National Public Radio’s
scare campaign against community controlled radio
Media Review
By Ron Sokolsky
|  After
first announcing tentative plans on January 28, 1999
for legalizing low power radio and allowing for a lengthy
year long period of public comment, study and deliberation,
Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Chairman William
Kennard floated a reform proposal on January 19, 2000
which provided new rules that envisioned the licensing
of an estimated 1,000 new Low Power FM (LPFM) stations
in the range of 10-100 watts. Yet, by the end of the
first year, after 1200 applications had already been
filed in the 20 states initially eligible to participate
in the LPFM sweepstakes, Congress caved in to lobbying
pressure from both the National Association of Broadcasters
(NAB) and National Public Radio (NPR), and gutted this
already modest FCC proposal for a new LPFM radio service.
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Amidst an NAB and NPR scare campaign about potential interference
problems, the language of what had once been the industry-promoted
Radio Broadcasting Preservation Act was attached as a rider
to the Omnibus Budget Act of 2000. Using the threat of supposed
interference as a pretext, the Act limits the number of possible
licenses by holding newly created LPFM stations to an extremely
conservative standard of having to be three bandwidths, rather
than two as the FCC had originally mandated, away from any
other station already existing on the dial (89.1-92.1 instead
of 90.1-92.1, for instance).
Even with this enhanced spacing restriction, there was a
flood of applications. By late December 2000 estimates by
the pro-LPFM Prometheus Radio Project, the number of licensed
LPFM stations which met the three bandwidth requirement ranged
from 250-500. However, these stations were mostly in rural
areas because the new spacing rules are very difficult to
meet in urban localities. Of course, full implementation optimistically
assumes there are no future backroom legislative deals to
squelch the service or efforts by executive branch power brokers
to let it die on the vine from neglect.
Stalling the Process
Revealingly, in 2000, Congress called on the FCC to study
the economic impact of these new stations on corporate radio
outlets as well as the aforementioned possibility of interference
problems even with a three band-width separation safeguard
in place. As to the latter study, the new service was required
to choose nine "test market" stations from among
those already approved or else set up their own field testing
that required assembling temporary stations, which would simply
broadcast tape loops or test tones for experimental purposes
only. These newly required tests, of course, served to stall
full implementation of the LPFM service with no date specified
as to the length of the experiment. Finally, in 2003, the
MITRE study, as it was called, proved the radio industry's
claims of possible interference to be false. However, nothing
has changed in spite of Congressional lobbying efforts by
grassroots LPFM proponents for repeal of the 3 band-width
interference rule. Ultimately, Congress, which in an unprecedented
move has usurped authority for implementation from the FCC,
must decide the future of the new radio service. As early
as 2001, the future of a more expansive LPFM looked bleak
with George W. Bush in the White House, a Republican-controlled
Congress and the presidentially-appointed FCC chair, Michael
Powell, calling the shots.
While the FCC's original LPFM rules were ultimately superseded
by Congressional edict, it is worth noting that even they
were controversial not only within NAB/NPR circles, but also
inside the free radio movement itself where many saw them
as constituting a Trojan horse. The FCC—intentionally
or in effect—promoted a divide and conquer strategy
that split the movement into two camps. The first camp consisted
of those who supported licensed LPFM, like the Prometheus
Radio Project, largely organized by the disenfranchised buccaneers
of Philadelphia's Radio Mutiny station, which had been shut
down by the FCC. After tirelessly lobbying the FCC and Congress
on behalf of LPFM, the Prometheus Radio Project led workshops
throughout the country in relation to the final FCC plan under
the banner of, "So You Want To Apply For A Low Power
FM License." Though not opposing radio piracy per se,
these touring workshops emphasized the licensed LPFM model
in a way that was in marked contrast to an earlier Radio Mutiny
era tour, which had incited free radio stations to go on the
air without a license in defiance of the FCC. Prometheus has
continued to organize on behalf of LPFM, even when faced with
the Omnibus Budget Act's efforts at "radio preservation,"
which reduced the number of potential licensees to about half
of the FCC's originally promised number.
In the opposing camp were those, like microradio pioneers
Mbanna Kantako (Human Rights Radio in Springfield, Illinois)
and Stephen Dunifer (Free Radio Berkeley), who refused to
endorse the lobbying of Congress in support of even the FCC's
initial LPFM proposal, seeing it as an attempt at government
cooptation. Moreover, as they predicted, that original proposal
would ultimately fall victim to the more entrenched power
of the broadcasting industry, if not in its earlier FCC stage
then later on at the Congressional level, where the NAB could
be relied upon to flex its lobbying muscles in an election
year.
As Dunifer put it in a widely circulated email message to
the free radio movement on January 12, 2000, "Writing
to your Congressman is not going to do any good unless there
is a check for at least $10,000 attached with a promise of
more to come... Congress does not give a rat's ass about what
any of us think or want. And neither does the FCC, it's all
about damage control on Kennard's part. He knows that the
government does not have the resources to deal with thousands
of folks taking back their airwaves. So he had to come up
with a strategy that would fool folks who somehow still believe
the system has a degree of legitimacy and credibility and
would participate in the process—just a charade really
in the final analysis... Our real strength has always been
the threat of an ungovernable situation on the airwaves—let's
make that threat a damn credible reality by putting hundreds
and thousands of free radio stations on the air."
In fact the FCC's proposal for LPFM refused to acknowledge
the free radio movement's role in forcing the issue of low
power broadcasting onto the public policy-making agenda in
the first place. It also failed to recognize the action of
seizing the airwaves as being within the framework of civil
disobedience. Even the original FCC rules allowed no amnesty
for the micropower broadcasters who had previously been busted
or who, by remaining on the air, had challenged the FCC's
old prohibition of stations under 100 watts and raised the
larger issues of free speech and the "right to communicate."
When the preliminary announcement of pending LPFM rules was
made, Kennard ordered illegal broadcasters to halt operations
within 24 hours of being instructed to do so by the FCC or
by February 26, 1999 if they expected to be eligible for possible
licensing in the future. By the end of 2000 this promise had
ultimately proved fleeting.
However, it had by then created a rift in the micropower
movement as many unlicensed broadcasters rushed to "clean
up" their acts in anticipation of LPFM licenses down
the road. Those hopes were eventually dashed by the Congress.
Such a sequence of events is not unusual in the context of
a corporate state in which FCC liberals offered the carrot
of licenses rather than simply relying on the stick of shutdowns
in order to regain control of the airwaves.
The carrot was in essence the stick by other means, but the
stick never fully disappeared. Instead, shutdowns actually
increased, and the limited amnesty promised was removed by
more conservative legislators once the damage to micropower
movement solidarity had already been done.
Smothering Free Radio in Bureaucracy
Many free radio broadcasters, however, refused to abandon
their stations since they had no desire to be officially licensed.
Others held firm out of distrust of the FCC and/or a legislative
process that was dominated by the corporate broadcasting industry.
By not allowing the original micropower broadcasters to be
licensed if they had refused to leave the airwaves during
the approximately two years that transpired from the time
of Kennard's original rule-making announcement until the passage
of the Omnibus Budget Act of 2000, the FCC had acted to re-establish
its authority over the airwaves and punish those radio rebels
who had dared to challenge it.
Yet the free radio pioneers' suspicions that even the limited
amnesty promised to those of them who had never been caught
and voluntarily went off the air in compliance with the new
LPFM-related FCC edict were proven valid in the end. Ironically,
as the first African American chair of the FCC, Kennard's
proposal was the bureaucratic equivalent of telling civil
rights activist Rosa Parks that though everyone else could
now sit wherever they wanted in the bus she must remain seated
in the back because the Montgomery bus boycott which she helped
organize had been illegal under the laws of the Jim Crow South.
Like all government regulatory agencies, in spite of its
populist rhetoric, the FCC has been captured by the very interest
groups that it supposedly exists to regulate. Accordingly,
the license approval process is subject to industry-dictated
constraints rather than the democratic priorities of redistributing
the airwaves along more diverse and egalitarian lines. The
FCC rules actually act to enclose free radio within bureaucratic
guidelines. Though the LPFM stations were originally designated
noncommercial, initial reports indicate that political dissidents,
grassroots activists and groups marginalized on the basis
of a progressive to radical stance on class, race, gender
or sexual orientation are still to be overwhelmingly excluded
from the airwaves in favor of more moderate non-profit organizations,
middle class minority entrepreneurs and "respectable"
church groups.
In fact, almost half of the licenses approved in the first
round were church-related, with many of these being awarded
to right-wing Christian fundamentalists. Moreover, as Sarah
Posner has pointed out in her article, "Right-wing Radio"
(Alternet, April 5, 2005), officially licensed LPFM stations
are being crowded off the air by religious broadcasters using
translator licenses to transmit programs from their bigger
full-power "parent" stations across a number of
states, especially targeting rural areas and leaving little
room for local LPFM stations on the spectrum. In that regard,
in spite of organized opposition by grassroots LPFM supporters,
which has resulted in a temporary "freeze" on the
licensing of translator stations, much of the damage has already
been done and, of course, an FCC "freeze" can be
lifted by that same agency at any time.
Moreover, a very real potential problem for new recruits
to the free radio movement is that the FCC can once again
claim that it has legalized low watt radio, even though Congress
has drastically reduced the number of eligible stations formerly
proposed. Using this pretext, it can now give its agents the
green light to aggressively go after those radio stations
operating without a license. Previously, public opinion was
often on the side of the free radio stations, which many saw
as being unjustly restricted from entry to the radio dial,
but the FCC can now claim that any aspiring station should
simply follow LPFM guidelines and apply for a license if it
wants to broadcast. Ironically, Prometheus has inadvertently
clouded the issue of who has the right to communicate by its
use of the term "community-authorized pirate stations,"
leaving one to wonder who "authorizes" them and
what will happen to those increasingly defenseless stations
not so "authorized."
Regardless of the dilution of the original FCC plan, the
traditional regulatory idea that micropower radio stations
are legitimately subject to government crackdown efforts if
they decide to go on the air without first formally being
licensed, has been given new currency. Formerly unlicensed
stations have faced ever increasing harassment since the FCC
put LPFM into motion.
Predictably, one of the first stations hit by this renewed
wave of government repression was Human Rights Radio in Springfield,
Illinois, which suffered two FCC raids at the end of 2000.
In both cases the spurious charge was that the station was
causing interference with air traffic control signals. Astoundingly,
the air traffic controller who testified to the interference
in court claimed the Human Rights Radio signal was coming
from the John Hay Homes public housing project, which had
once been its home, but which had been torn down years before
his complaint.
Moreover, as Stephen Dunifer explained in an open letter
originally sent to Springfield's State Journal Register but
never published, the threat of such interference was being
used as a red herring (the letter was later printed in a special
Fall 2000 issue of the Springfield zine, War Bulletin.) As
Dunifer put it in his letter, "Air traffic control signals
are narrow band AM, an amplitude modulated carrier with a
frequency spread of 25 kilohertz or less, while micropower
transmitters are FM, a frequency modulated carrier with a
frequency spread of plus or minus 75 kilohertz taking up a
channel 200 kilohertz wide. It would be very difficult for
an air traffic radio receiver to receive an intelligible errant
signal from an FM broadcast transmitter due to the fact that
the receiver is designed only to pick up an AM signal that
is much more narrow in spectrum width than an FM broadcast
signal."
Regardless of these technical facts, in order to gain popular
support, the FCC has increasingly relied on stories about
planes falling out of the sky due to errant micropower transmissions
as justification for their campaign to shut down unlicensed
broadcasters, and Springfield's media have taken these claims
at face value.
The first bust of Human Rights Radio occurred in October,
2000, just one week after it was announced in local media
outlets that 13 groups in the Springfield area had applied
for a seat at the table for the then-promised cornucopia of
legally-sanctioned LPFM licenses. As if the message sent was
not clear enough, the prosecuting attorney in court who successfully
obtained an injunction requiring that Human Rights Radio [HRR]
remained shut down, used the argument that the station was
a renegade entity which deserved no sympathy now that LPFM
licenses were in the offing. She noted that if [HRR’s]
Mbanna Kantako was a serious broadcaster he should have applied
for an LPFM license. Of course, Kantako could not apply for
a license even if he wanted to do so (which he does not) since
no amnesty was granted by the FCC or Congress to former civil
disobedients like himself.
Predictable Actions, Mainstream Media Coverage, &
the Continuing Fight for Free Airwaves
Later on, this prohibition of amnesty for Kantako was conveniently
ignored in the December 28, 2000 State Journal Register coverage
of LPFM, which simplistically explained that Kantako had merely
not applied for a license. The article then went on to celebrate
the tentative licensing of two applicants in the nearby rural
towns of Pana (where a church group had applied) and Taylorville
(where ham radio hobbyists got approval).
In that same issue of the newspaper, reporter Matt Dietrich
added insult to injury. First, he failed to cover the story
of Kantako's October bust, in spite of an email campaign directed
at the editor of the State Journal Register, which had been
mobilized by a call to action on the national Independent
Media Center website. Then Deitrich stayed true to corporate
media form and wrote a "feel good" story profiling
a legal low power radio station operator located in Springfield's
predominantly black eastside community [Dec. 28, 2000].
Of course, the station in question is only 100 milliwatts
strong (1/10 of a watt), and its programming consists entirely
of playing R&B oldies rather than challenging the powers
that be, but Dietrich repeatedly alluded to the operator as
acting like a model citizen for doing everything by the book
and being extremely careful about interference unlike, by
implication, Kantako.
No mention was made of the fact that none of the 13 applicants
for LPFM licenses in Springfield were deemed eligible under
the new Omnibus Budget Act rules. Nor was any attempt made
to interview them now that their license hopes had been scuttled,
even though at the end of the filing period, they had originally
been the subject of a "feel good" story of their
own which seemed to imply that their licenses were in the
bag. While, by 2005, groups applying for LPFM licenses nationally
totaled 3500, the number actually receiving licenses who have
a radical perspective are few and far between.
Likewise, the message to African Americans in Springfield
was clear: Be appropriately thankful for a minuscule legal
station and you'll be the darling of the mainstream media,
but fight for your right of access to the airwaves by civil
disobedience and your station will get no coverage and you
will be personally vilified as a threat to public safety.
As for Kantako, he ignored the injunction and was back on
the air within about a week of the first bust. He then resumed
broadcasting again in the wake of the second raid on his home-based
station.
Meanwhile, as the information wars continue to heat up, other
independent media activists are devising strategies for breaking
the radio lockdown orchestrated by the corporate media and
its FCC enforcers by offering the possibility of global linkages
to be used by stations like Kantako's through a creative fusion
of micropower radio technology and webcasting. One such approach
involves creating a mosquito fleet of micropowered FM downloader/repeaters
for discrete tactical delivery of non-corporate audio reportage
to radio listeners anywhere in the world. Unlike webcasting
used by itself, all that is needed on the part of the listener
is a standard radio receiver—no computer access is necessary.
The icing on the cake is that web-casting microradio stations
are free of FCC controls.
This innovative guerrilla radio strategy involves the temporary
creation of what are called "Emergency Broadcasting"
facilities which provide ground zero reports from the epicenters
of the anti-globalization movement. In this regard, the newly
established Emergency Broadcasters Bloc (EBB) acts as the
tactical field division of the MicroRadio.NET Emergency Broadcasting
System. According to their website, "By seizing technology,
coordinating spontaneously and creating connections within
the independent media community; the EBB constructs field
facilities capable of streaming live audio, connecting you
to the mobilizations." Moreover, after the action, the
EBB infrastructure can remain to provide the nucleus for what
the EBB calls a new "CAMPFIRE" (Community Radio
Access Micropower Facility For Independent and Radical Expression)
for continued reportage of local issues and perspectives.
Furthermore, the EBB has committed itself to providing continued
technical support to fledgling CAMPFIRES and facilitating
popular education workshops on the use of microradio-webcasting
technology.
While Dunifer has lately become involved in designing and
developing low power VHF and UHF television transmitters (which
use off-the-shelf technology capable of reaching a distance
of 4-5 miles), his free tv efforts have not dampened his enthusiasm
for free radio. He still travels around the world as a sort
of free radio Johnny Appleseed, leaving micropower radio transmitters
everywhere in his path. In short, the anarchist potential
of the humble micropower radio transmitter is still at the
forefront of the present global struggle for independent media
in ways that challenge both the FCC's attempt at enclosure
of the free radio movement through the promotion of their
normalizing LPFM strategy and the National Association of
Broadcaster's reactionary attempt to dismantle even that admittedly
reformist approach. Stay tuned!
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