[Nettime-bold] RE: <nettime> Followup report on WBAI and Democracy Now

[ronda@ais.org (Ronda Hauben)]

"Jon Lebkowsky" <jonl@well.com> writes:

Ronda <ronda@ais.org> wrote:

>> It is good that Democracy Now is back on the air.

>Ronda, your message is somewhat misleading. "Democracy Now!" was never "off
>the air." You can listen online, the archive is at
>http://www.democracynow.org/archive/index.html.

It was no local issue - it was an effort to try out censorship
by cutting the program out definitely in NYC that day.


WBAI is a local NYC station. To cut the program in NYC where
people have been fighting against the attempt of Pacifica Radio
to change the nature of local stations is the issue.

>The program is broadcast by over 30 stations - the list is at
>http://www.democracynow.org/stations.html.

But if the program was cut off where its home station is -- that
is a deliberate act on the part of someone to test the waters
for censorship of it. Its interesting that instead of recognizing
that and being glad that someone from NYC is pointing out what
is happening, there is an effort to deny the reality by pointing
to secondary issues.

I don't know whether the program was carried by any other station 
elsewhere the day it was cut from  NYC broadcast. But the fact
that if a program is cut off from its local audience, to say that 
that isn't censorship -- that seems to try to create the misleading
notion that the NYC broadcast doesn't matter and the fight of 
people in NYC to challenge the efforts of Pacifica's board to take
over the local WBAI station.

>Even if WBAI stopped broadcasting the program, that wouldn't mean that it
>was "off the air" if it was broadcast by 30+ other stations. 

But the program is created at WBAI. If it isn't allowed to be
heard on WBAI that is censorship.

And as I am in NYC I don't know if it was heard anywhere else.

But the point is it is appropriate to challenge any efforts to 
take it off WBAI as censorship.

Ronda
ronda@ais.org
http://www.columbia.edu/~rh120/


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