Unapproved Broadcasts, Unapproved News

by Jeff Elliott,
Editor

Our look may be quite different from our previous 45 issues, but if you'll find the soul of the thing unchanged -- hard-hitting news and commentary that's usually impossible to find anywhere else. Our new layout, however, should make the Monitor easier to read. It should also make it easier to use the Monitor for research -- important because the archives become more valuable every day.

Every few minutes, someone using an Internet search engine finds one of the 2,000 articles published in the Monitor since 1995. Want examples? Still popular is the controversy surrounding CIA - contra drug deals, examined in issue 22 (winter of 1996). A story in last year's issue 37, "Endangered Orangutans Driven Into Arms Of Wildlife Traders," still brings letters to the editor requesting updates. An insider's report about this "army of god" causes a jump in readership of our 1996 issue 11 every time the fanatic group bombs another family planning clinic. And more have probably read issue 2, with its comprehensive examination of Round Valley and the Bear Lincoln case, than any other edition of the Monitor.

The great majority of these stories also remain topical; the 3 year-old story about global warming starting in the 1940's, for example, compliments a new report showing recent years were the warmest since AD 1400. Similarly, our 1996 feature "Santa's Little Sweatshop" provides important background for current stories about NIKE factories in Asia. The problem: How do you present interconnected material like this in a meaningful way?

While we can't go back and add updates to all those 2,000 stories, it's hoped that the new design will go some ways to help readers find material they want. Part of the answer was to offer resources directly with the articles. Thus new global warming stories will have a button that presents any Monitor archives stories about this subject. Similar buttons will be offered for many continuing topics. And special index pages will also be available for some subjects, such as news about sweatshop working conditions. For those stories, a picture with an arrow will lead readers to an up- to- date resource.

Another part of the solution was to offer better tools for finding material from back issues. Our "Best Of" list now has more entries, along with links to related index pages. Also, our new search page offers a unique way to find news not only in the Monitor, but from mainstream media sources, the Internet at large, and from Rachel's (more about that in a moment).

The final design change was to switch to "frames," a way of breaking the screen into different sections. This allows us to always keep the new search, best-of, and archive pages available at all times, along with the table of contents, front page, and info for non- subscribers. Frames are controversial -- and for good reason. Some readers using copies of Netscape or Internet Explorer before version 4.0 will find a black line separating the menu top of the screen from the rest. Others might find it annoying that the URL location doesn't display the address of each article. These (and many other) drawbacks were considered; still, this design offers far more advantages than not.

Monitor Publishing is proud to be the home for Rachel's Environmental and Health Weekly, the oldest and most respected environmental news resource available anywhere. Since 1986, Rachel's has offered solid, well- researched articles on myriad hazards threatening our food, our air, water, soil, our very lives. Often Rachel's and the Monitor compliment each other by publishing related stories about health risks such as hormone disruptors, "mad cow" disease, BGH, and more. You can explore Rachel's through their index, or use our new comprehensive search page.

Another proud announcement: Starting in May, Monitor is sponsoring programs on KRCB, public television and radio for the North Bay. On KRCB-FM we'll be underwriting Fresh Air with Terry Gross (weekdays, 4-5) and Eclectic Cafe with Cloud Moss (Tuesday, 8 - 10PM). And we're particularly happy to announce that we're underwriting TV broadcasts of Tell the Truth and Run: George Seldes and the American Press, joined by the Press Club of Sonoma County. (Broadcasts are currently scheduled for Sunday, May 24 at 10PM and Thursday, May 28 at 9PM.) We're confident that you'll enjoy this; besides documenting the exciting life of one of the most important journalists of our century, it's a great film that almost won last year's Academy Award,

Yet despite the high quality of the documentary, it's not an "official" program available on a PBS series like American Experience; each public TV station has to buy it from the distributor individually. And without the corporate sponsorship that goes with a network series, it's expensive -- roughly ten times the cost of showing yet- another "Three Tenors" rerun. As a result, fewer than two dozen of the 300 stations have broadcast the film nationwide.

Why did PBS shun the film? Last year, independent Berkeley filmmaker Rick Goldsmith told the Monitor that the network had no interest at all. "American Experience wants safe topics... like Harry Truman or Andrew Carnegie. That's not my approach. Seldes talks about the big forces that still dominate journalism today. There are also a couple of frames referring to PBS being bought and paid for by the corporate world, but I don't think that was a factor." (You can read more about Goldsmith's uphill battle in a 1997 Monitor editorial.)

Sadly, there's evidence that Goldsmith's experience isn't unique. Read "PBS' Pro-Corporate Stance Hurts Unions" in the current edition of the Monitor, along with "Fear and Favor in the Newsroom" and you'll find a pattern emerges: PBS offers only tepid shows that don't risk rocking some corporate boat. Even programs like Frontline and P.O.V. that broadcast "controversial" films apparently shy from offending the big money underwriters.

If politics and money dictates what appears on public TV, it also has to influence funding decisions over at the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. CPB, which helps the stations via annual grants, has changed its policies since the Republican attack. Survival of the fittest is the new standard, as the stations in the most lucrative television markets now have unusual clout. These megastations now can force all nearby public TV stations to delay broadcast of popular programs -- or even block them from showing certain programs at all. Thus a single big station gains viewers (and presumably, subscribers) by offering the newest and best, while little stations pray that a few viewers are still chomping to watch that stale bio of Teddy Roosevelt.

The loop closes: CPB gives most of its grant money to stations with the largest number of viewers -- naturally, the urban stations with the latest programs. Although an outlying station like KRCB is the only public TV available over a huge region (in its case, most of Sonoma, Napa, and Mendocino County), the station finds itself counting pennies. Indeed, KRCB lost about two-thirds of its grant money under the new rules. It was the biggest percentage cut of any station nationwide.

As you'll read in the stories mentioned above, individual stations help independent filmmakers create shows that will never enjoy network broadcast. San Jose affiliate KTEH helped produce and distribute "Fear and Favor in the Newsroom;" Pittsburgh's WQED donated editing services for a documentary about the bloody steelworker's strike of 1892. Both of these programs were deemed too controversial for PBS.

Without PBS' endorsement it's harder for a film to find a home on public TV, but with courage from the stations, it can happen. To their credit, most of the twenty (or so) stations that have shown the Seldes film have featured it on their evening schedules. New York City's WNET even coupled it with "Fear and Favor in the Newsroom," giving that film its widest exposure ever.

We saw this independent spirit when we first approached KRCB about underwriting the Seldes program. At first, it didn't look promising. Rarely does someone ask about airing an independent film like this; research was needed to determine the distributor, broadcast rights, and other details. The odd length of the film -- exactly one minute over two hours -- also made scheduling difficult. But the staff grew enthusiastic about the film, and will show it (at least) twice, most prominently Thursday, May 28 in prime-time. And remember, all this effort is for a film that PBS blacklisted.

Examples like these show that public broadcasting can indeed be responsive and work in the public's interest. For these reasons, I'll go out of my way to support local public TV and radio, rather than the corporate sort.

Our new design came about as we realized that the Monitor is more than just its current issue plus a backroom of musty archives; it's more like each edition adds a new chapter to a book. With your help, there will be a new chapter written next week, next month. Continuing into the new century.

If you live in Sonoma County, we particularly hope you'll consider switching your Internet service to monitor.net. Besides receiving the best service available anywhere, you'll read the Albion Monitor free and support our support of local public broadcasting -- as well as our hosting of unique resources such as Rachel's.

Every smaller public TV station fights for survival, and so do we. For each regular viewer of KRCB, about 1 in 10 becomes a member. For each person that visits our "get password" page, about 1 in 30 actually subscribes (a statistic that's still remarkably high by Internet standards). With more members, their station could become more competitive; with more Monitor subscribers and local Internet accounts, we could offer more frequent updates and more original articles. Even more of the news you're missing.

Stations like KRCB could disappear tomorrow, without your support. If that happens, the non- commercial airwaves will be completely dominated by turgid British costume dramas, biographies of the safely deceased, and Wall Street Week in Review.

The Albion Monitor could disappear, too. Should this one unique resource amid 100,000,000 web pages close, the loss will be small, measured by that scale -- gone will be merely a couple thousand pages. Most won't even notice the loss of its archives covering the remarkable murder trial of Bear Lincoln, sweatshops, debunking of Oklahoma City conspiracy theories, Judi Bari, HMO and nursing home fraud, vanishing plants and animals, global warming, Gulf War sickness, Indonesian suppression, CIA and contra drug deals, corporations using prison labor, or the life of Jessica Mitford.

The greatest irony would be that our motto turned out to be prophetic -- that "The news you're missing" ends up missing, itself. Bits of history that didn't quite make your daily newspaper. All gone without a trace.