(Note: In 1994, I helped organize an open public meeting at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago Film Center Theater with a WTTW executive. It was the first such meeting in 15 years. We used an open mike for the questions. No cards. Nobody's questions or comments were edited, summarized, or dropped.)

A few facts about public broadcasting:

* Full public accountability of major U.S. public broadcasting outlets is exceedingly rare.

* All decisions made by the station-selected public tv and public radio community advisory boards are by law non-binding.

* Like most all public outlets, the (controlling) boards of trustees of both WTTW and WBEZ are neither member elected or publicly elected.

At Thursday June 14th's first-ever joint WBEZ-FM | WTTW-TV public broadcasting community advisory board "public meeting", we found out that "public input" was to be only via written cards that were then subject to editing.

First I wrote "Please read my entire question out loud:" followed by

"U.S. public tv and radio are disastrous failures. This is particularly true considering the lies of ommission and commission both stations broadcast during the runup to the unwarranted U.S. invasion of Iraq (and Iran?), the trillions of dollars lost there and the unaddressed human needs resulting. So your ideas and prose don't really matter. Will the advisory boards demand stations WTTW and WBEZ each be controlled by a member elected board of trustees?

But the event's emcee Thom Clark (co-founder of the event's sponsor Community Media Workshop, a public relations "bootcamp") magically changed my question into the nicer sounding "can the board of trustees be elected?"

Sounds quite different, doesn't it, without the first part?

WTTW trustee Roger Plummer replied to my edited question with something about how "the trustees don't feel unaccountable."

And WBEZ said nothing.

Later, when it became clear my full question was not going to be read, I interrupted:

"Thom, why did you butcher my question? Why did you leave out the parts about Iraq, Iran, the trillions, all the bleeding and dying people? I'm here with Chicago Media Action and I'm representing a lot of people. (slowly, with a pretty intense anger) How dare you! I want my question fully asked and answered. I'm going to give you another chance now to read my question - read the whole question I gave you.

(Thom Clark) "No Scott. It wasn't appropriate."

(Me) You're a lapdog Thom.

Throwing my shoe at him might have made my point too.

WBEZ advisory chair Claudia Freed then said something about "no personal attacks" but as she said those words, I mimicked her voice tone - "Myah myah nah nah mya nah."

Though the meeting was otherwise boring and pointless, catch the last few minutes if you want when it is shown on CAN-TV Chicago access. I think now if Chicagoans want, they can ask their own questions to the public broadcasters without any filters.

Start getting your questions ready. I hear community town halls across the country on the subject of public broadcasting are being planned by media reformers. People are very upset about a lot of things these days, and media is high on most lists.

Posted by Scott Sanders, Chicago Media Action
Visit “About Scott Sanders - Who is this guy?” Click here. Feedback? Information? Email me - scott(at)chicagomediaaction.org or themediastructurefailed(at)yahoo.com

DISCLAIMER: The opinions expressed on this website are those of the individual members of Chicago Media Action who authored them, and not necessarily those of the entire membership of Chicago Media Action, nor of Chicago Media Action as an organization.

FAIR USE NOTICE: This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.