Public Radio’s Ramirez Faces Podcasters & CPB
In this Leonard Witt Restoring the Trust IM Interview, Raul Ramirez, News and Public Affairs Director of KQED Public Radio in San Francisco, takes on everything from politically motivated partisan attacks to podcasting. How will they affect public broadcasting? Well read on.
Key Quote: The best antidote to political attacks is to demonstrate our commitment to journalism, to public broadcasting and to democratic values.
Leonard Witt: Hi Raul, thanks for doing this. Lets start with a big picture concern. In the last couple of weeks there have been so many layoffs at major newspapers that Steve Lovelady of the Columbia Journalism Review wrote: it’s starting to feel as if the bow of the ship is slipping beneath the water. So what’s the situation, hopes and fears within public broadcasting, especially as they pertain to journalism?
Raul Ramirez: Tight financial times are nothing new to public broadcasting, but the prospect of diminished federal support is of great concern to people system-wide, particularly because of the impact that a drastic decrease or zeroing out of funding would have on smaller stations, particularly rural stations.
That’s one concern. Another concern for some of us is the ideological pressures being exerted on the system by new, and some not-so-new appointees to the CPB board… And, of course, public broadcasters share the same concerns as commercial broadcasters have as the FCC tightens enforcement of morality standards.
Finally, technological advances are creating new challenges and new questions for us, as with everyone else. For public radio folk, the methods that large producers such as NPR might use to distribute their material is of great interest — particularly with regard to the ability of such producers to bypass stations in the delivery of content via the Internet, podcasting, etc.
Witt: Oh man, you have given me fodder for lots of questions. So what is the scuttlebutt about Cheryl Halpern and Gay Hart Gaines, the Kenneth Y. Tomlinson CPB leadership replacements? Current, your industry trade magazine, describes them first as two big GOP donors.”
Ramirez: I have no special knowledge other than what’s been printed in some of the national media (honestly). It’s always a concern when people in the position to effect policy are out-and-out partisans. The experience with K. Y. Tomlinson is an excellent example. Personally, I don’t mind scrutiny if it encourages us to question our assumptions and examine our track record. When the goal of fairness and balance becomes the twisted charade that it’s been made by some cable networks — that’s when one can worry. But it’s premature to fret too much at the moment, in my view.
Witt: So, let’s say you said some very critical things about them, could they make big trouble for you at KQED? What kind of power do they have?
Ramirez: I prefer to think that the excesses of the Tomlinson days (secret hiring of politicized editorial hit men to scrutinize programs, etc.) are behind us, but the CPB has a great deal to do with what can happen in public broadcasting. That is, a lot of the seed money for experimental programming and for infrastructure in the system comes via the CPB. The bully pulpit of the chair can always influence would-be funders of particular programs and potentially influence the more cautious among our producer brethren.
It’s already bad enough that because of its funding structure, some folks in public broadcasting have to think about what their Congressmen might think about individual pieces (whether or not it’s admitted publicly). If the CPB were to be loaded with highly ideological individuals, regardless of who is chair, I have no illusions but that it would foster the same kind of self-censorship.
In extreme circumstances there are more draconian (or direct) ways to lean on stations, but I’m not sure we have seen much of that.
Having said that, I must say in fairness that the CPB staff, in my experience, is as professional and fair-minded as one might wish.
Witt: So what can your audience, that rose up again the proposed House budget cuts earlier this year, do to effect CPB policy?
Raul Ramirez: That is the heartening part of this entire picture: Our audiences have time and again let their elected officials know the importance that they ascribe to public broadcasting. That’s what they have done and that is an important component of what they can continue doing. You also see financial support for local stations growing in strength. Most importantly, the audiences over time have continued to grow as well. By the way, that support does not translate into uncritical support. Our audiences are as ready as ever to let us know when they think we have stumbled. I suppose you could call it tough love, and I much like it that way.
When I came to public radio 14 years ago after some two decades in newspapers, I was amazed at how up close and personal the relationship with our listeners can be — even in a large-market, large-audience station like KQED. We are family to our listeners — they wake up with us, drive to work or to take the children to school with us, sometimes bring us to work with them, they drive home with us.
That kind of relationship is difficult to create, and sometimes easy to wound if people feel that we have let them down. Ultimately, it is that accountability that (I hope) will keep public broadcasters strong against ideologically based attacks from inside the Beltway.
Witt: So why the disconnect between your audience and the policymakers? Plus I have to go back to that self-censorship comment. I had dinner one night with a group of visiting Chinese students. They contended there really isnt government censorship, we censor ourselves they said. So does that low-key intimidation ever make you think it is time to get out of public broadcasting, especially the way it is structured now?
Ramirez: If you look at those crude red-blue maps of the United States, you begin to see a significant disconnect between many segments of the American public and whichever color rules in D.C. AND, if you look at similar maps at the state level, you see clearly the ideological divides within each region. We all know how in the past two decades, the disconnect between citizens and government has become sharply accentuated. The disconnect between our audiences and the policymakers is part of today’s reality at so many levels.
I appreciate the comments of the Chinese students. I have worked with Chinese journalists and students from time to time, and my sense is that the self-censorship that many of them exercise is self-preservation at a very real level. The fact is that for many of them it’s self-censorship or suffering very real consequences — from being forbidden to publish to being fired, up to and including imprisonment. That has not changed to this day. I don’t think we are at the same level here — even if in the ebb and flow of these things, the flow is very much in the intended top-down control.
Leave public broadcasting? On the contrary, I would say. Certainly, I don’t hear colleagues here or elsewhere talking about that. (If the low pay and Spartan working conditions have not driven public broadcasters away, it’s hard to think low-key intimation would).
More seriously: I know that personally I feel that it’s all the more important that those of us alarmed by the politized winds in Washington should stay put and continue to do the best we can to serve our audiences and communities, and to broaden the public discourse. The best antidote to political attacks is to demonstrate our commitment to journalism, to public broadcasting and to democratic values.
Witt: I want to talk also about the technological changes and their effects on public broadcasting and news quality. You mentioned that you worry about the local stations relationship to NPR. I am, for example, a lover of public radio news, but my Atlanta station doesnt give me enough, so I circumvented them by buying Sirius radio. What do you say and think about audience members like me?
Ramirez: You and audience members like you are the future reality of broadcast communications. Some of us fret and worry. Some of us are working to be there, too (by the way, you can find KQED’s daily talk show, Forum, on Sirius, as part of NPR’s package of newstalk radio). NPR has been doing its best to reassure stations, and a consortium of stations just went through a very encouraging process with NPR over the distribution of podcast NPR “content” along with local “content.” Other producer/distributor organizations have signed on to the same arrangement, and that is encouraging.
One real impact of all of this, for stations with financial resources to do so, is an appreciation of the importance of “Localism” in our broadcast offerings. Localism is not to be confused with provincialism (no NPR-member station could be accused of being provincial, really). It is more of an emphasis on the local flavor, the sense of place that ties us to institutions around us. The Public Radio Program Directors organization is in the midst of a project to explore just what Localism is or can be. To me, it points in the direction of more and more stations paying attention to providing a service to their communities — a service that expands and augments what NPR and others offer through them. Those of us who succeed in doing that will continue to be seen as desirable conduits to national/international programming.
Witt: Give me an example of what you mean by service?
Ramirez: By service I mean, first, application of the core public broadcasting principles of fairness and storytelling that have attracted so many people to NPR, PRI, APR, etc, but providing them at the local level. I mean making possible a local civic conversation that respects the speakers, and the intelligence of the listeners. And I mean providing access to a broad range of voices (something that public broadcasters have a mixed record on) and viewpoints.
Witt: Gee, I was just going to ask you about that. Here is Tavis Smiley, in a Washington Post editorial, asking why isn’t the debate over how public broadcasting can become more inclusive of folk of different ages and national origins, of various ethnic groups, faiths and cultures — over how it can be used to introduce Americans to new ideas, and to each other? So I ask you: How is public broadcasting addressing that issue?
Ramirez: I have two answers to that. First, and mildly hopeful, is that public broadcasters will HAVE to do a lot better (along with the rest of the media) or lose tomorrow’s audiences. Many of our cities have evolved right beneath our gaze and understanding. And ALL of our cities — all of America — is evolving demographically. Any mass media organization that does not acknowledge this in its programming stands to render itself irrelevant in time.
Public broadcaster is not exempt of the implications of this reality. Candidly, I am not sure that everyone in public broadcasting signs on to this idea. I was at a conference just a couple of weeks ago where a very solid discussion on the topic of local coverage led to talk about a series of focus groups being planned in a number of public radio markets nationwide, to hear views on, among other things, what we need to do to remain relevant in the future. The research will focus on “core” listeners and “fringe” listeners. It’s partly because of financial constraints, but this project (one of the more promising efforts in this area) is not going to include NON-listeners, which of course includes low-income people, new immigrants, the very young, etc. And that is a good part of the future we should be looking to tap.
Witt: Back to new technologies. I had a conversation with Joe Richman, the producer of Radio Diaries, which in my mind is some of the best radio ever. I often think, for example, about the Halfrican piece. But he said a 13-minute segment costs more than $10,000. I think I have that right. Cheap, when you compare what it would have cost if it had been a TV documentary. But now for nothing a podcaster could make okay, if not terrific radio. How do you compete with that?
Ramirez: I don’t believe that in the long run “okay” podcasting will be chosen over “terrific” radio of the kind that Joe produces. I do worry about the shakedown period, but ultimately I believe that “okay podcasting” will find its place as an option that we choose to exercise at times. But I also believe that insightful, well edited, well produced, informative, well researched, fair-minded storytelling and journalism will be not just be an option, but a necessity. I don’t believe that young folk walking around with white earpieces connected to a white device have any less of a need for information to help them cope, to inspire them and educate them than folk who get sound via a transmitter tower. You need to remember, too, that the battle to produce the relatively more expensive, and excellent work that Joe Richman, vs. the cheaper and more plentiful crap you find in commercial broadcasting, that that battle has gone on for a long time. And people continue to opt for Joe’s work and are willing to pay for it.
Witt: Raul, this has been a fantastic interview. Lots of good information. Any thing you want to add?
Ramirez: No. Good questions. Just make me sound smart…
Witt: You are; so, it is not a problem.
For more of Leonard Witts Restoring the Trust IM interviews click here.
