by
NCPR Admin on May 10th, 2017
The St. Lawrence University Board of Trustees, which is North Country Public Radio’s’ s governing board, will meet on Friday, May 19, 2017 at 3 pm in the Eben Holden conference room on the St. Lawrence University campus in Canton, NY. A board committee will receive a report on NCPR station activities and finances, and will accept public comment. For more information, email station manager Ellen Rocco : [email protected]
Tags: public comment
Reviewed some of the May 19 meeting. One member said there are three SLU Trustees on the Community Advisory Board CAB . In the past these members were identified on the list of CAB members but are no longer identified as license holder Trustees.
Trustees of the license holders HAVE NO reason to be on the COMMUNITY Advisory Board. They are not representative of the community, they hold the license of the station. Does anyone get this paradox. This is not a Catch 22 situations, the station does not have a CAB and needs to rectify the situation.
5-3-2017 meeting ignored all two public comments posted before the meeting. What incompetentence or arrogance at yet one more meeting requesting public input and completely ignored again. Sandy Maine, I hope your eyes are opened. It’s not the station’s employees; it’s the management, license holders, NPR ,and, soon the CPB attorneys.
Hope the meeting on 5-19-2017 recognizes and responds to public input into the station’s behavior and political approach to the use of CPB taxpayer money in violation of CPB rules.
I won’r be able to make the meeting today either. I wrote this out though an I want you to consider my points. Thanks, Mike:
Hi people. I’m Mike Owen. I came to the North Country in the ninth grade went to High School in Madrid and Parishville. I was raised by an academic and an executive. but I was more interested in building mini bikes than doing homework. This path led me into a real empathy for the voices that are sidelined by the powerful.
I tell this little back story to provide context for what I perceive as the root problems NCPR suffers from.
Style. There are two standard methods of determining truth through language. We can make arguments based on facts. What’s known in academic circles as an epistemological argument. We are expected to include all pertinent information and draw whatever conclusion that information points to.
Content. The other form is lawyerly. We appeal to emotions, the heart not the head. This is advocacy for a particular conclusion that has been established before any investigation is made. It’s understandable in a courtroom because the formal structure is established by law. However, it has no place in journalism.
Even so, NCPR uses the second method both at the National NPR level and the local NCPR level almost exclusively. Just as Donald Trump does.
I rewrote this little rant a few times. An old friend of mine asked me why I bothered with this station. His question? “Why bother with NCPR? You know nothing is going to change.”
But I’m an optimist, always thinking this will be the time that the Station will show enough courage to examine itself.
I could run through an analysis of the news feed show by show, line by line, and be able to demonstrate how I draw the conclusions I do, but would that exercise change anything? My guess is that everyone would wear a fake smile and wonder how soon my presentation would be over.
You will be relieved to hear I’m going to take a different approach. Let’s just look at this week’s broadcast and ask if it was really trying to deliver a fair and balanced message.
All week there has been talk of impeachment. Trump told things to the Russians that the CIA didn’t want him to. We don’t know what he said, and everyone agrees that anything a president says is instantly declassified. NPR however has been making a series of lawyerly arguments based on the outing of vital sources. Moles in Israel.
Why doesn’t the station ask other question like these?
How national security is defined?
Is it patriotic to spy on the world for the benefit of a government corrupted by money at all levels?
Are we more secure this way, or by ending the seemingly endless war in Syria?
Is it possible that Trump was making a clumsy attempt at negotiating a withdrawal from the region?
All questions that a fair and balanced news broadcast would ask, but as we know, none were on NCPR.
That’s one part of the problem. The other big question is what is NOT being talked about?
Last week a journalist was gunned down in Mexico for reporting on drug cartels in that country. Mexico is now the second most dangerous place for journalists, right behind Afghanistan and just ahead of Syria. His co worker at the same news outlet gave a great interview on Thursday and laid out the nature of the problem, the names of the people involved, and made a plea for change. She has 24 hour bodyguards surrounding her but thinks she may suffer the same fate as her colleague because the bodyguards are government employees and the government is very much involved with the drug cartels. The mexican version of Citizen’s United.
That is just one story and if you haven’t heard it, or haven’t heard the details it may be because it was broadcast on Democracy Now! The show that many people have unsuccessfully tried to get aired on NCPR for many years now.
But I’m no longer simply trying to get this show aired.
I want to see a way opened up for the larger community to participate in NCPR’s decisions The closed shop must end.
More random people could be invited on the air. Music shows could always have a guest adding their own taste to the theme.
Rocco has done a great job of building the station with public money She has had the strengths needed to build the station up, a great fundraiser and booster for the station. Now that she is retiring and internet options becoming more and more available the station will have to compete with the world. We have an opportunity to look for the kind of management skills that will expand the appeal of the station to beyond the borders of self described Democrats and folks with higher education.
How will people be selected for the hiring committee? I would be willing to serve on it myself it I was asked to.
Where is it all going?
Letters to other media outlets? Lawsuits? Nowhere?
Greetings Mr. Chairman,
I have read all the CAB (Community Advisory Board, aka executive council) minutes and public posts, have participated in meetings, have read all 16 pages of the CPB guidelines and have been on the phone several times with the CPB Inspector General’s office.
My participation had a minor effect in two areas. For the first time in the station’s history a CAB chair actually ran his own meeting instead of the station manager. Second, the station has partly started to use the term CAB (Community Advisory Board), the industry’s vernacular for community representation required by federal law. But I cannot get the CAB to act like a CAB. A board is not a board unless it acts like a board.
My letter to the CAB for the February 2, 2017 meeting was not addressed at all. My name was in the minutes.
Will the SLU Trustees–the license holders–resolve the following issues for the good of the station?
The CAB does not rotate in new members as required by the NCPR station bylaws and the spirit of the CPB (Corporation for Public Broadcasting) rules of CAB guidelines. Will you remedy this? The bylaws state that there is a three-year term limit while most members have been on for seven years
The Executive Council acts as a think tank, fundraiser, and extension of the license holders, BUT it is not a CAB in any sense. Can the license holders enforce the CPB rules and install a real CAB that acts like a CAB? Such a board would take public input seriously, discuss and listen to recommended alternative news sources such as Democracy Now!, and, after due diligence, make recommendations to the station management. It’s all in the minutes of the meetings. This has NOT been done and is why I make my case here today.
Will the trustees take the place of the inactive CAB and listen to Democracy Now! news as a needed alternative to the mainstream NPR based news? Democracy Now! is on 1,400 public TV and radio stations. Will NCPR be the last station to air this vital alternative to NPR based news? I personally know of several dozen people who no longer support or listen to NCPR and instead listen online to any radio station in the world to the exclusion of NCPR.
Ms Rocco has her bias against Democracy Now! but she fails to see the bias, advocacy and censorship by omission built into NPR based journalism. In a democracy, there are various versions of the truth competing for vindication. NPR and PBS TV have joined forces, share reporters, and almost word for word tell the same EXACT stories every day. We need Democracy Now! as a source of award winning journalism for the turbulent times ahead.
The license holders must act. The CAB of NCPR, your station, is broken and acts outside the laws established by the CPB and the stations own bylaws.
Sincerely,
Rich Paolillo
It’s been two weeks. Can the minutes of the last meeting in Lake Placid be posted before Friday’s meeting with the governing board.
Correction on spelling of the CAB board member that spoke up for Democracy Now, and subsequently ignored, was Mr Robinson.
Greetings
The Community Advisory Board has not acted as a board, has never advised, and does not rotate in new members. It has not listened to Democracy Now as a group, after numerous requests by the community, and vote on whether or not to recommend Democracy Now to management. Mr Robbins, new to board, said he likes the show and thinks it would serve the listeners. This comment was met with total silence by the board, no discussion, no follow through, no action. This “executive council” is not a Community Advisory Board and is in violation of CPB rules.
Thanks
I’ll see you at the meeting.
Here’s an example of the structural problems this station suffers from. Not surprisingly it’s an interview with a huge figure in independent journalism and being aired on a show this station has repeatedly refused to air in spite of the fact that some 50 other stations are currently doing so. When is this station going to catch up with the pack? Are we supposed to wonder if this will be the last station to carry the program? Meanwhile Saturday morning is taken up with a car repair show that’s so old that one of the guys on it is dead. Doe
s anyone want to know how to fix their ’86 Dodge Omni anymore?
https://www.democracynow.org/2017/5/12/glenn_greenwald_on_barrett_brown_press
Hi Ellen, or Board of Trustees.
I’m a little confused. Where do these comment go? I want to submit a comment but not to you Ellen. A friend of mine said he commented before another meeting and his comment ended up not being posted anywhere but instead got sent to some editorial loop that never completed it’s process until after the meeting was held. Where are the other public comments? Why is it so hard to find out about these meeting with SLU. It seems to me that if you wish to hear from the public you would put a tab on your homepage seeking submissions.
Thanks, I’ll see you at the meeting.