our most excellent friends at the Stanley Foundation and NAMI, who are waging a national campaign to criminalize people with psychiatric labels.
oh yeah, this should be self-explantory: the Partnership for a Drug Free America. or DARE.
do I have to connect the dots?
or how about our very good friends at the Heritage Foundation (gotta love that name, 'Heritage'. sorta reminds one of 'Fatherland'.), who supplied our liberal-fascist leaders with the "broken windows" theory of law-enforcement and paved the way for "quality of life'" repression against poor and homeless people in urban areas?
or our most excellent friends at the Stanley Foundation and NAMI, who are waging a national campaign to criminalize people with psychiatric labels.
oh yeah, this should be self-explantory: the Partnership for a Drug Free America. or DARE.
do I have to connect the dots?
we're not talking about the lefty, non-profity, uptight type stuff ok?
how about pirate radio? lpfm stations broadcasting news that no one ... not abc, nbc, cbs, npr, pacfiica... will even touch.. regardless diversity solves that problem. everything is okay as long as there are one or two lefty groups that broadcast to no one but themselves and never do anything different besides make a career out of it
how about pirate radio? lpfm stations broadcasting news that no one ... not abc, nbc, cbs, npr, pacfiica... will even touch.. regardless diversity solves that problem. everything is okay as long as there are one or two lefty groups that broadcast to no one but themselves and never do anything different besides make a career out of it
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