US Special Forces, No US Special Forces and booking guests on KYRS

In light of recent events at KYRS, I thought this was worth considering...

I am posting this blog entry by Nathan Moore, news facilitator of WORT 89.9 FM Madison, Wisconsin. The KYRS version of Moore's posting would be "US Special Forces, No US Special Forces and booking guests on KYRS".

The original post by Moore can be found at http://wortnews.blogspot.com/

Nazis, No Nazis, and booking guests on WORT

As a lot of you likely know, a group of "National Socialists", aka Nazis, has announced plans to hold a rally in Madison this coming Saturday. Several weeks ago, local activists formed a group cleverly called "No Nazis in Madison". The group has been organizing a counter-rally, as well as trying to use this as a catalyst to bring attention to issues of institutional racism beyond the knee-jerk response to the rally.

So, WORT is covering some of these activities. I received an email from the host and new producer of the Friday 8:00 Buzz earlier today. I've edited it for relevance to this issue and ease of reading, and have pasted it below. I've also pasted my response below that.

-----Original Message-----

From: Tonya Brito

Jonathan,

I've been following up on finding someone from No Nazis in Madison to interview re the demonstration/counter rally to the upcoming Nazi rally that they are organizing. The announcement sent out by the No Nazi in Madison group did not have a contact person listed and instead directed me to a couple of websites, including a members-only Yahoo group. I completed the online registration form in order to join the yahoo group so that I could communicate with them, sent an interview request and now have a contact person to talk to.

I have also received an e-mail from a neo-nazi with the National Socialist Movement who is requesting an interview. See below. I suspect that this person was lurking in the Yahoo group set up by No Nazis in Wisconsin.

I thought I'd write a brief "no thank you" response but wanted to check with you first to find out if anything more ought to be said/done.

Tonya


-----Nathan's Reply Message-----

I'm generally not in favor of bring neo-nazis or any kind of nazis on to the air. Producers and hosts at WORT do enjoy a remarkable amount of autonomy, so I can't say that you "aren't allowed" to bring any nazis on the air, but I do discourage it.

Though my personal news ethic hasn't been adopted as any kind of offical policy by the station, I think the best news & public affairs production for a community station should at its heart help rebuild and maintain a community's sense of itself, empowering listeners to engage in community activism. That includes fostering deliberation and understanding, as well as explaining systems and processes in depth. None of those things are benefitted by having nazis on the air. Nazis are anti-community, as they push to exclude large segments of our community and encourage people to destroy community. They do not contribute to fostering deliberation or understanding, given their zealotry and unyielding racial hatred. Our goal of serving the community is not met by understanding the motives of a race warrior. They also do not help us explain systems in any depth. Their explanation of most social problems is that it's the fault of blacks, Jews, gays, etc. That's the opposite of meaningful explanation.

We have no requirement - nor should we - to strive for "objectivity" in the traditional sense of the word. As if objectivity were even attainable in our socially created and defined world, we at WORT wouldn't necessarily want to seek it anyway, given our mission to air the voices of the underrepresented, challenge listeners, and promote communication, education, & understanding -- in a word, to build community through democratically run media. Building community necessarily positions us outside the realm of "objective" journalism, and requires us to make value judgments about which information and which sides of a story are more in line with our goals - while also remaining open-minded about the possibility of many paths to community-building and many visions of what a vibrant, flourishing, democratic community could look like.

Anyway, this has gotten very heady, especially so early in your tenure as Jonathan's producer. ; )

As an aside, WORT did put nazis on the air way back in 1977 or '78 - before I was even born. It went horribly. WORT was a very new station at the time, and the Madison left came out by the hundreds to protest the station for its then-news director's decision to invite the nazis on the air. The protestors blocked the unwelcome guests from getting into the station. I don't know what the hosts actually aired, but it wasn't the nazis. There's an article about it in our 25th anniversary book that long-time activist and WORT volunteer Allen Ruff wrote. He summed up the feeling of the protestors in a way that is still very relevant today - that is, that WORT airwaves are a valuable (and rare!) community resource, and that the nazis have no business on these airwaves.

Hope this helps! Sorry so long...

~Nathan