By Allison Lee
Special to AsianWeek
Have you found yourself bopping your head along to the latest Clipse beat on the radio, or digging that Erykah Badu/Common duet, only to be interupted by some insensitive DJ who makes you mad with his backwards political beliefs?
If you listen to KMEL in San Francisco, this may happen a lot. The station says they are down with the people, but facts show that that’s far from the truth. But don’t worry, if you are angry, you are not alone.
Bay Area radio station KMEL (106.1 FM) has a coalition of young activists questioning whether the hip hop and R&B portal is really, “The People’s Station,” as its public relations slogans like to tout.
Some young people are saying that the station may promote this idea in their image, but that KMEL is far from community-minded in its practices. In response to what it calls utter hypocrisy, the Coalition for Media Accountability, a coalition of journalists, youth organizations, media advocates and community members, has organized in a single effort to critically analyze and improve the reality of KMEL.
In the fall of 2002, the Youth Media Council (YMC) — an Oakland-based youth organizing, leadership development, media capacity-building and watchdog project dedicated to amplifying the public voice of marginalized youth and their communities — authored a community assessment of KMEL, based on an analysis of three weeks of the station’s programming, entitled “Not the People’s Station.” YMC is at the forefront of research examining the role and responsibility of entertainment radio in urban communities.
KMEL is the primary station for Bay Area people, especially youth and people of color, and attracts over 600,000 listeners. Though KMEL’s image would suggest that they embrace the community, research shows the opposite. KMEL is owned by Clear Channel Communications, one of the largest media conglomerates in the world, with more than 1,200 stations under its domain. This monopoly is the consequence of a 1996 decision, the Telecommunications Act of 1996, which reversed the law prohibiting a single company from owning more than 28 stations. Since this government deregulation, radio has changed radically. Furthermore, Clear Channel — along with other “media mega-corporations” — have eliminated avenues by which listeners could hold local stations accountable, increasing the gap between the powerful and the powerless.
The study reveals that KMEL does not seem to give access to the community it targets, which is youth and people of color. According to the critical report, KMEL does not give voice to local youth-led organizations or youth leaders and most of its hosts overwhelmingly discuss crime, drugs and violence when not talking about music. The station also provides little air time for local artists and tends to blame individuals for social conditions, rather than comprehensively examining root causes embedded in public policy, during editorial content. YMC’s biggest concern was that KMEL neglects to provide accountability mechanisms as a means for community participation. Furthermore, the report critiqued KMEL’s portrayal of youth, specifically their coverage of youth as criminals instead of as positive forces.
A 2001 study of local news indicated that youth are “more likely to be depicted in the context of crime and violence than through issues such as health, education, family and community life, and KMEL is consistent with this trend.”
It wasn’t always this way; at least not entirely. What triggered the study was the abrupt departure of Davey D, the former community affairs director and progressive host of the show “Street Knowledge,” one of the only shows that provided an open forum for community members of the Bay Area to participate in dialogue about relevent topics, such as violence and crime. YMC suspects that Davey D stirred up controversy at the station soon after hosting Congresswoman Barbara Lee on Sept. 17, 2001 — the only representative who voted against the U.S. “War on Terror” in Afghanistan.
According to Shipra Shukla of Media Alliance, “When we contacted the station, all we were told was that it was a personal decision [to fire him]. They were vague and showed no commitment to wanting to talk to us.” Shortly thereafter youth and community members were systematically excluded from the discussion, and listeners were left to rely on the obsolete perspectives and homogenized content of a corporate-owned station.
According to the report, there have been numerous instances of irresponsible broadcasting. One such example took place during a segment in September of this year, on a talk show called Street Soldiers. The erroneous title of this segment was “Drug Dealing Grandmother in Vallejo.” Not only did the hosts report inaccurate facts (the grandmother was accused of having drugs sold from her home, not of selling them herself), but they supported measures to evict elderly people from their homes as a solution to curtailing the drug problem in poor communities, and narrow-mindedly blamed individuals without regard for the larger picture.
When a caller remarked, “You have to look at every aspect of a person’s life ... let’s get to the bottom of the whole thing, let’s look at the root,” the host responded, “We cannot permit ourselves to excuse anyone in a life of crime. The bottom of the whole thing is individuals and personal choices and personal responsibility and that is something we have been lazy about when it comes to our people. What’s happening is our people are colluding in their own destruction.”
According to Nicole Lee of the organization Let’s Get Free, the philosophy of KMEL has changed. She remarks, “KMEL no longer has a Community Affairs director, but a Director of Promotions. This is very different.”
However, YMC is not out to attack the station. Lee comments, “Our goal is to build an ongoing relationship with KMEL, to create an ongoing dialogue. We want the community to have an input and we want KMEL to be held accountable.”
The report offers a six-step plan for KMEL to become more accountable to the communities it claims to represent. The recommendations include sponsoring on-air roundtable discussions hosted by youth leaders, increasing public service announcements about peace and justice events, creating a community advisory board and setting up an accountability hotline.
A meeting between the station management and YMC is scheduled for Dec. 10. Hopefully, this will bring some positive and much needed change to the station.
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