[Peace-discuss] first pass at account of UPTV meeting today

[Randall Cotton]

Here is a first pass at a description of how today's UPTV commission meeting
went. As I mentioned before, the meeting was ostensibly recorded and I have
already filed an FOIA request to get a copy of the tape (they have one week
to provide it). Once I get the tape, I will fill out this description even
more.

The meeting started innocently enough with a discussion of various changes
to UPTV Rules, Regulations and Policies.

Then, just before discussing FSTV and Democracy Now!, I was given an
opportunity to speak. I quickly reviewed my proposal, presented the 500+
petition signatures, stated that I thought the petition demonstrated
substantial interest in the community for this programming and specifically
encouraged the commission to vote today on a motion that advises in favor of
the project. Then I asked the commission if they had any concerns or
questions. Discussion ensued which took up the rest of the meeting and made
it run way over schedule.

I necessarily have to leave out some details since I didn't record the
proceedings (man, do I regret that) and the chronology may not be perfect,
but here are the salient developments:

A technicality was raised (can't remember by who). It was pointed out that
the UPTV "Public Access Policies and Procedures" (in section 3.7) requires
that all programming must be submitted in the form of a tape. That is, there
is no provision in the "Public Access Policies and Procedures" for UPTV
members to arrange for retransmission of programming received via satellite.

Also, the mayor spoke up:

"What kind of precedent are we setting?", he said.

And then raised the specter of the KKK, the NRA, and Matt Hale or other
white-supremacy hate groups proposing programming in a similar way.

"Once you open the door, you have to welcome anyone who walks through it"

I may not be objective on this, but it came off like a calculated scare
tactic to me.

In response, one commission member pointed out that it was not really an
issue because it was rather unlikely that someone from the community would
come to the UPTV commission with such a proposal in the same way (e.g. a
UPTV member offering to sponsor a regularly-scheduled satellite program
promoting white-supremacy along with 500+ signatures from the community).

In response to the "tapes only" technicality and the mayor's "KKK" argument,
one commission member (Pete Resnick) suggested that the commission accept
this project as an initiative of the commission itself, rather than as a
routine programming request of a UPTV member (me). This gets around the
member-specific "tapes only" technicality and allows the commission to
simply decline to consider future "KKK" proposals. It was pointed out that
there is already precedent for the commission itself advising the approval
of satellite programming to be carried on UPTV (specifically, the Annenberg
Channel).

But the mayor came up with an even more specious argument. He said that if
the commission itself were to consider advising approval for FSTV and DN!,
it should not do so without surveying all satellite programming available to
it and making a choice from among everything available. It was pointed out
that this was not done in the case of the Annenberg Channel, but the mayor
was unfazed.

At one point, Pete Resnick attempted to formally move that the UPTV
commission advise moving forward with efforts to broadcast Democracy Now! as
proposed. There was a second. The chairwoman called for a vote and to my
recollection, 4 or 5 affirmative votes were indicated (4 is a majority on
the 7-member commission, and only 6 members were present). At this point,
however, Kevin Maxson, instead of voting, called for discussion and he sided
with the mayor's "survey" argument. When questioned as to why a survey of
satellite programming should be necessary to move forward, he struggled for
a moment and then said it would be "less partisan" to look at all
programming first.

Yyyyyyyyah.

The mayor chimed in.

At one point the mayor tried to make an analogy with city property, saying
that if the city owned a piece of property and a community member proposed
they be given the property so they can start a business, the city council
shouldn't just grant it to them out-of-hand. A commission member countered
that property has great value and is in high demand, as opposed to
public-access cable time which has been underutilized for years.

Ultimately, due to the mayor's input (and Kevin Maxson falling in behind),
the commission was dissuaded from acting on the matter, instead instructing
Chris Foster to go ahead with a survey of available satellite programming
and the matter was put off for the next meeting on September 13th.

Toward the end of the meeting, as I asked for clarification on why the
council was proceeding the way it was, the mayor became increasingly
animated in the discussion (though we never spoke to each other directly).
Here's a couple quotes I wrote down (I think this was after the recording
was turned off - the cassette tape being used ran out since the meeting ran
long).

"Why is it we want this?"
"How do we know this is good programming?"

Also, another interesting tell toward the end: when I asked for
clarification, some commission members indicated that the survey would be to
look for programming IN ADDITION to Democracy Now!, but the mayor
immediately refuted that and indicated that it could be to look for
programming to REPLACE Democracy Now!

Both the mayor and Kevin Maxson intimated that the prospect of the
commission voting to advise approval of FSTV/DN! was a "knee-jerk reaction"
(yes, they used that exact phrase) to a single UPTV member (even though
there were 500+ signatures on the table).

So there you have it - like I said, I hope to flesh this description out
after I get a copy of the recording and look at the minutes of the meeting.

I have several ideas on how to proceed from here and I'll get them out in a
few days.

Of course, I'm also interested in what others think should be done.

R