News And Action! June 7, 2001

Chairman, Bill Swindells, is making an effort to re-launch the CAB, including expand its population and fill empty seats. There is a call out now for nominations, especially for diverse, community-identified representatives. You can mail to him at OPB, 7140 Macadam Ave, Portland, OR 97219. The next meeting is Wednesday, June 20 - time still uncertain. Call Joyce Sanders @ 503-293-1943 for confirmation. Space is limited.

A presentation by this title was made by Loren Sears to the governing board on June 5, their last meeting until September 2001. Read it here. It was well received and the board indicated they would like to discuss it further in a special group meeting yet to be scheduled. We are asking them to expand their mission statement to incude community relevant programming and commit to a plan, with a timeline and budget, for achieving it on OPB TV.

We are organizing support around the State this spring and lobbying the Legislature as OPB's funding bill (SB 5552) comes up for its routine consideration. If you support public interest broadcasting, we'd really like to hear from you, especially if you're located outside of Portland. There is a recent op-editorial from the March 10, 2001 Oregonian on these matters in the LIBRARY.

Community groups, activists and viewers from around the state are invited to add their endorsement to a resolution for change at OPB (see RESOLUTION) We're available to visit these groups and make a presentation of the issues. We are also looking for co-sponsors for the "Ready For PBS" film festival, highlighting outstanding productions refused for national broadcast by PBS.

an Oregon community-focused magazine show, aired on OPB TV Sunday, February 25 at 1PM. Visit the OG web site www.oregongazette.com for more information and to order copies of the program if you missed it. This was an attempt to make a pilot show illustrating how community relevant programming could be done in Oregon. Check it out, let us know what you think!

 The CAB Community Leader Survey was completed last year and the general results are posted here. Response was clear: not enough local programming, invisible minorities, lack of diversity and community spirit.

Established last year, CIPB is "a national membership organization dedicated to putting the public back into public broadcasting." They promote a national, independently funded, publicly accountable Public Broadcasting Trust to support public stations and program services, freeing them from corporate and political pockets. They also support initiatives to democratize programming on local stations. They seek members from and alliances with all local community action groups such as FOPB, NAACP, etc. Check out their website: www.cipbonline.org and join now.

They offer training videos and manuals (How To Make Public Broadcasting Accountable to Your Community: A Manual For Activists) and are led by some of the most prominant activists and experts in public broadcasting: Jerold Starr; Exec. Director; Janine Jackson, Nicholas Johnson, George Gerbner on the board; Ben Bagdikian, Roberet Avery, Jeff Cohen, Barbara Erenreich and William Hoynes among their advisors. Starr's book, Air Wars: The Fight to Reclaim Public Broadcasting, details the burgeoning reform movement.

Alex Traugott handles office communications and outreach at: 1029 Vermont Ave. NW, Suite 800, Washington DC 20005. Voice: 202-638-6880 Fax: 202-638-6885 E-mail: cipb@cais.com

A current concern is the "Religious Broadcasting Freedom Act" now winding its way through Congress. It's intended to enable religious programmers to compete for broadcast spectrum as noncommercial educational stations. From a recent CIPB press release:

 Washington - A broad coalition of national educational and religious organizations are urging their members to write to Congress to fight a growing takeover of reserved educational licenses by ultraconservative religious broadcasters under the guise of religious freedom. Members are urged to tell their representatives to oppose House Resolution 3525, known as the "Religious Broadcasting Freedom Act" and Senate Bill S.2010, known as the "Noncommercial Broadcasting Freedom Act."

The still growing coalition includes educational groups like the National Education Association, Center for Media Education, People for the American Way, Benton Foundation, Political Research Associates and National Writers Union and religious groups like the National Council of Churches, The Interfaith Alliance and Unitarian Universalists.

Coalition coordinator Jerry Starr, Executive Director of Citizens for Independent Public Broadcasting, observes, "Already having easily intimidated the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) into rescinding guidelines intended to protect educational licenses from partisan abuse, the religious right and their political allies now seek to deprive the FCC of all discretion to properly defend any eligibility requirements for noncommercial educational (NCE) television licenses."

Write your Senator to oppose this bill - see CIPBONLINE for more info and links to Congress.

Another organization that has recently come to our attention, National Alliance for Media Arts and Culture (NAMAC) maintains Media Democracy Consortium and Action/Advocacy pages on their web site: www.namac.org Generally concerned with all issues furthering the media arts in film, video, audio and interactive, they carry relevant information regarding public interest obligations and current legslation.

 Briefly, the CAB accomplished very little this year before taking its routine summer hiatus. To put matters on an even slower track, several members resigned after their two year appointments expired, as did Sherwin Davidson, Chairwoman. We are left without a functioning board. OPB Chair, Bill Swindells will have to reappoint a bunch by October. See him if you're interested in serving in an authentic capacity. See Loren Sears (fopb@efn.org) if you're interested in protesting the dysfunctionality and lack of independence of the CAB from OPB steerage. See Certification Quidelines to read CPB's expectations.

The CAB Community Leader Survey was completed this year (something did get accomplished!) and the general results are posted here. Response was clear: not enough local programming, invisible minorities, lack of diversity and community spirit.

In November, 1999, the OPB Community Advisory Board was able to (briefly) discuss the local programming issues that had beeen put on the table the previous January. The board chose to vote on them as motions then passed one (asking for a target for weekly hours of local prodution on OPB) and defeated the other three as recommendations to the OPB Board of Directors. Debie Hinton, OPB Executive VP of Creative Ventures, submitted an outline of a Local Production Plan to possibly take flight over the next two years, if funding is available. Then the CAB's meeting schedule was changed from monthly to quarterly, with the next one in February 2000.

The February CAB meeting was devoted to discussing more of the Community Leader Surveys the board members had been doing. Leaders in the survey included Multnomah County Commissioner Serena Cruz, Chair Bev Stein, Secretary of State Bill Bradburry and Oregon ACLU Director Dave Fidanque. Loren Sears proposed identifying specific community-interest stakeholders in OPB and beginning an outreach process to bring them in for presentation to future CAB meetings. Sherwin Davidson gave notice that she was resigning after two years as CAB Chairperson. It would be the OPB Board Chairman, Bill Swindell's task to replace her.

Nike's Phil Knight has just rescinded his future private gifts to the University of Oregon because the UO signed a student advocated agreement with the Workers Rights Council, as opposed to his choice, a manufacturer-run organization. This reminds us that no corporate gift comes without strings attached. It raises the question for us: what are the compromises made by public broadcasting in accepting corporate sponsorships for a significant amount of its programming?

 For October 1999, OPB's Focus magazine lists a new series called Oregon Lens which, alternating with the PBS series, Independent Lens , will be shown only at 12 Midnight, Sunday evenings! Apparently yielding to pressure for some kind of independent venue they could not have picked a worse time for anyone to see - an act that's cynical beyond belief.

This site has recently been updated. The addition of the FORUM is the biggest change made. We've also added a new section to OPB Television, called Producers' Criticisms of OPB. On Related Sites we added a link to the Charles Benton Foundation - and to the LIBRARY, added contrasting editorials from Norman Solomon and George Will.

The FORUM is our long-awaited chat room or caucus intended to host a statewide, public discussion about broadcasters' public obligations, media actions, production projects or relevant media news. You can read postings from other correspondents and post your own without intervention. Its hoped you all will add your views to the items under discussion or introduce new items of your own. You may appeal to readers for information or use it to find production assistance for your projects, and to coordinate your media activities around Oregon. You'll need to sign in once and then remember your ID and Password as you go directly to the FORUM thereafter. Let's get talking to one another!

In the Producers' Criticims of OPB, Portlanders Jim Blashfield, Tom Taylor and George Hood register their long experiences of frustration in offering the best work of Oregonians to OPB for broadcast. They are just some of the producers who have offered their comments in public - others will not go on record for fear of compromising their future dealings with the programing and production departments of OPB. Production quality is often the stated reason for OPB reticence to use their work, but relevance to us here in Oregon and the value of authentic, local expression is discounted in this response. For instance, University journalism students have produced good quality work about a wide range of Oregon communities and issues that we should be seeing - also refused. A proactive program to incorporate local expression and communication is called for at OPB. Better yet, to become facilitators of statewide communications and let go of trying to control creation of it.

The Charles Benton Foundation advocates all aspects of local public access to media, and maintains a website that archives and tracks progress of the President's Public Interest Advisory Commission report on proposed obligations of digital broadcasters. The report encourages establishment of a public trust fund to ensure funding free from politics, possibly taxing commercial uses of broadcast spectrum, providing political campaign access time, supportive programs for minority and other independent production. Reasonable ideas. On the other hand, the corporate media lobbies are very powerful and little gets put into law without their consent. At the Benton site you can also subscribe to a daily headline service of broadcast/media related news articles!

While progressive critic Norman Solomon decries the assimilation of public broadcasting into the corporate domain, and encourages a restoration to its original democratic purposes, ideologue George Will uses a similar observation to encourage right thinking Republican congressmen to just do away with it altogether. Obviously George doesn't care a fig about the public's interest here. Both writers published their syndicated colums at the same time this August. Also check out William Hoynes', Public Television For Sale.

• We are reaching out to viewers, producers and communities all over the Oregon and southwest Washington to solicit their views on public broadcasters' performance.
• We are preparing media publicity campaigns to draw attention to our survey and the issues.
• We are meeting with politicians and OPB board memebers to let them know the public's feelings and to propose changes at OPB that will assure relevant public television in this region.

If you would like to be involved with organization or publicity in your locale, please let us know by mailing or e-mail the response form on our Input page.

We will continue publishing papers and articles on this site (Library) dealing with relevant community/media issues. If you have any such writing you'd like to contribute, articles or studies you are aware of, let us know that also.