With Big Bucks Out To Hijack Truth and Broadcasting Integrity- The Daily Show and Bill Moyers Set Models for WNYC Radio

October 29, 2014, Jon Stewart takes on the Koch's when they advertise on his show.

This October when the Koch Brothers ponied up $$$$ to muscle in on the Daily Show (broadcast on a commercial network- Comedy Central) to gain influence through paid-for advertising spots, Jon Stewart pushed back scathingly with a brilliant “adjusted” version of the Koch's own commercial, torpedoing the Koch ad by sinking it in proper context, i.e. the pertinent facts of what the Koch’s are actually up to.  (See: Democalypse 2014 - South by South Mess: Ad of Brothers, October 29, 2014.)

Bravo!

A Model for Public Broadcasters, Maybe WNYC Public Radio?

That raises the question of what happens when similarly objectionable sponsors hope their money plus messages will hijack the public’s reliance on the integrity that people expect from public broadcasting, integrity we expect partly because so many of us ante up our own contributions so that such broadcasting will be paid for largely by our own listener dollars.. . .   The fracking industry has been paying public radio to run its pro-fracking “think about it”campaign. David H. Koch, a heavy funder of climate science denial, sponsors, with mysterious intention ,“Nova,” a premier PBS science program. And David Koch has been put on public broadcasting boards!  Where is Stewart’s spirited, contextual, integrity-regaining push-back against such sponsorships on these non-commercial public networks?

Similarly, what does public radio station WNYC do when $$$$$ is flashed by an objectionable and powerful entity intent on selling fictions about itself?  Do they perhaps put that entity’s Chief Operating Officer on its policy-setting board and send out a press release that spiffs up that CEO’s reputation, if that, in fact, is the very least they do?  (Would that be a poor attempt to follow in the steps of the Daily Show to evoke laughter?). . .

. . .  At least $$$$$$ is the presumed reason that people believe that MaryAnne Gillmartin, the CEO of our local real-estate-subsidy-pursuer Forest City Ratner, was recently appointed as a WNYC trustee, because people can see no other explicable reason for her appointment other than $$$$$ and see lots a reasons why she should definitely not have been appointed to such a position.   See: Sunday, November 16, 2014, Is Forest City Ratner, As Victor, Writing Our History?- WNYC's Press Release on Appointing Forest City Ratner's MaryAnne Gilmartin to Its Board of Trustees and  Tuesday, November 18, 2014, Was Forest City's Gilmartin appointed to WNYC board because of "passion for public radio" or fundraising help?

The Message to Send Back

How does one push back effectively?

For the Daily Show the vehicle was humorous satire, but the “adjusted” Koch brothers commercial the Daily Show crew created provides a model for what to do when someone comes knocking at your door seeking to buy what will be perceived as true.  Such a response doesn’t necessarily have to be couched in satire. . . . And the essence of the Daily Show’s tactical response applies quite well to the ways that Forest City Ratner can be outed when it lies about itself.

The `adjusted’ Koch brothers commercial, with some helping emphasis from Stewart’s bantering introduction to it, let us know:

    •    Who the Kochs are really are behind this offered veil, a not so friendly giant that’s far too eagerly controlling far too many aspects of our environment.
    •    That their commercial is the facile purchase of a cheerily false veneer of happiness, a virtual “smile factory” to generate a “how bad could they be” message.
    •    That, in a shadowy way, they deploy a spider web of dark money that buys our elections and politicians.
    •    That the ad is far more important for what it leaves out than for what it includes.
    •    The ad has a 180 degree from the truth message: We are making your (the listeners’) lives better, instead of, in actuality, destroying much of the essential environment and natural ecosystem around you.
    •    There is a scary ubiquity, omnipresence, inescapable dominance on the part of the sponsor, relegating or exiling the rest of us to potential non-entity status.
    •    That even our thoughts and basic understanding of the truth is at risk as these entities work to indoctrinate all, even our innocent children, to believe their manufactured falsehoods and seek to commandeer and rewrite our sources of knowledge.
    •    That, in their view, everything, every aspect of us, is up for their monetizing grabs.
    •    That they are unfair to the average worker they employ, offering low wage jobs.
    •    That they are: “The next generation of robber barons bending the democratic process to our will.”

(While the description above is generated from viewing the Daily Show segment about the Kochs, the hyperlinks are all set up to document the similarities to the Forest City Ratner organization.)

Another Choice Video, Another Model for WNYC

The Daily Show
Get More: Daily Show Full Episodes,Indecision Political Humor,The Daily Show on Facebook

(Above: Democalypse 2014 - South by South Mess: Ad of Brothers, October 29, 2014, click through to Daily Show for best viewing).

If you haven't already watched this four-minute Daily Show segment I highly recommend that you do and I don't think that my analytic summary above will subtract from your chortles or appreciation of what an exquisitely structured piece it is.  . . .

I have another choice segment of exquisitely constructed video, 22 minutes, that I am going to urge you to watch that I will discuss here as a second model for where WNYC should want to head in dealing with Forest City Ratner and the New York City real estate industry in general.  This one is from another broadcaster, Bill Moyers.  I specifically cited it as such an example in an email I sent to WNYC president Laura Walker in follow-up to talking with her after the last WNYC trustees meeting.



(Above: Full Show: The Long, Dark Shadows of Plutocracy, November 28, 2014- transcript available at this link- click through to Moyers & Company for optimal viewing.)
 
First let me set the scene a bit.

WNYC Community Advisory Board Meetings

November 18, 2014 WNYC Community Advisory Board meeting.  Attendance of New Tech City's  Manoush Zomorodi (facing, far right) was featured.

Some of us who considered absurdity together with danger to be inherent in Ms. Gilmartin’s appointment to WNYC’s policy-setting board went to the last two WNYC Community Advisory Board meetings (October 20, 2014 and November 18, 2014) to comment and object.  By the second of these two meetings the advisory board was beginning to weigh and think about our objections.  Unfortunately, the advisory board is no more than advisory; it doesn’t run things and can only relay to the board of trustees that does run things the feedback gotten from the public.  Unfortunately, the Community Advisory Board’s reports to the WNYC trustees board are only annual.   The next report including these objections won't go to the trustees until October of 2015!

At the October 20, 2014 Community Advisory Board meeting there was a presentation about sister station WQXR's aspirations/ambitions

December 3, 2014 WNYC Trustees Meeting

December 3, 2014 WNYC Trustees Meeting

No matter, some of us then went to the December 3, 2014 WNYC trustees meeting, the first trustees meeting held since Ms. Gilmartin was placed on the board. Ms. Gilmartin sat in a seeming position of honor right next to Laura R. Walker, board member, President & CEO of WNYC who conducted most of the meeting.  Ms. Gilmartin sat somewhat sullenly without speaking, probably aware that objections had been raised about her appointment.  When I spoke with President Walker afterwards she said that, because seating at the meeting was not assigned, nothing should be inferred from who was sitting where, but she refused to say who sat next to whom first respecting Ms. Gilmartin and herself.

Second and third from left, Walker and Gilmartin seated next to each other

While the WNYC board apparently hadn’t heard from the Community Advisory Board, a number of the members, Ms. Walker included, were expecting us and knew why we were there.  Even so, apparently not all the members were similarly aware and the Noticing New York’s article about Ms. Walker’s appointment had not been distributed to all the trustees.

An opportunity for public comment was not part of the meeting, but Ms. Walker noted that the public could approach and speak with the trustees who lingered after the meeting's executive session (during which the public had to exit the room).  Returning afterwards is when I spoke with Ms. Walker and an assisting staff member.

I was told that Ms. Gilmartin’s appointment had been in the works for more than a year.  Although I pressed for an answer, Ms. Walker would not say whether anyone had raised the obvious likely objections to Ms. Gilmartin’s appointment other than to let me understand that there had been discussions about Ms. Gilmartin's qualifications.  I asked, and Ms. Walker said that she had known Ms. Gilmartin for a number of years.

At the meeting, and outside of it afterwards, there was discussion about a gala (including what to wear) and, outside the board meeting room, there was also some discussion about how there was a lot of money in the borough of Queens, as in Flushing, that was not and ought to be represented on the NYC board.  As we were there to say that representation of actual people and listeners ought to be represented in the composition of WNYC’s board, not Forest City Ratner’s money, I was sensitive to the phraseology that there was “money” in New York City that needed to be represented on the board.

This dispersal of board members after the meeting was rapid.  I did not get to have much in the way of conversation with very many, but one of the board members who said he was aware of the controversy about the Gilmartin appointment said that he did not have any problem with it because he thought that Ms. Gilmartin and her interests should be represented on the board as part of representing the interests of “all New Yorkers.”

My Noticing New York point of view is that WNYC and public broadcasting is intended to be an alternative to the relentless expression of commercial speech and is not supposed to be setting up a he-said/she-said balance on its board between all of the city’s commercial interests and those of the public.  There is also concern that with any such `balance' it will shift inexorably in the direction of the commercial interests represented.

Kurt Andersen Interview of  Cultural Affairs Commissioner Tom Finkelpearl

Left Cultural Affairs Commissioner Tom Finkelpearl.  Right Studio 360's Kurt Andersen

As if to emphasize the intersection of NYC's coverage of news and culture in New York with governance and politics, a centerpiece of the publicly held  portion of the trustees meeting was a half hour interview of NYC Cultural Affairs Commissioner Tom Finkelpearl.  He was interviewed by Kurt Andersen, known for his "Studio 360" program broadcast in prime slots in the station's line up.  Andersen quipped that without the editing and typical winnowing of a typical "Studio 360" interview (talking for an hour but getting the best ten minutes) he and Mr. Finkelpearl were not going to sound nearly as good as what usually goes out on the air.  It was, indeed, odd to hear Mr. Andersen's familiar voice associated with a face I might not have guessed went with it.  Present in the room with him, he didn't sound quite so perky.  If you'd like to listen to Mr. Andersen, "Studio 360" did an absolutely brilliant, recently rebroadcast, 2013 hour about the Disney Company parks that included discussion of urban planning issues, but not in ways that would relate those issues obviously to NYC.

Agenda for Trustees meeting

Commissioner Finkelpearl, a pleasant, erudite fellow may be familiar to our readers as he has gone to bat several times to speak on behalf of "Spaceworks."  Noticing New York views the Spaceworks very differently since the private Spaceworks firm, formed at the end of the Bloomberg administration (and not covered by WNYC yet) albeit "nonprofit," seems to have a decided real estate bent and has declared as one of its primary missions the acquisition and shrinkage of New York City Library space as "underutilized."

The Finkelpearl/Andersen interview discussing how culture and economics interrelate generally got around to discussing real estate, specifically Hudson Yards, which, as it is a thematic sister to Forest City Ratner's Atlantic Yards, should have been reason for Ms. Gilmartin's ears to perk up.  Conversely, might Mr. Finkelpearl's perception of Ms. Gilmartin have gotten an adjustment from sitting across from her that morning?  Hudson Yards is fewer acres and in many ways not as bad as Atlantic Yards, but similar vintage, both being mega, single developer projects sired under Bloomberg.

The discussion of Hudson Yards came up in the context of the millions of dollars the city is spending in terms of "partnerships" with cultural institutions and how culture, in the likely form of a governmentally assisted institution ($75 million), could be integral to moving the huge, single-developer Hudson Yards project along.

Back to David Koch

Concluding the Finkelpearl session, trustees were able to put their own questions to the Commissioner and the first as about whether Mayor de Blasio cares sufficiently about the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  Mr. Finkelpearl said this was not true, recounting that the department was actively involved with the Met and that he police commissioner had gotten involved with the issue of food cart vendors outside of the Met.  The issue has been exacerbated by the opening of the new (publicly protested) David H. Koch plaza outside the Met and is one that David Koch, living nearby, is speculated to be one he takes a personal interest in. Koch thought the old fountains outside the Met were "crummy" and  says of the replacement scheme "I suggested the whole project," reportedly getting into the "micro-details" of it.  We heard Mr. Finkelpearl explain that the Met gets $24 million a year from Cultural Affairs plus often getting "large capital investments."  City schools get $22 million yearly from the department.

Mention here of David Koch provides an opportune segue to discuss the Bill Moyers segment I recommend and the email I sent about it to Ms. Walker.

The Koch brothers represent the essential epitome of the fossil fuel industry and its outsized power.  In my email communication to Laura Walker about omissions that weaken WNYC’s coverage I cited, by example (you see how I detailed this in the actual email I sent below), the new episode of Moyers & Company that addressed itself to the outsized power of the real estate industry in New York City.  One point made during the Moyers show was the equivalency of the real estate industry  vis-à-vis New York City to the overbearing influence of the oil and fossil fuel industry nationally.

Putting Ms. Walker on the Spot

Compensation information for WNYC president Laura Walker from station's 2012 990 IRS filing

You may perhaps observe that my questions in my email below put Ms. Walker very firmly on the spot.  Before feeling too sorry for her consider that she is paid big bucks for these decisions and presumably to take the heat for it.  WNYC’s most recent IRS 990 forms on file with the Guidestar service (signed 05/14/2014) show that Ms. Walker’s reportable compensation for 2012 was $559,838 in addition to which she received from WNYC that year another $98,178 in the category of deferred compensation and non taxable benefits, for a total compensation package back in 2012 of $658,016 for her estimated 35.5 hours of work per week.  (Her salary, $486,688 in June 2007, was last noticed by Gawker in 2009, so it’s been going up a bit.)


In point of reference, talk show host mainstays Leonard Lopate and Brian Lehrer were paid for that reported year, $236,211 and $287,084, respectively (plus, respectively, $25,219 and $31,900 in the category of deferred compensation and non-taxable benefits).

My Followup Email to Ms. Walker

From Noticing New York's December 24, 2013 coverage (like Moyers) of the plutocratic towers casting shadows on Central Park- Slide promoting Skyscraper Museum Show-"View of Central Park from One57"

Here is my email to Ms. Walker:

Dear Ms. Walker,

When we talked after the WNYC board meeting yesterday you said that if there were ways I thought that WNYC could be doing a better job covering and addressing issues that I believe need to be addressed in this city I should let you know and that you would relay my thoughts to the WNYC editorial board assuring me that, notwithstanding the recent appointment of Forest City Ratner CEO MaryAnne Gilmartin as a trustee to WNYC's policy-setting board, that the listeners of WNYC will get the coverage of important issues that is deserved.

In that regard, I call to your attention a new episode of Moyers & Company: The Long, Dark Shadows of Plutocracy, Aired: 11/28/2014.

Although Moyers & Company is an independently produced nationally syndicated program that deals with issues of national importance I think you will observe that the entirety of this particular 22-minute program focuses on a series of connected concerns that are all local New York City issues, the kind that it would be the natural province of WNYC, our city public radio station, to cover.

This Moyers & Company episode, in a connecting-the-dots fashion showing the interrelationships, zeros in and seamlessly addressees all of the following issues:

    •    Increasing wealth inequality in NYC with the ascension of a privileged elite buying power to create an increasingly unlevel playing field that's being taken advantage of to create more power and wealth inequality.  (i.e. the  "dark shadow of plutocracy")
    •    The invasion of a significant public commons with its sacrifice to privileged private interests.  In this case that public commons is specifically, but also somewhat symbolically, the example of Central Park.  It is important to remember that WNYC similarly represents a significant public commons.
    •    Reminders of how our collectively shared commons represent the experience of democracy and its effective functioning.
    •    An elucidating equation of the power of the real estate industry in NYC with the all too influential national oil industry centered in Texas.
    •    How this disequilibrium translates into bad urban design and degraded living conditions for the average New Yorker with developer greed driving that detriment.
    •    An analysis of how the "Swiss bank account money" fueling these subtractions from the public good (per New York Magazine's "Stash Pad" cover story) likely doesn't pull its weight in contributing to the local economy, notwithstanding former Mayor Michael Bloomberg's defense of the super-rich and his political urging that the NYC economy be channeled in this direction.
    •    That, because of political machinations and dodgy deals in Albany linked to questionable campaign contributions, democracy and the public interest is being sold out in these regards, which means that these wealthy luxury apartment owners who very frequently don't pay local income taxes also very dramatically escape a proper shouldering of their fair share of real estate taxes.
    •    How the Moreland Commission, set up to investigate abuse and corruption in Albany politics, was focusing on these exact city real estate industry issues when it was dismantled by Governor Andrew Cuomo as it got too close to his own conduct in regard to these particulars.
    •    How the imbalances in the way we are managing our public resources is resulting in a less diverse, increasingly exclusive city with the needs of significant sectors of the population being insufficiently or completely unsupported.
    •    Some thought about what makes for effective public protest and countering political actions in the face of these things.

I doubt that you would disagree that all of these concerns plus the way that they are interconnected are of vital interest to New York City's populace and WNYC's listeners.  I therefore invite you to submit this Moyers episode to your editorial board and ask them when WNYC has covered these issues and their interrelation with similar comprehension and vigor.  I also ask you and the editorial board to identify when WNYC has subjected the Forest City Ratner organization and its activities that very much affect the city to the same kind of careful scrutiny.

I recognize that pieces of much of the above have been covered in fits and starts from time to time by various WNYC programs.

Brian Lehrer, for example, has (almost unavoidably) independently covered such topics as "stash pads" and the luxury towers casting shadows into Central Park, and has also had some excellent discussion about Governor Andrew Cuomo's dissolution of the Moreland Commission. Still, given that WNYC intends to be a station that prides itself on long-format, in-depth and analytical, in-context reporting, where is the kind of in depth reporting from WNYC that, like the Moyers story, pulls these things together, interrelating them for the kind of comprehensive overview that begs to be made?

I've covered much of what the Moyers episode addresses in Noticing New York, routinely making most of the same connections, and I do so because it has been my priority to deal with what I believe is most critically in need of being addressed in terms of New York City development, governance and politics.  That NNY coverage has been possible despite the fact that financially Noticing New York is essentially a shoestring, zero-budget operation.  So it doesn't take money.

Yesterday I repeated to you the suggestion made by one of the public attendees at the last WNYC Community Advisory Board meeting, that if comes to a question money (one of the CAB members suggested money was at the root of certain practices in question) that WNYC should simply consider "doing less with greater integrity."

A side note before concluding:  I realize that in holding out to you the Moyers work as an example, I may be undermining arguments I have recently been making because: 1.) It involves commendable actions recently taken by the Municipal Art Society although I have criticized MAS to the extent to which they, with board changes of their own, have abdicated- or reversed- much of the core mission MAS once pursued, and 2.) the broadcast came to New Yorkers via WNET Public television which I have criticized for not covering the the real estate industry issues that beset the city.  Quite true, but: A.) MAS could hardly ignore the magnitude of the issue (even if it is interesting that after the 1980s TimeWarner building construction battle precursing this more recent tower shadows issue was not completely won, MAS appointed that questionable building's architect as its board chair), and B.) As a nationally syndicated program the Moyers show bypassed the local editorial board, and was not a product of it.

I am thankful for WNYC's coverage of such local development issues and associated politics whenever it is clearly good, which it can be, but I am taking you up on your offer to communicate what needs and ought to be better, gaps that need to be filled.   Please let me know and direct my attention accordingly, if I have overlooked WNYC coverage that would match up to the story that Moyers & Company just produced.  Likewise, do let me know if you think that there has been rigorous coverage of Forest City Ratner that is comparable.  If that's not the case, I'd be delighted to hear that you are communicating to the WNYC editorial board that there are standards toward which they yet need to strive with the expectation of beneficial results to follow.

Thank you for your attention.

Above and below from the Moyers report

 "Masculine" vs. "Feminine" News, What's Most Important To Cover

Years ago, I heard on public radio (I was traveling and I am not sure it was WNYC and cannot retrieve more facts) a fascinating speech by a prominent national female news anchor of the time.  I am guessing that the speaker might have been Diane Sawyer and that this was in the 1990s.  She spoke about what is perceived as  “male” or “masculine” news, which was considered “hard” news and more important than what was considered “female” or “feminine” news.  Political news was generally viewed as falling into the “masculine” news category that also frequently preoccupied itself with headlines about crises that might be covered with relatively short spans of attention from the media.  Conversely, “female” or “soft” news, often dismissively viewed, tended to focus on the very intricate texture and meaning of our daily lives, often in ways that might help foreshadow or help us comprehend and prevent crises.

I remember coming away from hearing the speech with a very deep respect for the importance of this deeper, more contextual, background kind of news often viewed as “feminine” and inferior.

Fluffy News to Put You to Sleep?

That being said, I am beginning to wonder whether there has been a programming shift at WNYC to the less substantial, less meaningful, the kind of stuff that life-style commercial networks already cover with more than sufficient adequacy.  I asked Ms. Walker what she thought the purpose was of including Ms. Gilmartin in a July 15, 2014 Brian Lehrer segment about how to get a better night’s sleep.  At the time that of that broadcast Ms. Walker and her board were obviously, based on what she said, considering honoring Ms. Gilmartin with an appointment to the WNYC board.  Ms. Walker did not really have an adequate answer, except to say that Ms. Gilmartin was just there as another female executive although I pointed out that her appearance in that segment alongside Arianna Huffington, head of the Huffington Post and AOL was obviously burnishing for Gilmartin’s reputation.

Background IS Indeed Important News

I actually view politics as being deeply imbued in the fabric, texture and background of our lives, what might be considered the feminine, often dismissed side of the news cycle.  Ergo, Ms. Gilmartin’s appearance in the context of that segment has political meaning.  Similarly, the background urban environment in which we live and the meaning it gives our lives is important, part of what we pay attention to and the decisions we must make when we govern ourselves.  For instance: Aren’t landmarks an important part of the way we feel and emotionally connect to the city in which we live?  It appeared the real estate industry had inveigled the de Blasio administration to do a massive, wholesale “de-calendering” of all of the landmarks now before the city Landmarks Commission to preserve, a total of about 100, jettisoning years of work by preservationists. . . New York Times architectural critic Michael Kimmelman posted to Facebook that it was “a sop to the real estate industry and the opposite of transparent, especially without a public hearing.”  

Indeed, done en masse under the vague “housekeeping” rubric, attested to an intention to hide exactly who was intended to be benefitted by whatever the juiciest handouts were in the group, but it was a safe bet that there were at least several really juicy ones, one of them perhaps the intention to build yet one more in the parade of supper tall towers south of the park at the site of the 57th and 5th Avenue’s Bergdorf Goodman!

. . . The Brian Lehrer show didn’t get around to covering the potential disaster but, thankfully, the plan was set aside after massive opposition anyway.  The Leonard Lopate show got around to it after the fact, almost too late.

Moyers Watching Stewart

Moyers commenting favorably on Stewart's treatment of his Koch sponsors

Will Jon Stewart’s bite the hand that sponsors you by assembling appropriate truth-telling adjustments catch on with public media?  Stewart’s push-back apparently did catch the eye of one public broadcasting veteran, none other than Bill Moyers himself.  Days after the Daily Show segment aired, the Billmoyers.com website put up a post with a link back to the Daily Show observing how Stewart had meted out his  honest helping of justice for the Kochs’ “series of treacly, feel-good commercials touting all the wonderful things the company does to make our lives better.”

The Goldman Sachs commercial that pops up links to more video promotion for Goldman, including its involvement with huge real estate projects in New York City.

There’s work for Moyers to do in this regard because the efforts of $$$$$ to encroach are everywhere. . .  It’s ironic, but when I clicked to watch “The Long, Dark Shadows of Plutocracy” what I got first before it started to play was a “treacly, feel-good commercial” for Goldman Sachs and company “touting all the wonderful things the company does to make our lives better.”   As written about previously here in Noticing New York, Goldman, including a subsidy-abusive real estate manipulation to build its own NYC office tower, was squarely targeted by Moyers in at least one previous Moyers broadcast.

Does this go in the “you just can’t win” category?  I’d like to think that Moyers has dished out far better than he has been subjected to, that his integrity is as mightily intact as it appears to be, and that at this point he is miles ahead of those who spend to piggy-back on his message, hoping to neuter the truth he offers. . .  That he, like Jon Stewart, may still be thought of as setting a good example for WNYC.

PS:  Something for Noticing New York to do next?:  Look more carefully at the composition of the rest of the WNYC board to consider whether we can expect there to be adequate checks and balances to the kind of influences that come with appointments like Ms. Gilmartin's.

Is Forest City Ratner, As Victor, Writing Our History?- WNYC's Press Release on Appointing Forest City Ratner's MaryAnne Gilmartin to Its Board of Trustees

“History is written by the victors.”   That's certainly the old adage that reflexively gets accepted as true by so many of us even without knowing who first said it.

But first the victor must wrest the pen that writes history into its own grasp. . .  That’s what Forest City Ratner seems to be trying to do when it comes to Atlantic Yards and its exploits in New York City.

In October Forest City Ratner’s Chief Executive Officer MaryAnne Gilmartin was appointed to the board of trustees of the board of New York Public Radio, better known as WNYC and its sister station WQXR, according to the press release appointing Gilmartin, “America's most listened-to AM/FM news and talk public radio stations.”  How did that happen?. . .

. . . Certainly not without a lot of maneuvering and purposeful intent on the part of Forest City Ratner.

The WNYC public radio stations are not are not only the “most listened-to” stations; there is also an implicit agreement with their listeners that, because they are listener financed, they can be trusted as a much more reliable source of earnest news reporting, an alternative free from the corrupting influence that saturates commercially owned and operated news media.  Accordingly, for instance, the idea that the WNYC family of stations provides in-depth news and information that is vastly superior to the kind of press release-conduit journalism that commercial stations put out was propounded again and in the sales pitches made during WNYC’s last fund-raising drive, just as that idea has been highlighted in the many years of fund-raisers before.  This most recent WNYC fund-raiser was subsequent to Ms. Gilmartin’s appointment to the WNYC board.

Ms. Gilmartin’s arrival at her policy-making trustee’s position on the WNYC board is reminiscent of another board’s takeover and ensuing 180-degree policy changes seen most clearly with respect to Forest City Ratner’s Atlantic Yards: That of the once venerated Municipal Art Society.

The Municipal Art Society was once thought of as representing the public and standing up to developers in the face of abusive development.  Kent Barwick, when he was the head of MAS, called Atlantic Yards “the poster child for what goes wrong when process is ignored. . . a poorly designed project that has polarized the community and that squanders both opportunity and public trust.”   Not so long ago, MAS had scores of forums about development in the city invoking the name and principles of Jane Jacobs in which, while the moderators kept civil order, the Atlantic Yards mega-monopoly was excoriated by expert panelists and attending public alike, for a zillion villainous transgressions against the public interest.
  
More recently, after an orchestrated reconstituting of the board, essentially, as it was disclosed to me, happening as something of a coup, MAS has reversed itself to the extent that many no longer regard it as representing the public.  This new version of MAS has given not one, but two, awards the to the Atlantic Yards mega-development, essentially praising Forest City Ratner for the kind of neighborhood destruction that was previously decried, an absurdity that’s siren for satire, essentially an award for “preserving a swath of Prospect Heights by tearing it down to build the Ratner Prokhorov Barclays arena while letting the rest of the destroyed neighborhood acreage lie fallow for a few decades.”   (See: Monday, June 16, 2014, Ratner, Gilmartin & the MAS Onassis Medal: selective memory, glitzy gala, and enduring dismay.)

Just a few days ago I ran into a woman who was a new resident of New York who, without knowing any of the history of how MAS’s mission has been recently redirected, told me that she had attended a MAS event and unexpectedly found it an almost unbelievably depressing pro-development spectacle.  I don’t know. .  I wasn’t there, but I do know that there has been a massive exile of those who used to be involved with MAS, including its former president, Kent Barwick, to resurrect The City Club of New York.  What’s left of the former Municipal Art Society seems to have gobs of money, but its soul is and moral compass are lost.  In its place, the new, leaner City Club is shaping up credibly to fill in the void of what MAS once was.

There are, of course, other well-worn sayings about history.  One of the best known is George Santayana’s “When experience (which is history) is not retained...infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it,” which may be viewed as something of a retread of Cicero’s “Those who have no knowledge of what has gone before them must forever remain children.”  Malcolm X took a crack at essentially the same sentiment with: “History is a people's memory, and without a memory man is demoted to the lower animals.”

It provokes thought and fright to consider that when history is written by the victors it will be rewritten so that those things that should never have happened in the first place will happen again virtually by design.  In other words George Orwell’s, “Whoever controls the past controls the future.” 

This brings to mind another adage about victors and victory: “To the victor go the spoils.”  Getting to write history, the ability to control the past and thereby own the future too, may be viewed as just a subset of the spoils that the victors get to walk away with.

It is not then surprising that at the groundbreaking for the Ratner Atlantic Yards arena, Ratner and Atlantic Yards supporter Mayor Michael Bloomberg seemed to focus wishfully about his expectation of public forgetfulness to cement the highly controversial victories: “nobody's going to remember how long it took. They're only going to look and see that it was done.”  Such ablution via deficient memory extends to the cleansing almost any means-to-an-end in public debate and governance if “only results matter.”  

The sad thing, if Forest City Ratner gets to write the history of Atlantic Yards, is that such writing of our history will not just be the consequence of victory, but another victory unto itself.  Although Forest City Ratner overpowered the public interest and the community to achieve many things it ought never to have achieved, I think it is quite fair to say that the community won a good share of the battles.  The most important was the laying bare of Forest City Ratner’s deceptive practices. That's more important even than the successful adjudication respecting such practices when the community won its environmental lawsuit.  These victories helped ensconce a public understanding of the abuses in the competing narratives of what happened.  In this way, the predatory Forest City Ratner cat was belled to warn those mice who might appeal to the cat as its future meals.

Evisceration of WNYC and the Municipal Art Society is a way of silencing that bell on the cat.  The “Braveheart” quote about writing history, put in the mouth of Robert the Bruce, is “history is written by those who have hanged heroes” with a concordant implication that those dead heroes and their deeds are then written out of our pasts.  That saps the spirit of resistance even further.  The heroes of the Atlantic Yards fight and other community battles may now be largely exhausted, having worked unpaid against well-financed minions.  They may have paid the price of many wounds, made many sacrifices.  We may even now think of some of them as the equivalent of the dead on the battlefield, but it’s truly grievous to think that all their hard work and truth that was brought to light by, for instance, the “No Land Grab” team or the “Battle For Brooklyn” documentary would be forgotten.

Maybe history will be rewritten so that WNYC’s future listeners or those going to next year’s MAS functions devolve, uninformed, into the feckless, perpetual infants or children of Cicero’s and Santayana’s admonitions, but on its own side of the fence Forest City Ratner is not going to forget its perfected playbook.  Similarly, other developers seeing what Ratner got away with will remember and emulate.  Which is to say that whatever battles have been won or lost it is still an ongoing war.

That brings us to what should be a number of critical realizations about the road we are not yet at the end of.  Yes, there is a question as to whether other developers will use, throughout the city, tactics Forest City Ratner used with respect to Atlantic Yards and its other New York City exploits going back to at least 2002, and there is the likelihood that Forest City Ratner’s tactics on future projects will resemble those its used on Atlantic Yards, but. . . .

. . .  Anyone who thinks that Forest City Ratner has won the Atlantic Yards war thinks in very circumscribed terms.

Completion of the Atlantic Yards mega-development from this point on could still take as much as another forty years.*  Even now, twelve years after Forest City Ratner started moving in to take over a swath of Prospect Heights with the threat of eminent domain, it has built only the arena (that's not even technically finished at this point as a corrective new secondary green roof is being built).  It has not built any housing.  It has not replaced any of the residential units it destroyed, including the low-income units it will never actually replace.  It has not replaced the businesses it evicted.  The one attempt Ratner has made to build a residential building stands halted, mired in a lawsuit about incompetence and may have to be torn down to be built again from scratch, its original estimated cost of $155 million now rising to perhaps $215 million or even $265 million.

(*  Even though the new, most recent, contractual deadline now theoretically stands as 2025, with the deal subject to perpetual negotiation with Forest City Ratner in the position of a politically muscular monopoly, no future terms can be assured.)

Forty years, or however many decades it actually takes to complete Atlantic Yards, affords ample opportunity for the community, albeit exhausted, to insist, as it should, that the mega-project be divided up and bid out to multiple developers, restoring the streets, sidewalks and avenues that Forest City Ratner has privatized.  Conversely, it affords opportunities galore for Forest City Ratner to reenact more times than we will be able to count what it has done at juncture after juncture, renegotiate repeatedly the terms of its monopoly to shift benefits increasingly in its favor.

In fact, as an example of how easily things can go one way or another, just recently in June, hardly anytime at all before the residential constructions problems and ensuing litigation about it was to be disclosed in August, something that would have made Ratner extremely vulnerable to finally losing monopoly control over the project especially given the community's litigation victory, Ratner slickly maneuvered, taking advantage of a new administration under the incoming mayor to renegotiate new terms for its deal (and more subsidy), once again more to its advantage.  Not knowing how how income eligibility bands were being rejiggered in the background, the representatives who ventured to negotiate for the community were snookered in the deal they'd probably have been better off never making no matter how good it was made to sound. Without cinching this deal, Ratner might have failed in his desperate deal selling a portion of the mega-project to the Chinese government. 

Consequently, Forest City Ratner is not presently the victor seeking to write history.  Still not yet the victor, it is simply doing what it has done from the start, seeking control of the news media and those who write the news in order control the narrative, in order to be the victor when all is said and done. . . .

If ever a definitive tale is told about the still-ongoing Atlantic Yards saga it is virtually certain to be in the form of the book on the subject that Norman Oder is writing.  Mr. Oder writes Atlantic Yards Report (currently retitled “Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park Report” in view of the fact that the Ratner firm euphemistically rechristened its project to divorce its self from years of bad press).  Atlantic Yards Report originally began as the “Times Ratner Report” much of its earliest focus being about how irresponsible and misleading the coverage of Atlantic Yards by the New York Times was. 

Conception of the Atlantic Yards project goes back to the summer of 2002.  In February of 2001 an eminent domain land deal was reached that turned Forest City Ratner into a real estate partner with the New York Times to construct its new headquarters.  For more about how the questionable reporting by the Times undoubtedly assisted Ratner’s Atlantic Yards to advance and ultimately succeed as far as it has, see:  Sunday, June 26, 2011, “Page One: Inside the New York Times” Reviewed; Plus The “New York Times Effect” on New York’s Biggest Real Estate Development Swindle.

This means that rather than being anything new, Forest City Ratner's encroachment into the theoretical bastion of public radio and public broadcasting is just a shifting of the previous line of influence, a pushing forward to dominate more completely by extending tactics previously used successfully by Ratner.  In fact, while public radio has done better in the past to escape the influence of Ratner and the real estate industry, the same cannot be said of New York City’s WNET public television station where criticism of the city’s real estate is never heard, but Forest City Ratner has gotten great promotion on Charlie Rose.  (See:  Monday, April 2, 2012, Charlie Rose Does Infomercial For Forest City Ratner and Tuesday, April 3, 2012, Channel 13, New York's Premier Public Television Station, Provides Promotion For The Ratner/Prokhorov Barclays Basketball Arena: What To Do About It?)

Ratner is also well infiltrated into the Brooklyn Academy of Music and the Brooklyn Museum.

Ms. Gilmartin’s first WNYC trustees meeting is scheduled to be Wednesday, December 3, 2014.  Before that, Tuesday November 18, 2014, the WNYC Community Advisory Board is meeting at 7:00 PM at St. Francis College in Brooklyn Heights.  The Community Advisory Board is supposed to take comment from the public about the station’s operations.  At their last meeting the CAB groused that far too few members of the public come to their meetings.  (With Gilmartin's appointment  they may be on the verge of ironic solution.) 

The WNYC Community Advisory Board was established to comply with the Public Telecommunications Act the purpose of which extends to providing “a source of alternative telecommunications” that will be “responsive to the interests of people.”  To receive public funds public broadcasters must have Community Advisory Boards to review the “programming goals established by the station, the service provided by the station, and the significant policy decisions rendered by the station.”  (emphasis supplied)

Under that rubric, it would seem that Ms. Gilmartin’s appointment to her policy-setting position on the WNYC board should be of vital concern to the CAB.  To argue, contrarily, that it is only a board appointment and that the CAB should wait and be concerned only when station policy actually changes after enough board members of Ms. Gilmartin’s ilk have been appointed would be to say the CAB should react to close the barn door only after there has already been an irreversible escape of the horse.

CAB members face a conundrum in regard to whether they will screw their courage to the sticking point and object to Ms. Gilmartin’s appointment.  According to the by-laws of the Community Advisory Board: “CAB members are subject to the approval of the [WNYC Board of Trustees] or its designees, including members re-nominated for a second term.”- . . .

. . . . That means that, by getting appointed to the WNYC Board of Trustees, Forest City Ratner head MaryAnne Gilmartin now has a say-so about who is on the Community Advisory Board supposedly watch-dogging her implementation of station policy.

Although the Community Advisory Board should probably be recommending Gilmartin's removal from the board and holding up her appointment as an example of what never ought to be done again, if they do, it could subject their members to her vengeance.

Although WNYC is keeping confidential more specifics and the deliberations that were involved, we know that the Trusteeship Committee (comprised of the following Trustees: Tom Bernstein, Martha Fleischman, Anton Levy, Herb Scannell, Lauren Seikaly, Peter Shapiro, Susan Solomon, Nicki Tanner, Andrea Taylor, Keith Thomas, Cynthia King Vance, Laura Walker and Alan Weiler) nominated Forest City Ratner CEO MaryAnne Gilmartin for trusteeship after an evaluation they were supposed to make of her qualifications and suitability for service and probably someone on the committee identified Ms. Gilmartin as a potential candidate for trustee.

Since WNYC is not telling us we have to guess while noting that it could even have been WNYC president Laura Walker who pushed Gilmartin's nomination forward.

A hint that Ms. Gilmartin might have been coming to the WNYC board involved her bizarre appearance back in July accompanied by WNYC president Laura Walker fluffing up a Brian Lehrer show segment about how to get `a good night’s sleep,' something, as commented by me at the time, it's questionable that Ms. Gilmartin actually deserves.  Giving a burnishing heft to Ms. Gilmartin's credentials though not necessarily making her being there seem less odd, Arianna Huffington was also a part of this surreal segment. Oh, Oh, WNYC!  Oh Brian!  See: Wednesday, July 16, 2014, On Brian Lehrer, FCR's Gilmartin reports on CEO Sleep Experiment.

If and when WNYC policies begin to change subsequent to this Gilmartin appointment it is doubtful that we see that change manifest in Brian Lehrer losing his prominent morning slot in the near future: He is expert at what he does, beloved by his audience, young enough to be around for a long time and, although moderating with reasonable fairness, he has never expressed hostility toward Atlantic Yards.  We would be more likely to see change creep in with a replacement of a retiring Leonard Lopate, an older broadcaster who has more regularly acknowledged the legitimate basis for the community's dissatisfactions with the megadevelopment.  It would be nice if Mr. Lopate were around to interview Mr. Oder when his awaited book comes out, but who knows when that will be as the Atlantic Yards saga continues to lumber forward in surprising ways frustratingly postponing any neat point at which to wrap up.  Mr. Lopate could likely be replaced by someone who, on the spectrum, is more more likely to be confused with a corporate lapdog than Brian Lehrer, perhaps friendlier to developers like Ratner than even Charlie Rose.

In pertinent part the press release announcing the appointment of Ms. Gilmartin to its board reads in cheery PR speak as follows:

NEW YORK PUBLIC RADIO ANNOUNCES FOUR ADDITIONS TO ITS BOARD OF TRUSTEES

Richard Brail, MaryAnne Gilmartin, Loretta Brennan Glucksman, and Brad Whitman Named to the New York Public Radio Board of Trustees

(New York, NY – October 9, 2014) – New York Public Radio today announced that Richard Brail, Managing Director and Head of the Media, Entertainment, Communications and Technology Group at Peter J. Solomon Company, and MaryAnne Gilmartin, President and CEO of Forest City Ratner Companies, have been elected to its Board of Trustees. Loretta Brennan Glucksman, Chairman Emeritus of the American Ireland Fund, and Brad Whitman, Vice Chairman in the Financial Institutions Group at Morgan Stanley, were also recently elected to the Board at the Spring meeting of the Board of Trustees.

As a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization, New York Public Radio is governed by an independent Board of Trustees that meets regularly throughout the year. There are currently 35 NYPR Trustees, headed by Cynthia King Vance, Chair. Information on all Trustees can be found here.

“Rich, MaryAnne, Loretta, and Brad bring vast experience in business, media and non-profit governance that will advance both the work of the Board and the mission of New York Public Radio,” said Laura R. Walker, President and CEO, New York Public Radio. “I look forward to collaborating with them to keep New York Public Radio at the forefront of digital innovation, award-winning content creation and enterprise journalism that enriches the lives of New Yorkers and audiences around the world.”

“I am delighted to welcome Rich, MaryAnne, Loretta, and Brad to New York Public Radio’s Board of Trustees,” said Cynthia King Vance, Chair, Board of Trustees, New York Public Radio. “These accomplished leaders bring a passion for public radio and new and valuable perspectives to a highly engaged Board of Trustees. We are lucky to have them join us as we reach for even more ambitious heights at New York Public Radio.”

* * * *

MaryAnne Gilmartin is President and Chief Executive Officer of Forest City Ratner Companies. She has been point person in the development of some of the most high-profile real estate projects in New York City. Ms. Gilmartin led the efforts to build Barclays Center and Pacific Park Brooklyn, a 22-acre mixed-use development. Ms. Gilmartin also oversaw the development of The New York Times Building, designed by Renzo Piano and New York by Gehry, the tallest residential building in the Western Hemisphere, designed by Frank Gehry. In addition to these projects, Ms. Gilmartin has managed the commercial portfolio at MetroTech Center in Downtown Brooklyn, which consists of 6.7 million square feet of Class A office space. Ms. Gilmartin served proudly for over 7 years on the New York City Ballet Advisory Board. Currently, Ms. Gilmartin serves as a Board Trustee for the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM); a Member of the Board of Governors of the Real Estate Board of New York (REBNY); and as a Member of the Industry Advisory Board of the MS Real Estate Development Program at Columbia University.

* * * *

New York Public Radio is New York’s premier public radio franchise, comprising WNYC, WQXR, The Jerome L. Greene Performance Space, and New Jersey Public Radio, as well as www.wnyc.org, www.wqxr.org, www.thegreenespace.org, and www.njpublicradio.org. As America's most listened-to AM/FM news and talk public radio stations, WNYC extends New York City's cultural riches to the entire country on-air and online, produces award-winning programming for local and national audiences, and curates the best offerings from networks NPR, Public Radio International, American Public Media, and the British Broadcasting Company. WQXR is New York City's sole 24-hour classical music station, presenting new and landmark classical recordings as well as live concerts from the Metropolitan Opera, the New York Philharmonic, and Carnegie Hall, among other New York City venues, immersing listeners in the city's rich musical life. In addition to its audio content, WNYC and WQXR produce content for live, radio and web audiences from The Jerome L. Greene Performance Space, the station's street-level multipurpose, multiplatform broadcast studio and performance space. New Jersey Public Radio extends WNYC’s reach and service more deeply into New Jersey. For more information about New York Public Radio, visit www.nypublicradio.org.

# # #   

Press release about Gilmartin appointment, page one, click to enlarge

Press release about Gilmartin appointment, page two, click to enlarge

Ms. Gilmartin brings a "passion for public radio and new and valuable perspectives to a highly engaged Board of Trustees"?  And, we are lucky to have Ms. Gilmartin join WNYC "as we reach for even more ambitious heights at New York Public Radio.”  Really?  Plus there's that cleverly oblique reference that Ms. Gilmartin has been the "point person in the development of some of the most high-profile real estate projects in New York City."*

(*  Commenting on this article Norman Oder in Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park Report post 11/18/2014 writes:  "Forest City has a passion for shaping perception--such as the erasing-history effort to rename Atlantic Yards as Pacific Park. - So even the capsule biography of Gilmartin, surely supplied by her office for the press release, is part of that effort [incorporated in the WNYC Press Release!]. According to the press release, Gilmartin `led the efforts to build Barclays Center and Pacific Park Brooklyn, a 22-acre mixed-use development.'- Actually, Pacific Park Brooklyn hasn't been built yet. The first tower is stalled. The second break ground next month.")

Another item in the press release that's probably of interest in this context is that Brad Whitman also being appointed to the board, although now with Morgan Stanley, came from Barclays Bank just months before where he was head of mergers for financial institutions.  Barclays is the bank whose name is on the Ratner arena. That prominent public spot was sold to it as advertising, confusing what the public should think about its misconduct.  The world is too entirely too small, isn't it?

(click to enlarge) The kind of public interest advertising we might see in the subway if the public were coming up with funds for what's posted there.  Instead, the recidivist Barclays has the subway station and publicly paid for arena named after it to wash away thoughts of its misdeeds.

Forest City Ratner has never done a project without deep publicly paid for subsidy and it has never done a project where it was selected by competitive bid.  Its modus operandi in pursuing its usually large scale crony capitalistic deals is to get on the political inside, buying elected officials with campaign contributions and then misrepresent what is going on, that which the public is getting and what the public is losing. 

For a little more background on this and Ms. Gilmartin's appointment, see: Saturday, October 11, 2014, The Forest City Ratner Cafe, at the Brooklyn Children's Museum, and Gilmartin's new role on WNYC board, Atlantic Yards Report- Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park Report- Atlantic Yards, Pacific Park, and the Culture of Cheating, Tuesday, December 1, 2009, Unfair Substitution of Fiction For Fact in the Atlantic Yards Dialogue and Wednesday, July 18, 2012, Noticing New York's Hearing Testimony Re New York City Housing Development Corporation's Subsidization of Ratner's Atlantic Yards Mega-Monopoly.

Am I being too inhospitable, too unwelcoming to Ms. Gilmartin's arrival at WNYC?  Should one's attitude be more of a civilized "live and let live" approach where commercial and noncommercial interests could cohabit in the public broadcasting space, exchanging ideas with he-said/she-said balances?  Would that be the right resolution?  Could we expect that cohabiting commercial interests in public broadcasting would restrain themselves and not use the usual tactics of superior financial resources to overwhelm? . .

. . I don't think so.   Public broadcasting is supposed to be the alternative to other broadcasting already steeped in and motivated by commercialism (dubbed the "vast wasteland" when public broadcasting was conceived- "endlessly screaming, cajoling commercials"), not another sandbox where commercialism can play in a different guise getting elevated to equal footing with the public interest and that which the public wants to pay for.

There are those reading what I write here who will say that public broadcasting is already too infected by and susceptible to the influences of commercialism.  Environmental Action has a current campaign against what are essentially bought and paid for pro-fracking advertisements on public radio:

"NPR has been accepting millions of dollars in "sponsorship" from the fracking front-group known as ANGA. In exchange for their support, NPR hosts like Steve Inskeep, Melissa Block and Audie Cornish routinely read messages that blatantly misrepresent the dangers of fracking to our planet and people.

(See: Fracking the signal.)

Indeed, too often NPR and APR's MarketPlace (we won't review the complicated pluralistic structure of public broadcasters here) have run one-sided stories about how good fracking will be for the economy that appear to have come straight from that industry's press department representatives.  But the fact that these inroads have been made is not a reason to let there be more.

No, Forest City Ratner and MaryAnne Gilmartin don't cohabit nicely in the sandbox with others and they don't share toys.  When they want the property that you have they take it for themselves by eminent domain, stealth, cheating, and dirty and brute politics.  And that is why MaryAnne Gilmartin should not be on the board of New York Public Radio setting policy, including news reporting and public dialogue policy, for the WNYC family of radio stations.

Channel 13, New York’s Premier Public Television Station, Provides Promotion For The Ratner/Prokhorov Barclays Basketball Arena: What To Do About It?

All right, I have to admit it. This article is structured as crescendo of rage. So the further you read the more you will find that is absolutely appalling. I am writing about Channel Thirteen's promotional endorsement of the Bruce Ratner/Mikhail Prokhorov basketball arena being built where the brownstone neighborhoods of Park Slope, Fort Greene, Boerum Hill, and Prospect Heights converge.

Non-profit Sector as the Future of Serious, Dependable Journalism?

Some say the that the future of serious, earnest, in-depth coverage of important public issues will be in public-supported nonprofit sector, especially given the decimation that old-style media organizations have faced at the hands of the internet as those income streams of the days of yore (like the classifieds) have migrated to alternative, now independent venues (like Craig’s list). Newspapers, seem increasingly lightweight, compliant to the influence of press releases and money. Nonprofits like Pro Publica present a plausible alternative. Indeed, much of the best news coverage in this city, including coverage of local issues, comes from New York’s principal public radio stations run by WNYC and during their pledge drives they remind listeners of the increasing importance of the public model.

But it isn’t that simple. News reporting is part of media and culture in general and one thing inevitably bleeds into another so therefore everything is connected. And this means that money and monied interests keep asserting themselves even in what is nominally the not-for-profit sector.

Channel Thirteen Invites Support of Ratner/Prokhorov Arena?

The very beginning of February (February 3rd) I was watching evening TV when an intrusion presented itself on Channel 13, the city’s premier public television station, a station I gratefully thank for presenting programs such as the probing and analytical issue-oriented “Frontline,” “Nova” which frequently covers environmental important subjects as global warming, “The American Experience, which provides overviews of the American past and many more public affairs oriented programs including such things as local coverage of State of the State and City and budget addresses by the governor and mayor. What intruded into my theoretically `commercial free’ public television evening was a promotion for the new publicly-harmful “Barclays” basketball arena being developed by Bruce Ratner and Russian oligarch Mikhail Prokhorov.

The intrusion might have been more tolerable if it had been clearly labeled as the commercially funded promotion it was. Instead it came in the form of a veiled product placement inviting Channel 13 viewers to support Channel 13 by venturing to the arena to see an Andrea Bocelli concert. It even made it seem that those Channel 13 viewers going to the arena at the station’s behest would be joining more closely to bond with the Channel Thirteen family.

Here is exactly what the channel directed at its viewers (the visual at the beginning of this article accompanies it):

New York public media has exclusive tickets to Andrea Bocelli live in concert on Wednesday, December 5, 2012 at the band new Barclays Center coming to Brooklyn.

Support 13 on any major credit card and for your $1250 gold level contribution: we’ll thank you with two prime orchestra or front arena side tickets plus the DVD Andrea Bocelli “Concerto, One Night in Central Park.*” Pledge at the $1000 Silver level for two tickets in the back orchestra and lower arena sides plus the DVD. Finally, for your $750 bronze level contribution, receive two lower-level rear tickets and the concerto DVD.

This is Andrea Bocelli’s only scheduled appearance in the New York area so don't miss out, join us.

(* Channel Thirteen broadcast the Central Park performance back in 2011.)

`Join' 13 by convening at the arena? “Don’t miss out”? Implying that the experience to be had at the arena would be a pleasurable one? What was the station doing by implying that going to the arena was endorsed by it as something that melded with and was an essential part of the civic good of supporting Channel 13?

Ratner PR Victory

The PR meisters working for Bruce Ratner and Mikhail Prokhorov had to be slapping themselves on the back about getting Channel 13 to sign onto this one. After all, a major problem they have always faced is that the citizenry that keeps track of public issues and assiduously keeps score concerning who is and is not living up to their civic responsibilities (i.e. essentially a large block of the audience that supports Channel 13), have viewed the arena for what it is, an inexcusable political theft and boondoggle extremely deleterious to the greater community of New York. There are those like me who wonder if any event of any sort could drag me with any happiness to the arena: Knowing its history could I ever be willing to relax and forget myself enough to have a truly good time there irrespective of what event was going on?

Serious News

The arena promotional immediately segued seamlessly into another announcement, the same announcer’s voice continuing without skipping a beat, making no inflection to punctuate a differentiation in the message he was delivering:

Join Charlie Rose and guests for stimulating discussions about today's top stories and late-breaking events. That's tonight on Charlie Rose.

“Join” the 13 community at the arena- “join” the group Charlie Roses and his group of guests for . . . what?: “stimulating discussions about today's top stories and late-breaking events.” The Ratner Prokhorov PR people must have been gleeful indeed!: Bundling all this together the Channel 13 people made it seem quite as if supporting 13 by going to the arena might be a way of doing your civic duty that was entirely congruent with a “stimulating,” intelligent and informed `discussion’ of the day’s “top stories and late-breaking events.”

Money, Money, Money

Admittedly it is to be observed that the influence of money also regularly intrudes into the Charlie Rose show. Every show announces how the program broadcasts from the Bloomberg Building, effectively making New York’s mayor Charlie Rose’s landlord. Bloomberg doesn’t charge Rose rent. And the mayor is not only mayor: While Bloomberg has been mayor his wealth multiplied several fold and he became the wealthiest man in New York City. (Recently he has dropped down to number two). It is safe to say that without his wealth Mr. Bloomberg would not be mayor; further, without his wealth the City Charter would not have been unprecedentedly changed to specially permit Mr. Bloomberg the third term he is now serving. As of 2009 Rose was in debt to Bloomberg for another favor: Bloomberg Television started rebroadcasting his show in primetime around the world and pays him for it.

(above, the Bloomberg credit, an animation, that appears on Rose's shows.)

Fell Liked

Rose’s interviews are notoriously softball: His interview style is to appear to immensely like and respect almost anyone he interviews. That’s not the easiest of tasks on those occasions when he sometimes interviews some pretty controversial figures. Rose has, for example interviewed Holocaust-denying Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad six times. (September 27, 2007, August 22, 2008, September 28, 2009, May 3, 2010, September 20, 2010, September 20, 2011.)

Ahmadinejad seemed to like his interviews well enough to keep coming back for more. Interviews with such characters are important to bring about. Where these good interviews? Inevitably, there will be many who are hard to please when conducting an interview like this. Here is one commenting viewer calling Rose in one of these interviews a “televisual fluffer.”

I’ll have more to say about Rose as a “televisual fluffer” when we proceed further, particularly as it pertains to the Barclays Center. Still, it should be acknowledged that Rose is very smart and typically well prepared. His interviews demonstrate that softball is not necessarily antithetical to “stimulating.” Nevertheless, the question must be asked whether whenever, for example, Mayor Bloomberg or someone else to whom Rose might be beholden appears on his show, that softball deference may prevail to a much greater extent.

More: Mondo Cane

But first, back to what that Channel 13 announcer back in February said next, going on, once again, with no inflection to punctuate a differentiation in the delivered message:

Announcer: What happens when you expect more? You ask more! You discover more!

The next line was delivered by another PBS interview talk show host, Tavis Smiley: And you become more!

Back to the station announcer: Now celebrating 20 years in broadcasting, Tavis Smiley keeps pushing the envelope.

Given that we are talking about PBS promotion of the Ratner/Prokhorov Barclays arena, it is worthwhile to note that it is Tavis Smiley who, when he wants to remark philosophically about authentically adhering to your principles refers to a quote he attributes to friend Jay-Z: “You can SAY what you SAY, but you ARE what you ARE.” Jay-Z is the pop superstar who, having been given a small piece of the action, has, together with his superstar wife Beyoncé, been uncomfortably promoting the damaging Ratner/Prokhorov arena.

Frankly, in terms of `expecting more,’ I am expecting more and would like to demand more from Channel Thirteen.

Serving the Public

Is it serving Channel 13 to be promoting the Ratner/Prokhorov Barclays Center in this way? Doesn’t the channel risk alienating its subscriber base in much the same way that the Brooklyn Museum did when, in 2008, the museum betrayed the Brooklyn community and besmirched the memory of Augustus Graham, one of its principal founders, by awarding its Augustus Graham award to real estate developer/subsidy collector and eminent domain abuser Bruce Ratner, even as he was trying to force through pending approvals of his proposed Atlantic Yards mega-monopoly spearheaded by the arena? The “honoring” of Ratner from whom the museum had received funds and who has unfortunate further influence via Museum Trustee appointments resulted in a well-publicized protest the night of the award ceremony.

The museum was asked to apologize for its actions. Certainly, in retrospect events of the intervening years have proved that an apology was owed to a far greater degree than earlier defenders of Ratner might have expected since virtually every negative predication about Ratner and his mega-project have come true, compounded by a slew of additional negatives that were never envisioned. Even so, the museum has never offered the community the apology it requested in 2008. I for one, have never since renewed my museum membership as a result.

Sotto Voce

It is to be acknowledged that Andrea Bocelli has a sweetly beautiful voice. I remember how the sweetness of his voice was used prominently to good counterpointing effect in one of HBO Soprano’s episode when Camilla, the wife of Mob Boss Tony, falls in love with his voice. An arena is also probably a good venue for Bocelli to sing in. He often sings operatic melodies, but since he does not have an opera singer’s voice his singing needs the amplification which he regularly employs.

Was I too sensitive when I was startled by Channel 13's promotion of the Ratner/Prokhorov arena in early February? Was I just making it up or imagining things to think that there was a seriously flawed lack of perspective and neutrality in Channel 13's promotion of the arena? Did it really cross the line and endorse the arena as a public good somehow comparable to Channel 13 itself?

Fluffed-Up Production Values

I don’t think I was being too sensitive. I didn’t know then what I am about to tell you now but this should put to rest all doubt on the subject. To go into that we need to come back to that criticism we cited above: That Rose can sometimes be little more than a “televisual fluffer.” On March 10, 2012 Charlie Rose broadcast what was in effect a half hour high production value infomercial for Bruce Ratner, his arena and his proposed Atlantic Yards for which Channel Thirteen is even now running continuing follow-ups.

Atlantic Yards journalist and expert Norman Oder has already done a thorough dissection of Rose’s March 10, 2012 `interview’ of Ratner denouncing Rose for his “spectacularly uninformed sycophancy.” (See: Monday, March 12, 2012, Uninformed sycophancy: Charlie Rose interviews Bruce Ratner about "Atlantic City Yards" (sic), betrays zero recognition of controversy.)

In the Drink

In an earlier piece about the Charlie Rose interview before Mr. Oder had an opportunity to actually see the interview (he had only been able to read the very promptly-appearing quotes from the NetsDaily) Mr. Oder pointed out that “Rose's skein of sponsors includes some supportive of or doing business with the arena” and linked to a 9/28/09 David A. Kaplan article in Fortune, a good portion of which is about the interrelationship between the sponsors of Rose’s show and its content: “Why business loves Charlie Rose.” Within the Fortune article Oder found some interesting quotes. To wit, here's one:

The fundraising produces a web of peculiar interconnections between Rose and the people he covers.

The Fortune article says that, “By far the biggest underwriter is Coca-Cola” and Mr. Oder notes that “Coca-Cola has a deal with the Barclays Center.”

(Above, from Coca-Cola corporate support spot on Charlie Rose.)

The Kaplan Fortune interview says that “Rose has to scramble to meet” the budget of his independently-funded show and notes that “late last year” (presumably 2008) “he had to lay off a third of his staff because of fundraising woes.” Intriguingly, Kaplan quotes Rose as saying, “I make more from speaking than I make at PBS.” That provides contextual insight in connection with one of Kaplan’s criticisms of Rose’s disclosure of conflicts of interest:

When Muhtar Kent, the CEO of Coca-Cola, went on the show in June, Rose disclosed Coke's underwriting tie of "many years" at the outset. He has done similarly with other guests, showing laudable transparency.

And yet the "fullness" of the disclosure can be in the mind of the discloser. Should Rose, for instance, have disclosed that in 2002 he had served as emcee at the Coke shareholders meeting, at which he declared, "It is a privilege to be associated with the Coca-Cola family"? Rose says this is "nitpicking to a fault." "I wouldn't take their money if I didn't want to be associated with them,*" he says.

(* Paul Krugman has a new column that concludes by informing us that Coca-Cola is amongst a group of behind-the-scenes companies supporting, through “ALEC”- American Legislative Exchange Council- a “hard-right” crony capitalist agenda of corrupting corporatist privatizations.)

(Above, from Coca-Cola corporate support spot on Charlie Rose.)

Notwithstanding, the Bloomberg and Coca-Cola support that flows in, Kaplan suggests that Rose is not driven by money and is, in fact, a rather poor business man distracted by the love of the art of what he does.

There is no question that Rose has conducted some remarkable interviews but Mr. Oder’s suggestion that Rose’s fawning interview of Bruce Ratner was a nadir is exactly on target.

Interviews That Facilitate Messages

Analyzing Rose’s typical friendly interview style designed to put his guests at ease Kaplan quotes Rose's most frequent guest -- New York Times columnist Tom Friedman: “It isn't that he doesn't ask hard questions, but he does it in a way that is designed to give you the best chance to make your case for your point of view.” Similarly Warren Buffet favors going on Rose’s show as a vehicle for getting his “thoughts” out to the American public because “Charlie is smart, and by the time you've spent an hour, if you haven't got your point across, it's your fault, not the medium's.” If you are a frequent watcher of Rose you know that Rose typically interviews subjects from the standpoint of facilitating what they themselves want to present the way they want to present it. So, for example, you can probably hear him ask in your your head his version of a hard question, usually something like “What do you say to people who say. . . [Insert some well-known criticism the guest might be eager to refute].”

All of this facilitation can involve going way overboard as Rose did with Ratner. In what was a virtual parody of a late night infomercial Rose asked Ratner questions and provided fill-ins that were nothing but cue cards for every talking point Ratner probably arrived intending to make. In fact, you can read Rose’s questions to Ratner without reading Ratner's responses to know approximately what Ratner came prepared to say and ultimately did say during the interview. Here is a Noticing New York breakdown and analysis in that regard if you would like to know more about the interview: Monday, April 2, 2012, Charlie Rose Does Infomercial For Forest City Ratner.

(Above, Rose asking Ratner his questions while visibly referring often to index cards.)

Time For The Press Kit

Throughout the Ratner interview Rose assisted Ratner to present PR slides, many of them just the typically suspect strategically-illuminated architectural rendering with sonorous announcer-voice glitz and unjustified exclamations of praise. In a recent, interview of French actress Audrey Tautou that ran just over 18 minutes, one minute and 40 seconds was taken up by showing the theatrical trailer for her new film, another minute and 5 seconds was taken up with a clip selected from that film, and all of this was supplemented by a two minute, thirty second montage of Tautou's past performance highlights. In all that's five and a quarter minutes from Tautou's press kit out of an 18 minute interview. Maybe it’s appropriate to treat an actress this way and to see her film, even selected highlights, is actually to see her work. Is it appropriate to treat real estate developer Bruce Ratner the same way? Between unpacking Ratner's press clips and helping Ratner get out all his talking points there was nothing more to the interview.

(An aside on all these film actor and director interviews Rose does: Does Rose really like absolutely every actor and every movie he sees? Does he really actually see every film? In the old days of Siskel and Ebert they saw every film they reported on and plenty of what they saw they didn't like.)

(Below, some of Ratner's renderings cooed over by Rose during the interview. More, available in NNY's review of the interview.)

Topper For My Next Trick

Unbelievably, what immediately followed the Charlie Rose Ratner interview program without so much as a second of daylight in between was another promotional spot for the Barclays Center Bocelli concert, similar to the one I’d seen at the beginning of February. It began:

Thirteen offers our supporters exclusive seats to Bocelli’s December concert at the Barclays Center, his only New York appearance.

This one was accompanied by complementary visual renderings of the arena (below) that were indistinguishable from those just seen on the Rose show itself. It concluded with Andrea Bocelli in Central Park saying “I am Andrea Bocelli. I hope you can join me at my concert with some very special guests.”
Trust Thirteen

A split second later the screen was filled with the word “Trust” and then esteemed PBS news anchor Jim Lehrer appeared on screen as lead man in a tag team of successive PBS personages delivering this message:

The American people have named PBS . . .

. . the most trusted source of news . .

. . . and public affairs . .

. . . and the most unbiased institution in America . .

. . . for the ninth year in a row.

Trust, . . .

. . . the American People have spoken. . .

Thank you.

Thanks for trusting Thirteen

It is Charlie Rose who, amongst the other personages, delivers the line “and the most unbiased institution in America” and it is Tavis Smiley who gets to deliver with quiet emphasis the single stand-alone word “Trust” (Momentarily appearing on screen before he utters it). Of course, the 2012 Harris Interactive “Trust Tracker” study being referred to said that PBS, not Thirteen, was the trusted entity and the tagging on of (Channel Thirteen President Neal Shapiro’s) “Thanks for trusting Thirteen” was probably done locally just as it probably was done at other local PBS stations. Similarly, it is also only fair to point out that while PBS runs the Charlie Rose show it is only local PBS station Channel Thirteen that is intertangling its showing of this spot, the Charile Rose Ratner interview and the station’s promotion of the Ratner/Prokhorov Barclays arena.
(Above, Travis Smiley with "Trust" and Thirteen President Neal Shapiro with "Trust Thirteen")

Support- Who Again?

The thanks-for-trusting-Thirteen spot was followed by another chance to make a contribution and then a Thirteen-March-Support-Great-Programs mix-up of spliced program clips in which appeared, again, Andrea Bocelli.

The station has been continuing with frequent Barclays/Ratner arena-supporting clips. There is an advertising strategy of making different commercials of different lengths: You show the long expensive commercial perhaps only once or just a few times in an environment where you know it will get attention and then you follow up with frequent very shot spots that serve as a reminder of the long one you invested in. Almost as if it is doing this, Thirteen recently followed a March 16th Charlie Rose show (an interview with Chairman of the Joint Chief’s of Staff Martin Dempsey talking about national security, together with the Audrey Tautou interview) with a newer arena promo spot with more hype stirred into it. It began:

If you were in the audience of Andrea Bocelli’s sold-out Central Park concert in 2011 you know it was a night that neither you nor he will ever forget.

Bocelli then speaks on camera with subtitles about earning an audience’s affection. Then the announcer picks up over promotional images of the Ratner/Prokhorov arena:

Bocelli returns December 5, 2012 to the new Barclays center for his annual holiday concert. Thirteen offers you an exclusives early opportunity to enjoy his only New York area appearance, live in Brooklyn, only minutes away by subway or Long Island Railroad.

Notably, this arena entreaty (ending in “Don’t miss it!”) is followed by informing the listening audience that they can support Thirteen by buying tickets to an Adina Menzel concert at Carnegie Hall. (At $300 for a pair the tickets in this more intimate environment are considerable cheaper.) Unlike the spot for the Ratner/Prokhorov arena, the Adina Menzel concert spot doesn’t promote Carnegie Hall or tell you how easy it is to get there. (No, I’m not referring to the time-honored “practice man, practice!” joke.) This was all immediately followed by another version of a clip advising viewer to “Trust Thirteen,” this one beginning with Charlie Rose himself:

The America people have named PBS the most trusted source of news and public affairs .

Then Tavis Smiley: . . . and the most unbiased institution in America for the seventh year in a row.

And back to Rose: Trust, the American People have spoken.

Channel 13 announcer: At Thirteen you can count on us.

Channel 13 president Neal Shapiro: Thank you.

This is then followed by a repeat of exactly the same Trust-Thirteen spot that followed the Rose Ratner interview program. One extra niggle of a problem though: One of these spots tells us that the American People have named PBS most trusted institution for the seventh year in a row, the other tells us it’s the ninth year in a row.

"All In The family"?

In case viewing all of the above on air didn’t suffice, here is what I got from Thirteen in a March 19th e-mail subject-lined “All in the Family”:

A Channel Thirteen representative informed me that the Andrea Bocelli arena concert is also being run on Thirteen’s affiliated PBS sister station WLIW21.

Commercials From Public Broadcasting?

Does all this Noticing New York painstaking dissection seem a tad over-compulsive given that we have all become inured to the way that longer and ever more elaborate corporate sponsorship messages have caused public television to increasingly resemble commercial television? In early 2004 Public Broadcasting Service, loosened its guidelines on the content of the credits according to the New York Times (see, Advertising: On Public TV, Not Quite an Ad but Pretty Close, by Nat Ives, March 28, 2005) and that same Times article noted that:

Since the mid-1990's, the underwriter announcements that precede and follow many public television programs (and usually conclude with the narrator thanking "viewers like you") have gradually adopted many trappings of regular advertising, despite appearing on "commercial-free" television.

More recently in May of 2011, the Times reported that PBS was planning another shift, inclusion of promotional messages and branding within PBS shows breaking to into them like commercial television every 15 minutes rather than just at the very beginning and end of programs. (See: Advertising: PBS Plans Promotional Breaks Within Programs, by Elizabeth Jensen, May 30, 2011). PBS shows currently run 50 minutes or more without such interruptions. So far I haven’t observed an implementation of these proposed very frequent interruptions.

The progression toward this great resemblance to commercial television has been gradual and over an extended period over time. In 1984 Federal Communications Commission gave permission to PBS to relax its very tight, original 1967 limits on underwriter credits and allowed non-promotional logos and “value-neutral” descriptions of products or services. “Enhanced Underwriting” appeared in 1993 or 1994 but that underwriting was not allowed to have a “call to action,” or to use superlatives or say that the company’s products were better than others. In 2003, PBS introduced 30-second underwriter messages. These messages often include marketing slogans and images from the sponsor’s advertising campaigns.

(It is not just commercial sponsors that are a concern. There is also concern about money that is “donated” by foundations that may have agendas not compatible with balance or the public interest. See On The Media, March 31, 2001, Foundations and Public Broadcasting, Should audiences be as concerned about foundation grants as they are about corporate money?- Transcript available here. Incorrectly audio filed here staring at about 25:20.)

The Distinction of Endorsement

So amidst this accelerating slide toward commercialism why should Channel 13's promotion of the Ratner/Prokhorov Barclays arena command attention? Almost all advertising, even when collapsed into the sliver of a several second announcement strives to strike the key notes of a classic formula: create/identify a need, identify the product being sold as the solution, end with a “call to action” (buy the product) and make sure the audience remembers the product name. These are the elements that public broadcasting underwriting guidelines have sought to rein in, particularly the “call to action.” The boundary being crossed with the arena promotions that makes them distinctly different is not just the presence of a “call to action” (the entreaty to go to the arena) but from whom that call to action is emanating, Thirteen itself rather than a sponsor.

Normally underwriting credits are a disclosure of funding (and therefore also disclosure of a possible conflict of interest) wherein the sponsor itself gets a chance to say in its own words something nice about itself, for the most part mainly just patting itself on the back for supporting the show. In the case of the arena promotions Thirteen is running it is the PBS station itself that is endorsing the product and even associating it with the public good. It hearkens back to what we frequently saw in the early days of television, and much more rarely see now, when on programs like the Today show hosting personages like Dave Garroway would themselves shift from the content of the program to present and personally endorse products.

Brooklyn and The Proper Narrative Matters

It’s not that Channel 13 doesn’t have the free speech right to endorse the arena as a civic benefit for the public, it’s that Channel 13 hasn’t earned that right by engaging in the hard analysis that would allow it to reach such a conclusion. The slovenly Charlie Rose interview of Bruce Ratner certainly doesn’t count in this respect. At the very least, Channel Thirteen needs to start with a recognition of the extreme controversiality of the arena and its associated land grab. It should understand why that is.

Instead, Channel Thirteen has avoided chances to cover these issues. The first significant documentary about Ratner’s Atlantic Yards project was Isabel Hill’s 2006 “Brooklyn Matters.” The negative predictions about the mega-development in that documentary presaged much of what ultimately came to pass. Had it been more widely aired it might have changed the sorrowful course of events seen unfolding in the subsequent 2011 Atlantic Yards documentary “Battle For Brooklyn,” which made the short list for best documentary Academy Award nomination over such other films as “Page One: Inside the New York Times.”

Channel Thirteen rejected the “Brooklyn Matters” documentary for local airing even though it would have been very much in line with the kind of independent film making it regularly shows on programs like “POV” (for `Point of View’- “TV's longest-running showcase of independent nonfiction film”) and notwithstanding that its IRS filings say that its mission is to deliver to New York “media experiences of lasting significance” and that it endeavors to “serve the underserved” and “facilitate responsible citizenship” and “adhere” to the “highest standards” of “editorial integrity” in reflecting and respecting a “diverse and complex world.”

It will be interesting to see whether “Battle For Brooklyn” will wind up playing on Channel Thirteen’s air given that its narrative so directly contradicts the kind of Ratner hype associated with Thirteen’s promotion of his basketball arena.

Focus For Metro Events

How Channel Thirteen steps up to cover local issues is all the more important in that we have voids in coverage from different and necessary viewpoints when developer-friendly Rupert Murdoch buys up the local community papers and a paper looking askance at eminent domain abuse like the Sun folds. In March of 2011 Channel Thirteen was unveiling its new its web-based MetroFocus stepping in to cover, “local news, culture and life in the New York City region.” That new media organ has the potential to go a long way in filling that void, successfully providing intelligent insightful coverage of urban design and development issues much akin to what like listener-supported WNYC has accomplished. In addition to broadcasting local public radio, WNYC provides excellent web-based journalism accompanying the on-line availability of its broadcasts complete with extensive archives.

Thirteen’s Metrofocus has been addressing itself to urban design and development issues and has covered Atlantic Yards and the Barclays arena which, given their criticality, are stories Charlie Rose seems to have skipped over.

MetroFocus has provided the following Atlantic Yards coverage:

• Timeline: Atlantic Yards Grows, Slows in Brooklyn, by John Farley, July 19, 2011, Updated: August 24, 2011

• A Story of Three Arenas: Of Sports, Money and Democracy, by John Farley, August 1, 2011

• Occupy the Movies: OWS Moves Out of Zuccotti and Onto the Silver Screen, by Georgia Kral, December 7, 2011
• The Battle for Brooklyn is Over, but the War Rages On, by John Farley, July 11, 2011

• What Would Jane Jacobs Say? by Sam Lewis, September 16, 2011

And Atlantic Yards gets mentioned here:

• Q&A with ‘Gridlock Sam’ Schwartz: Why We Need Cyclist Bridges, by Georgia Kral, March 27, 2012

• A Block Party Without a Block: A Community Survives Long After Its Homes Are Razed, by Sam Lewis, October 18, 2011

Notwithstanding MetroFocus, the real money and resources you see from Thirteen are what you see on the broadcast on its Channel 13 and 21 TV stations.

Wherefore Funding?

How television, broadcasting and public broadcasting in particular are funded is very important. There is strong argument to eliminate government funding for public broadcasting given the potentiality for politically-motivated government influence over what ought instead to be a check and balance on government itself. However where Bloomberg, as mayor of New York provides Charlie Rose with his studio rent-free and also pays the Charlie Rose program ongoing syndication income it is hard to think that those checks and balances are in place even if Bloomberg, the man who became the city’s wealthiest citizen, is nominally doing this only in his personal/business capacity. Also, while a separation of public broadcasting from government may be a laudable goal in terms of abstract principle it hasn’t always been a practicable possibility: When the Public Broadcasting System was created in 1967 (by the Public Broadcasting Act of 1967) after FCC Chairman Newton N. Minow’s 1961 “vast wasteland” (“Television and the Public Interest”) speech, setting up a television network required a prodigious amount of capital. At the time the existing three networks were essentially an oligopoly, control of which had been seized by the small group of companies that prior to that had already seized control of he radio networks. (See: Columbia Law professor Tim Wu’s excellent book “The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires”.)
Channel Thirteen’s IRS filing 2010 IRS documents say that the station received $22,424,003 in government grants and contributions. That’s almost equal to the $27,400,263 Thirteen lists as having received in membership dues. The membership dues figure are, in turn, only 24.7% of the $110,795,564 listed for its total gifts and grants revenue figure. Further, that $110M+ “gifts and grants” figure doesn’t include all the station’s revenue. And WNET’s IRS filings say that it received another $1,477,792 in government grants and contributions.

Channel Thirteen’s public relations department informed me that, “Thirteen’s viewer support constitutes approximately 22.9% of our donations per year.” They also informed me that “about 1 in 12 Thirteen viewers are members.” That’s down from the 1 in 10 figure I remember Thirteen reporting during is pledge drives in the 90s when it was saying that, by comparison, the ratio of viewer support was 1 in 7 for the PBS station in Los Angeles.

"Listener Supported" vs. "Public Broadcasting"

It is to be noted that there is a difference between `listener-supported' and `public broadcasting.' It might be said that the HBO subscription pay-TV model is far closer to a `listener-supported' model than is the PBS Thirteen model. And indeed, answering to its listener subscriber base HBO has broadcast some important documentary films like: Josh Fox’s “Gasland” (about hydraulic fracturing and in 2011 was also in the running for an Academy Award), “Hot Coffee,” (about the efforts to limit the ability of the public to get redress from the courts) and “Hacking Democracy” (about how voting computers in use such as Diebolds are easily susceptible to hacking, nominated for an Emmy for outstanding investigative journalism).

Relationship With Audiences That Can . . .

Obviously, in the free enterprise system, attention must be paid to the demands of the viewing audience, particularly when, as with HBO, one does not engage in the compromises of generating so-called `free' TV by accepting advertising. But advertising -supported broadcasting needs its audiences too. Rupert Murdoch has owned and controlled many press outlets in his empire: He nevertheless doesn’t conform their content to make their points of view identical or too perceptibly identical to his own. When he bought the Wall Street Journal he knew he would lose its audience if he stopped providing what its readers considered reliable news and made its content like that of the Fox network or his tabloids. (Even if the Journal is looking more tabloid-ish these days- see picture.) It is around the edges together with wherever it is critical where you see the results of Murdoch ownership and control.

When the Murdoch hacking scandal broke in England the Wall Street Journal was reluctant to cover it just as Fox News was. This has been well covered by, for instance, NPR’s “On the Media” but PBS’s new Frontline, “Murdoch’s Scandal” provided a pithy summary of what happened. The Journal ignored the hugely important story the English paper The Guardian was breaking. The rest of the British press seemed afraid to join in the coverage. Then the New York Times joined in to pay attention to the scandal elevating its importance. The Wall Street Journal editorially criticized the Times for this. As Times got involved we saw an example of what has been called the “Times Effect” kicking in (there is probably also a PBS effect), the floodgates opened and it seemed every paper everywhere was jumping on the scandal except that the Wall Street Journal was still reluctant to report on it no matter its importance for American business.

Channel Thirteen needs its audience, no matter how fractionally small the membership contributions are that come from that audience. In other words, Thirteen cannot immediately drift too far afield from the standards that its audience expects. Nevertheless, long term, depending upon the diet upon which it is fed any audience can drift, migrate, reformulate over time. In some cases audiences can be simply jettisoned altogether. With the arrival of cable TV a great number of new channels were started directed to niche interests. Oddly, sooner or later so many of them were showing shows with no explicable connection to why the new channels were created to exist: Why is “Ice Road Truckers” on the History Channel as well as aliens? Haunted house visits on the Arts and Entertainment rather than on the SciFi Network? More ghost shows on the Travel Channel? (These are the ghosts left behind when stations alienate from their originally intended audiences?)

Years, ago TechTV, a 24-hour niche channel based in San Francisco, was a beautifully nerdy network about computers and technology featuring instructions on hugely outsized computer screens and discussion of all sort of intricate computer programming arcana. In New York Tech TV went to its viewers seeking their help it keep its place on the cable dial which the viewers did but shortly after that fight was won the station abandoned its programing and became the G4 network, dopily pitching hype about boy toys to a very different young, low-brow, audience. It would be a shame if in time there was a similar squandering of the entrusted legacy of Channel Thirteen and the rest of the PBS system by turning it into a conduit for the PR messages of the corporate interests and local real estate moguls, especially given the significant public investment it took to create the public system and the fact that once seized and so looted it could probably not be recreated.

Direction Comes From . . . ?

As Thirteen’s decision to support and endorse the controversial Ratner/Prokhorov Basketball arena is unlikely to have been reflective of any sensitivity to Thirteen viewer audience standards, where did this strange direction come from? Can it be blamed on Thirteen’s corporate sponsors? Channel Thirteen’s public relations representatives tell me that “corporate underwriting at Thirteen constitutes approximately 10.8% of our funding per year.”

It would be easier to blame the Thirteen board of Trustees. Certainly, if nothing else, any Trustees who are viewing what is on the station have not, by complaining about it put a halt to the arena promotions. But would the Trustees think anything of it, the way viewers like me are automatically appalled? Looking at the WNET board of Trustees you will see some very wealthy and recognizable names and, as might be expected, there is overlap and interrelationship with the list of the station’s very largest donors. Remember that most of the money is not coming from listeners since listening membership contributes only 22.9%.

Notably, a man with a name very recognizable in real estate circles has been appointed as chairman: James S. Tisch. Tisch (is President and Chief Executive Officer of Loews Corporation and is involved in construction through the hotel chain. Tisch is also on the board of the New York Federal Reserve with Kathy Wylde and Lee Bolinger, both of whom advocate abuse of eminent domain. According to the station’s IRS filings Mr. Tisch puts in an average of 4 hours a week for the station without compensation.

There are other names on the super donor and Trustees lists that are recognizably connected with real estate. By no means are all of the names so connected. That’s not the point. The point is: Of this list many of those who are not directly connected with the business of our local real estate barons are still in the class that is likely to be regularly hobnobbing with them. Even if it is true that Channel Thirteen aspires, as it says, “to serve the underserved” it might not be easy to pick out a preponderance of its board members who would be the best candidates to instinctually represent the interests of the “undersreved” over those of the real estate moguls like Ratner whom they are regularly encountering on the charity grand event circuit. For instance, Board Vice Chairman Ann G. Tenenbaum, a big donor in her own right, seems to do a fair amount of hanging out with various Tisches (Jamie, Alice, Jim) based in the number of event photos that Google at the top of the list. Ditto for Vice Chairman Dirk Ziff.

Was the board of trustees involved in the decision to promote the Ratner/Prokhorov arena? One would think that facing the inevitable controversy inherent in such an endorsement and the very heavy promotion that Channel Thirteen seems to have committed to that the trustees would have been involved or that the chairman or a board committee would have had such a role. The Channel Thirteen public relations department assured me that this was not the case:

This transaction did not involve anyone from our Board of Trustees.

I was also informed that: “The total number of tickets we will be receiving has not been set yet; we will receive NO Sky Box seats.” So the relationship has an interesting informality to it despite the investment in the commercial spots being broadcast.

Rather than the board being involved I was informed that the decisions approving the December 5, 2012 concert promotion, and the approvals of the announcement and spots about the promotion that are being aired, when they will be aired and how they will be ordered and interleaved with other announcements has been the responsibility of Channel Thirteen President and CEO, Neal Shapiro*, executive producer David Horn of Great Performances (one Ratner connection popped up), and Thirteen programmer Kent Steele.

(* According to Thirteen’s 2010 IRS filings Mr. Shapiros’ annual salary is $524,995.)

Whatever one may be tempted to surmise about how overtures were made to effect the promotion, I was informed that, officially at least, the tickets for the Bocelli concert promotion are “furnished by Sugar Music, Bocelli’s management company.” When I asked about whether
the visuals of the Barclays arena (inserted into the promotions that Channel Thirteen has been running) were supplied directly by Sugar Music or came instead either from the one of the Forest City Ratner companies or from one of the public relations companies that have been working for the Forest City Ratner companies, I was told they came from a website. I am asking about which one and still awaiting word. The PR department says that “Thirteen has had a long and mutually respectful relationship with Bocelli.” As already footnoted Thirteen broadcast Bocelli’s Central Park Concert in 2011.

Future of the Concert

It will be interesting to see whether the Andrea Bocelli concert will be a success on any level at all. It is possible that it might not even happen given that the arena’s construction is apparently behind schedule (latest word here). If the arena construction does complete soon enough to host the Bocelli concert it will likely only be because of the uncurtailed breaches of construction rules and specially tolerated round the clock 24/7 construction schedule that has been inflicted upon the surrounding community residents. (See: Wednesday September 21, 2011, Construction of the Ratner/Prokhorov (“Barclays”) Arena Is Behind Schedule. Either That, OR a 24/7 Construction Schedule Was ALWAYS Intended.)

There may be more than enough tickets. No Land Grab reported that there were tickets were being sold on the secondary market as of February 6, 2012. (Also the stage configuration that might be used may involve a configuration closing one or more of the central interior entrances to the arena.)

Future of Thirteen

Channel Thirteen has long been a place where you could find chronicled many important public issue battles, many that were, or are, in danger of being lost. The human race may, for instance, be losing the race to counteract global climate change but despite the fact that David H. Koch’s money is prominently announced as funding every episode of PBS's Nova (and David H. Koch is on the Thirteen board as well), Nova and other PBS programs like Frontline keep bringing the issue of global climate change to the fore. Even when so many defeats are faced, the public broadcasting system has, at least, always provided a forum where we can collectively shake our heads in pity with an informed consciousness about what should be done or what should have been done. It will be a real tragedy if in the future PBS and Thirteen transition and we find that not only are these just and necessary fights lost but that an appreciation for their importance is then buried under false and uninformed the-victor-writes-the-history PR hype.

Loss of control over Thirteen is something we should all be on guard to prevent. I could offer an admonishment that in order to have more control we should all be listener supporters in order to have greater influence over the station. Or, looked at another way, is that a doomed strategy in a world where wealth has been increasingly redistributed from the 99% to the 1% in schemes like Ratner’s arena-associated mega-monopoly land grab? How can the 99% expect to keep up and compete? I don’t think anybody is about to put me on the Channel Thirteen board. Maybe the better strategy is instead to do exactly the opposite: To terminate membership support for Thirteen just the way I decided I had to terminate my membership support for the Brooklyn Museum after they falsely put Laurels on Mr. Ratner’s head at great sacrifice to the community they had a duty to serve?

Channel Thirteen is telling us as their audience that we should “Trust Thirteen.” At this juncture don’t we need to turn the tables and tell Thirteen that an essential element of trust has been lost? That the station is, indeed, breaching our trust in a deep and untenable way? Channel 13 Board of Trustees meetings are open to the public. The next board meeting is Thursday, May 10, 2012 3:00 p.m. (WNET, Worldwide Plaza, 825 8th Avenue 14th floor, Kellen Board Room).

Interestingly, May 10th is the same day that Bruce Ratner will, starting at 11:30 AM, just six blocks away, be the Guest of Honor at the New York Building Congress's 91st Anniversary Leadership Awards Luncheon at 1335 Avenue of the Americas. The strategy is to keep those accolades coming for Mr. Ratner as he steals from the public and thereby hopes that no one will notice. Tables to sit inside with Mr. Ratner start at $25,000. The luncheon underwriters are listed as Bruce Ratner’s own Forest City Ratner company, Rudin Management Company and (billing itself as one of the worlds most ethical companies) AECOM.

Now why ever might it be worth mentioning the coincidence of these two events?

Putting it in Channel Thirteen’s own promotional vernacular:

What happens when you expect more? You ask more!

And we should demand more. We need to demand behavior from Thirteen that we can “Trust.”