Media Activist, Jackie Wright of Wright Enterprises engages media representatives and community leaders in a short open letter to get their read on the sudden dismissal of key staff at KGO Radio Station and the sudden change in the stations format. With Democracy dependent on a "free press," can corporate media companies provide information needed to protect the democratic process when the focus is the bottom line? Will corporate media moguls be concerned about "fair and balanced" reporting or rather debits, credits and the balance sheet?
Jackie Wright of Wright Enterprises, writes open letter to media and community leaders...
December 9, 2011
Is anybody else talking about what happened at KGO?
http://richliebermanreport.blogspot.com/2011/12/kgo-radio-day-shit-hit-fan-bloodbath-at.html
Anyone else think SF Chronicle's choice of Ray Taliaferro's photo added insult to injury?
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/12/01/MNMM1M7B9E.DTL
Of all the years of Taliaferro being on KGO, is this the only photo SF Gate had?
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In a story about the "veterans leaving," the accomplished broadcast legend and community leader is pictured between two clowns. Really?! This is the most professional photo that the San Francisco Chronicle could find?
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My Google search found several distinguished images. How about yours?
If people are fearing for their jobs as the "Fourth Estate" crumbles can we trust the news we need to make valid conscientious decisions about our democracy. Will people who are fearful lie and sensationalize news to keep their jobs?
For those in organizations, any dialogue and/or action being taken to address local "media matters?"
Is there a need to shore up minority and alternative media companies all the more?
http://www.wrightnow.biz/apps/articles/default.asp?articleid=75705&columnid=
Media companies and news being manipulated to create a stronger bottom-line and to make money is one thing....but add the reality of unbalanced reporting and its impact to cause us to "pull the trigger faster," as Dr. Kang says in Trojan Horses of Race (http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=627381); can we hear the wind whistling as our democracy falls. Are we at the beginning of the fall, in mid flight, or just about to hit the ground?
Just asking,
Jackie
December 9, 2011
KPOO News Director Harrison Chastang responds:
This consolidation is happening with college stations, which are selling to nonprofit corporations that play classical or religious music and eliminate community and student produced programming. This happened here early this year with KUSF. Nearly all these changes are legal and the FCC usually rubber stamps whatever changes require FCC approval, regardless of protests from the community. This consolidation has had a tremendous impact African Americans in that it has forced Black station owners to sell out and when these ownership changes occur, usually the people fired are the few Black folks who are on the air. Since ownership changes at KGO radio, longtime Black anchor Rosie Allen left the station and now Ray is gone. KBLX is for sale and there's no guarantee that Kevin Brown & Co. will keep their jobs if new owners go with a non-urban format.
There's legislation in congress to further revise the communication act to allow corporations to buy even more stations. If Obama is not re elected and republicans take control of congress it will happen. It's one of the under the radar reasons not discussed on the campaign trail or debates on why the president needs to be re-elected and the GOP not get control of the house/senate.
Harrison Chastang
HAND WRITING ON THE WALL
Warnings from broadcast mogul, Ted Turner--- The Current Media Trends Can Kill US
My Beef with Big Media- How government protects big media--and shuts out upstarts like me. by Ted Turner, Washington Monthly, 2004
..."Loss of localism also undercuts the public-service mission of the media, and this can have dangerous consequences. In early 2002, when a freight train derailed near Minot, N.D., releasing a cloud of anhydrous ammonia over the town, police tried to call local radio stations, six of which are owned by radio mammoth Clear Channel Communications. According to news reports, it took them over an hour to reach anyone--no one was answering the Clear Channel phone. By the next day, 300 people had been hospitalized, many partially blinded by the ammonia. Pets and livestock died. And Clear Channel continued beaming its signal from headquarters in San Antonio, Texas--some 1,600 miles away. "
The current media conglomerate trends causes a triple blight according to Turner, "quality suffers, localism suffers, and democracy itself suffers."
READ ENTIRE ARTICLE
https://washingtonmonthly.com/magazine/julyaugust-2004/my-beef-with-big-media/