[Wefta] Re: [Peace-discuss] military recruitment on WEFT (!)

[Alfred Kagan]

As a librarian, I know something about "censorship."  We always talk 
about the difference between censorship and appropriate collection 
development.


At 11:31 AM -0500 8/22/03, Chas. 'Mark' Bee wrote:
>Alfred Kagan wrote:
>
>>Doug,
>>
>>I think you are confusing censorship with selecting appropriate 
>>PSAs for WEFT's audience.  The military get lots of free 
>>advertising elsewhere.  They are hardly censored.  We don't need to 
>>play their advertisements for death and destruction.
>
>
>      Dude, these are *not* reasons that would keep it from being 
>censorship.  Apparently another injection of reality is needed here. 
>Your motives for shutting this down, though perhaps honorable, are 
>also political ones - that's censorship, regardless of what happens 
>'elsewhere'.
>
>   I'd like to suggest that anyone who wants to affect WEFT's 
>handling of PSAs come to the station and volunteer to handle PSAs. 
>Trust me, it's not very difficult.  In fact, you could say there's 
>an 'open-door' policy.  And as a Board and PC member, I myself don't 
>*ever* plan to knuckle under to outside pressure from a special 
>interest group over 60 seconds of air time.
>
>   And in fact, if appropriate channels had been used instead of this 
>unfortunate but ever-popular 'outing WEFT' thing, the PSA would 
>probably be gone just as quickly.  I reviewed it last night, I think 
>it has calls to action in it, and I recommended its removal, 
>strictly on the basis of its legality when played by a non-profit. 
>It's being removed from the PSA box, I hear, and once it gets a 
>critical listening at the PC meeting I imagine that's it.
>
>   Viola.  The system works.  And WEFT didn't have to silence 
>someone's voice just because someone else didn't like it - which is 
>a victory for freedom no matter how you slice it.  And if you come 
>get a show at WEFT, we won't censor you either.  WEFT is not and 
>must not be in that business regardless of outside influence.
>
>   -cmb, anti-war bigmouth, free speech broadcasting advocate
>
>p.s.  The station takes PSAs from just about anybody, and I'm sure 
>we'd be glad to have yours.  There are specific FCC rules which 
>apply (like no calls to action), so please do be sure to *find out 
>what they are* before production in order to avoid unnecessary 
>delays.  I don't know for sure, but I think Sandra, WEFT's PC 
>coordinator, can supply these on request.  Or I can.  Or if that's 
>not fast enough, there's always that wonderful resource, 
>www.fcc.gov.  We do have to take orders from them, they have all the 
>guns.  ;)


-- 


Al Kagan
African Studies Bibliographer and Professor of Library Administration
Africana Unit, Room 328
University of Illinois Library
1408 W. Gregory Drive
Urbana, IL 61801, USA

tel. 217-333-6519
fax. 217-333-2214
e-mail. akagan at uiuc.edu