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Not-So-PBS

Although it won an Academy Award for best documentary and has played extended runs in cities around the nation, including Seattle, the film The Panama Deception has been officially turned away from the airwaves of PBS.
The network feels the film does not meet PBS' standards for fairness. PBS also believes it has provided America with adequate coverage of the U.S. invasion of Panama on it's shows Frontline and MacNeil/Lehrer Newshour. Ironically, it is precisely this type of coverage that the film takes issue with to begin with.
In San Francisco, those wanting to see The Panama Deception on PBS had to attend a protest during which the film was projected onto the side of the building of the local PBS affiliate.
Locally, KCTS Channel 9 has decided to, unquestioningly, follow the PBS line. This decision seems foolish when one considers The Panama Deception's success here in Seattle. Its stay was extended twice, local papers highly recommended the picture, and, according to the film's director, Barbara Trent, this town provided the film with its second-highest fundraising totals nationwide. KCTS is passing up a golden fundraising opportunity of its own by refusing the film.
More recently, PBS turned down the world's first and only human rights television series, Rights & Wrongs. Eighty-five PBS affiliates, however, have decided to run it anyway. The show already airs weekly in 32 countries around the world.
The Nation hailed the series as "energetic, inventive, intelligent, the most refreshing and informative news program I've seen in a long time. The show, unlike almost all other television news shows, makes you think; it enlivens rather than numbs you."
Rights and Wrongs has been well received in those areas where it is currently aired, but there has been no word yet whether KCTS will be brave enough to show it.
Meanwhile, FAIR, the New York-based media-watch organization, has launched a national letter-writing campaign on behalf of the program. Anyone wanting to see the program should contact Jennifer Lawson, at PBS, 1320 Braddock Place, Alexandria, VA, 22314, or 703-739-5060.
The network also won't air Barbara Trent's Cover Up: Behind the Iran-Contra Affair unless certain allegations made against then-President George Bush are excised. PBS did air Haiti: Killing the Dream, but only after the most controversial statements made by Noam Chomsky and former U.S. Attorney General Ramsey Clark were cut.
It's been said before, but we'll say it again: If PBS were truly "public," it would tell the public what it needed to know without pause or bias. And the network would fear our dissatisfaction with its performance more than it fears the possibility of the government pulling its funding from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, a major PBS supporter.

-Matt Robesch



For a copy of "Haiti: Killing the Dream," contact

Crowing Rooster Productions, PO Box 2284, South Burlington, VT 05407.

For copies of "Panama Deception" and "Cover Up", contact

The Empowerment Project,1653 18th St. #3, Santa Monica, CA 90404.)



Portions of this story were updated in issue 16 of the WFP.



Enviro-Paper is pure P.R.

A sign of the times: Puget Sound's first "greenwashing" publication hit the streets last month.
Recycling Insight, a monthly tab that bills itself as "Environmental News for King County," is an embarrassingly unveiled public-relations organ for many companies we love to hate. Toxic-spilling Waste Management Inc. and rainforest-slashing McDonald's are among the companies who landed glowing stories about their environmental "achievements."
Publisher/editor Loudon Smith must not think that Seattle-area readers are too savvy - she positioned big ads from these two companies on the same page as the stories. Our personal favorite: the ad for "McRecycle USA" underneath a story about McDonald's written by the company's public-relations company. Other stories were written by flacks as well.
Smith isn't kidding when she says in her column that the publication is a "valuable marketing tool" and an "industry journal." Whether, in her words, it's a "solid consumer resource" is debatable.
To our surprise, Smith - whose background is in marketing and advertising - freely admitted the true purpose of the paper.
"The paper is different in the sense that we're not doing journalism. It allows us not to have to send a reporter out on stories," she said. "We're not bashing anyone. We're highlighting the companies and people who are environmentally conscious and are offering environmental services. It is P.R. for businesses that are doing something to reduce waste and recycle."
Smith said she's helping promote companies doing such things as "reducing ozones." (Did she mean that?)
Smith acknowledged that her publication, a 50,000-circulation freebie distributed from Kent to Kirkland, hasn't been universally accepted. "A lot of people don't want to take subscriptions because we're doing P.R.," she said.
Smith can be reached at 248-7976.



CURSE Quest Continues
It's been a fairly quiet summer for KCMU, the University of Washington radio station that has apparently stopped listening to its constituency and, as a consequence, may be going the way of the dodo bird.

CURSE (Censorship Undermines Radio Station Ethics), the organization formed last year by volunteers and listeners angered by the station's loss of democratic rule and musical experimentalism, has seen to virtually shutting down the station's fundraisers. KCMU's public profile this summer has been scarce; with the going-south of community support, the station has had trouble keeping volunteers long enough to train them for on-air positions.
As the impending court battle between the university and some CURSE members (not CURSE itself) gained momentum, the UW seemed anxious to get the ball rolling toward recovery
Earlier this summer, CURSE and the UW began talks to save the station. Three meetings were held, but then the UW was hit by the NCAA with alleged violations in its football program. UW university relations vice president Jim Collier, his assistant Norm Arkans and director of broadcast services Wayne Roth had been meeting with CURSE representatives. But Collier has had his hands full of Husky droppings ever since, and talks have been delayed.
Meanwhile, CURSE has held two benefit concerts and printed two more issues of its CURSEword newsletter, and it continues to meet with concerned listeners (former and current).
Pardon our vapidity, but stay tuned.



P-I's Slagle Quits
Seattle P-I managing editor Kerry Slagle, the paper's second-highest news executive, surprised staffers last month when he announced he was returning to Florida to start his own publishing company.

Slagle gave two weeks' notice to publisher/editor J.D. Alexander on August 16, and the decision was announced to the staff the next day.
"It surprised many people in the newsroom. People are wondering why he's leaving," a source said. "Kerry was in a position to expand his control over the newsroom, so it's a particularly odd time for him to be leaving. Maybe he wanted a promotion himself. But everybody expected JD to remain editor. Maybe it was just personal."



Late-Night Lefty Radio
Drawling Texan politician-turned humorous politically correct radio commentator Jim Hightower is scheduled at 5:52 am weekdays on Seattle radio station KVI 570-AM. A spokesperson for the Hightower Commentaries told the Free Press that many Seattleites eager to hear Hightower have called his Texas office complaining about the red-eye scheduling and the irregularity of the KVI broadcasts.

Meanwhile, KVI carries such notable commentators as Rush Limbaugh and Mike Reagan (Ronald's son) during prime programming hours. Public pressure on KVI may aid Hightower's chances of a better time slot.
"Sometimes, radio stations are afraid of us because they think that Hightower is a 'liberal'," the Hightower spokesperson said. "But I try to set them straight by pointing out that he is a 'progressive'."
Another lefty, Erwin Knoll, editor of The Progressive and a MacNeil/Lehrer pundit, is hosting a weekly radio interview show called Second Opinion, which can be heard on KCMU.



Marlee's "Blues Kitchen"
Marlee Walker, Puget Sound's first lady of blues radio, has left KPLU 88.5-FM, where she hosted a blues show for nine years, and has landed a new gig on KMTT 103.7-FM, "The Mountain."

Walker's new "Blues Kitchen" show started Saturday, Sept. 4. For now, she's on from 10 pm-midnight. But as her KPLU show expanded to two nights a week - Saturday and Sunday - she also hopes her new show will grow with her popularity.
"Seeing the way that the blues has grown, KPLU wasn't necessarily following that trend. I grew as much as I could at KPLU."
By moving to a rock station that already sprinkles an occasional blues song throughout the day, Walker said she'll be able to get into more screeching guitars (a la Johnny Winter) and some rock/blues crossover stuff (a la John Mayall).
"I'll play a lot of the same kind of material as I did at KPLU because it worked. But I'm going to stir it up with some spicy selections. I'll stretch out."
Walker said she'll keep doing her on-air "Blues to Do's" calender, which ties in with her monthly magazine of the same name. Blues fans can do themselves a big favor by calling Marlee and KMTT brass and saying they want to hear more blues programming. It worked at KPLU. The number at The Mountain is 233-1037.



J-A Ducks NLRB Bullet
The regional office of the National Labor Relations Board has refused to issue a complaint of unfair labor practices against the management of the Bellevue Journal-American (see Spike, Issue 4. Employees there belonging to the Pacific Northwest Newspaper Guild have been without a contract since late May, and relations between the guild and management are currently icy.

According to local guild official Art Joyner, the parent company of the J-A, Persis, and its local subsidiary, Northwest Media Inc., have "insisted on taking a lot out of our previous contract without explaining why. There is no indication that this is anything other than a very healthy company."
Management negotiators at the J-A, Nick Chernick and John Perry, were on vacation and unavailable for comment.



New Ink



Widows and Orphans



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Contents on this page were published in the September , 1993 edition of the Washington Free Press.
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