Reclaiming Radio
by Michelle Chen
This article was previously published in ColorLines.
"If you don't have access and ownership and control
of a media system, you really don't exist."
A mother's voice stretched over the air to a son spending
the holidays in a Virginia prison: "Keep your head up. I love you. Just do
what you gotta do to survive."
The hushed message was one of dozens featured on Calls
from Home, a project of Mountain Community Radio in Kentucky. Each
December, the call-in program helps families of prisoners reconnect through
holiday shoutouts, aired on stations across the country.
Since the first mass broadcasts crackled over the country's
airwaves in the 1920s, radio has defined itself as a democratic medium,
providing communities that have few resources - from inmates to immigrant
workers - a conduit for news and civic communication.
But today, media activists say commercialism has reduced a
vital institution to an industry of white noise. In response, alternative radio
projects and media-justice movements have emerged to resuscitate a flagging
public sphere.
Jammed with shock jocks, manufactured gangstas and formulaic
news bites, the FM dial allows scant room for critical thought. Activists say
that's no accident. The broadcast industry has become heavily consolidated and
commercialized since the 1990s, thanks to the dismantling of federal
regulations on corporate ownership. Those trends, critics argue, have
systematically silenced the voices of women, people of color, youth and other
underrepresented communities in the public sphere.
"Commercialism has reduced a vital institution to an
industry of white noise."
It wasn't always this way. A generation ago, radio was
fueling activism in Black communities nationwide.
Broadcast veteran Glen Ford, now editor of the online
journal Black Agenda Report, recalled how Black radio news helped
anchor civil rights movements in the 1960s and '70s: "They would be the
ones to cover the folks who were protesting police brutality or advocating
cleanups of the Black community or speaking about Black issues in
education."
Today, mega-broadcasters like Clear Channel Communications, which
controls more than 1,100 stations nationwide, are fixated on ad revenues and
economies of scale. Since it's more profitable to centralize content, local
affiliates run mass-marketed music and news, generally at the expense of
independent artists and community oriented programming.
The homogenization of radio plays out in ownership patterns
as well. A recent study by the media reform group FreePress found that
"ethnic minorities" and people of color control less than 8 percent
of full-scale commercial stations, while making up about one-third of the
population. Black radio ownership hovers around 3.4 percent, while about 13
percent of Americans are Black.
Paul Porter, a former radio producer who now leads the media
think-tank Industry Ears, believes the issue goes beyond just the demographics
of owners: even Radio One, the country's leading Black-owned broadcasting
network, follows the standard corporate formula of commercial Black music and
minimal news.
Across the dial, Porter said, "Radio is shaped for
stockholders instead of listeners."
As broadcast conglomerates narrow radio's political
scope, activists are recasting the medium to once again empower underserved
communities.
"Even Radio One, the country's leading Black-owned
broadcasting network, follows the standard corporate formula."
For decades, WMMT Mountain Community Radio has been the only
progressive news source covering the working-class coalfield communities of
Kentucky, Virginia and West Virginia. When two Supermax prisons moved into the
area, the station suddenly faced a new constituency: Black, male prisoners
transplanted from cities into mostly white Appalachian mining towns.
WMMT's parent organization, the Appalshop arts center,
turned the impending culture clash into an opportunity for dialogue.
"We considered the prison audience as part of our
community," said WMMT producer Nick Szuberla. "And then we began to
figure out ways to use community radio to address what was happening and to
make space on our station for their family and supporters."
The station began investigating local prisoners' complaints
of abuse in 1999 and soon developed Holler to the Hood, a call-in
program that explores the viewpoints of inmates and their families, along with
local community members. In addition to reconnecting separated families, the
program has helped launch grassroots civil rights campaigns and musical
collaborations between hip-hop and country artists.
Even in the so-called digital age, stations like WMMT remain
a key resource for communities isolated from the technological grid.
"We don't have broadband, WiFi, cable access,"
said Szuberla. "Community radio is a huge part of rural communities' civic
discourse."
For indigenous communities wrestling with poverty and
social marginalization, media access is a human rights issue.
"The program has helped launch grassroots civil rights
campaigns."
Loris Taylor, executive director of Native Public Media,
which advocates on behalf of the country's 33 American Indian-owned public
stations, said that tribe-run broadcasters are typically the sole source for
community-based cultural programming and news.
"If you don't have access and ownership and control of
a media system, you really don't exist," she said. "You don't matter
in terms of being citizens in a democracy who are entitled to the ability to
tell, and have a conversation about, your own stories."
With its gritty do-it-yourself ethos, grassroots radio
offers a platform for personal storytelling on a mass scale.
Thandisizwe Chimurenga, cofounder and cohost of Some of
Us Are Brave on the California-based Pacifica network, approaches radio as
a "mobilizing medium." Since 2003, the weekly show has been a rare
space for Black women of diverse political backgrounds to reflect on topics
such as domestic violence, immigration, mental health and imprisonment.
"The show aims to be a resource for the communities
that we come from," she said. "Black women's voices are so
under-represented, so absent in media."
To advance the show's mission, Chimurenga's organization,
the Ida B. Wells Institute, is developing a media program for young women of
color. By giving youth opportunities to produce their own stories, she said,
the training is designed to "demystify the workings of media for people -
show them they can actually do this also."
At Atlanta's Latin American and Caribbean Community Center,
grassroots media-making has shone a spotlight on Latino perspectives that
establishment media routinely ignore. The group's Radio Diaspora project,
broadcast in English and Spanish on WRFG Radio Free Georgia, covers the plight
of African descendants throughout the Americas who have long struggled for
visibility.
While corporate news often segregates coverage of
"Latino" and "Black" issues, Radio Diaspora draws connections
between different forms of oppression and structural racism across the
hemisphere. A recent trans-border call-in program examined internal
displacement in the Black diaspora, linking Hurricane Katrina survivors with a
community of African-descendant earthquake survivors in Peru.
"Black women's voices are so under-represented, so absent
in media."
Defying the foreign correspondent model, Radio Diaspora's
unconventional press corps relays news straight from the source. Local
community members and activists record and produce their own stories as they
happen on the ground.
"Our audience, and our participants-they really dictate
the shows that we do," said coordinator Janvieve Williams.
The country is dotted with more than 9,000 full-scale FM
stations, but fewer than a third are designated noncommercial and educational
broadcasters. While the Federal Communications Commission recently moved to
grant some new non-commercial licenses, activists are looking beyond the
standard radio spectrum to carve out fresh broadcast venues.
Some see promise in low-power FM radio, a new class of
frequencies with a range of a few miles. The FCC has allotted a limited number
of low-power licenses to community groups in recent years, though advocates say
not nearly enough.
One of the newest low-power ventures is WMXP in Greenville,
South Carolina. The volunteer-based station launched last summer as a
partnership between the South Carolina Affiliate of the Malcolm X Grassroots
Movement, a national organizing network, and the media advocacy group
Prometheus Radio Project.
Engaging local youth as listeners and operators, WMXP works
to counter the generic news and music that dominates local radio. "The
only real way to make sure that there are diverse voices on the airwaves is by
really having stations that are committed to community access," said
cofounder Efia Nwangaza.
"Activists are looking beyond the standard radio
spectrum."
Local spoken-word poet Preston Walker is developing a
free-form talk program inspired by the Black radio hosts and hip-hop artists
who shaped his identity growing up- influences that have all but vanished in
his community.
"I'm looking forward to introducing them to something
new, something different," he said, "something that they could grab
hold of, and become a part of."
While alternative institutions like low-power FM encapsulate
what grassroots organizing can accomplish, some radio activists focus on
compelling broader changes within mainstream media.
"We need to grab our people wherever they are,"
said Chimurenga. "In terms of activists, in terms of people of color, we
need to build alternative institutions, but we also need to fight where we are.
And we need to hold these mainstream institutions accountable because they hold
influence in our communities."
FCC policies broadly mandate corporate broadcasters to serve
community information and educational needs. But activists are skeptical about
the regulatory system's will to uphold those standards. In December, topping
years of rollbacks to media-ownership rules, the FCC moved to further gut
anti-monopoly protections by unraveling a long-standing ban on ownership of
both a radio station and a daily newspaper within one market area.
Activists in communities of color have meanwhile grown
frustrated with the scope of the media reform debate. Groups like FreePress
reflect their mostly white, liberal leadership, critics say, by focusing on
regulatory changes and not grassroots outreach to communities shut out of
corporate media.
"We also need to hold these mainstream institutions
accountable."
"When we talk about ‘media diversity,' we're not simply
talking about diversifying media choices or voices," said Malkia Cyril of
the Oakland-based Youth Media Council. "We're talking about eliminating
the structural oppression and racism at the core of consolidation."
Aiming to bridge grassroots activism with policy advocacy,
Youth Media Council sees the media infrastructure as both a target and vehicle
for activism. By training youth to frame their political messages and build
media campaigns, the group has helped youth of color publicize their actions in
mainstream outlets. The Council's media-accountability monitoring projects have
scrutinized local coverage of youth and social issues, pushing broadcasters like
Clear Channel to provide more community-oriented programming.
"Who has the right to participate in and regulate this
media system is a question of citizenship," Cyril said. "And the
question of civil enfranchisement is an issue for everybody."
Michelle Chen can be contacted at [email protected].