ATTEMPTED RAPE

DATELINE: March 1999
Washington, DC

In March of 1999 the Alliance for Community Media (ACM) uncovered an orchestrated plot by WETA. The new Forum Network tried to public access channel capacity in the District of Columbia and Fairfax County as well as other surrounding areas. The “Forum Network” was a joint project of the $900-million Gannett funded Freedom Forum and public television station WETA.
“It’s appalling,” said Bunnie Riedel, executive director of the Alliance, “The Freedom Forum is supposed to promote free speech, not try to bury it by grabbing the people’s media.”
Calls to the ACM office by concerned access providers pointed to a large scale scheme to secure one access channel from each of the metro areas in order to meet a June ’99 deadline for launching the Forum Network. “They were turned down by the cable operators and instead of re-thinking their plan, they’re going after access channels,” said Riedel. “I understand their desperation, they have millions of dollars invested in this venture, but they need to understand that access channel capacity is for community use--its electronic greenspace by, for and of the people.”
A programming plan of the Forum Network reveals a few hours of original programming per day with the rest of the programming day filled with re-runs from WETA or programming not aired by WETA because of its commitment to children’s programming. One proposal cited lagging viewership and the fact that “Analysis of WETA’s 1997 results shows that the number of people tuning into existing news and public affairs programming is very small” as partial justification for the need for the Forum Network. Peppered through the programming plan are standards such as Charlie Rose, Bill Moyers Reports, Frontline, Newshour, Nightly Business Report and nightly news from BBC.
“We met with Ed Turner (Freedom Forum) and Lin Lloyd (WETA), and it was clear to us that they did not understand the importance of community television. The access community has fought long and hard to carve out a media space reserved for people in communities to be able to communicate with each other. This is the one place in media where governmental and educational institutions can serve the community. And, it’s the one place where non-profits, community groups and individuals can become active participants in media, rather than just passive recipients of media. Access channel capacity cannot be handed over to elitist ‘talking-heads’ or more of the same from the BBC.”
In a letter to Lin Lloyd and Ed Turner, the Alliance emphasized its willingness to work with the Freedom Forum by assisting with program placement on access channels around the country, but made clear its position against access channels being used for non-access entities.
The Volunteer Voice – the newsletter of the Fairfax Cable Access Corporation’s Television Guild called for an immediate citizen viewer campaign to our local political representatives. “Call the Chair of the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors, Kate Hanley and let her know that you oppose allowing WETA to use any PEG channel”.
In the District of Columbia you should call the Office of The Mayor the Voice advised.
The Volunteer Voice also said that it would be organizing one of its “Yellow Post Card” campaigns to inundate WETA with “expressions of concern” from the citizens of Fairfax County. Each postcard will have a check box indicating that the sender will no longer consider contributing to WETA during their relentless fund raising drives.