[Newspoetry] Newspoem

[William Gillespie]

William,

Cross your fingers--today is the crucial day as the Parliement is now in
session. On Wednesday, the new management stopped blocking the broadcast
of the protesters, and yesterday the director general Hodac resigned
(for health reasons, as usual). So the protesters are half way there.
They just now need the Parliament to fire the rest of the board (all the
decent people have left it already), and change the law about TV. Then
the strike may end. I hope this is going to happen. If not, we should
launch the petition.

Simon

*******

Newspoets,

This poem is based on the number sequence

5
  2
4
  2
3
  2
2

In those numbers, the column on the right - 2222 -  represents
censorship: a static message with no information. the column on the left
- 5432 - represents freedom of speech being  homogenized and squelched.
This form is at odds with the content, which has a happy ending. This
contradiction is in tune with the situation, which might resolve happily
today. Or might not. So I might have to write a sequel.

JF - this has italics

*******

Czech TV

by William Gillespie
for Simon Kos


7.

and now for the evening
poem about events in the

listen you
think you

we interrupt this poem
to bring you this

know about
free speech

news broadcast composed
entirely by scabs

we had
soviet television

after this
political message


6.

Yes, that is exactly the problem with government-run television: it is
apt to become a propaganda tool of the ruling party. That is why you
must privatize the television station as you have so many other
government functions, to free it from political control.

Funny you should say that, given that your public television is
sponsored by Exxon. PBS ran a  program on the WTO protests. On some
stations. At 3 AM Monday morning.

My point exactly: government-run television is apt to reflect the
opinions of the ruling party. Wait, that wasn't my point.

You have never obtained freedom of speech, so you do not fear losing it.
You think the interests of the government are separate from those of the
media companies. Television is entertainment to you.

Well, now, that's not true: we can say anything we want in America.
Well, now, that's not true: we can say anything we want in America.

We see government as a bulwark against a flood. Whereas you are not
aware you are under water.


5.

back
on
the

zz
zz


4.

the new
director is

the man who
was guilty of

CASE DISMISSED
he's NOT

affiliated with
our party


3.

So let me get this straight: Czech Public TV Director General Dusan
Chmelicek called for a forensic audit of the office of the Brno regional
television station, and, when indeed it was discovered that Brno
Regional Director Zdenek Drahos and his people in management rented out
facilities or plots of the station without the consent of the Czech
Television Council, had close connections to Brno businesses receiving
commissions from the TV station without a prior public call for
candidates (and without a contract), and were broadcasting hidden
advertising, director Chmelicek recommended that the Czech Television
Council fire Drahos, to which suggestion the Council responded by firing
instead Chmelicek, quickly replacing him with Civic Democratic Party
affiliate Jiri Hodak, who then promoted (the accused) Drahos to Program
Director of the central Prague station. Then the reporters at the Prague
station, refusing to recognize the new management, staged a sit-in
strike and barricaded themselves in the production studio, where there
was no restroom, no water, no food; and then (and this is just
unbelievable to me), the police did not go in and drag them out, but
simply surrounded the station so nobody who left could get back in, and
the public brought the striking television workers baskets of  food and
jugs of water and tied them to ropes the workers lowered from the
windows of the studio. And the workers continued to produce broadcasts,
and the management jammed those transmissions and substituted
programming of their own.

It's just politics as usual. I'm too tired to think about it.

And the ensuing protests were larger than any Prague had seen since the
fall of Communism in 1989 (a euphoric time when limousines converged on
prisons to escort the dissidents to political office). Even members of
the lower house of Parliament, president Havel, and numerous prominent
artists and scientists called for the resignation of the director, the
board, and a set of new laws (already drafted) to protect more
effectively the public television from influence by the ruling elite,
until finally Hodak collapsed from exhaustion and resigned for health
reasons.


2.

zz
on


1.

the air
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