WNYC: Ray Kelly: Police Stops are Fact of Urban Life

WNYC is a mouthpiece for education deform, maintaining a chummy tone with Joel Klein in his tenure, maintaining an uncritical loyalty to the education deform movement key plank of charter schools. Somehow, on education WNYC is virtually a government organ, a radio counterpart to the New York Post, reporting mayoral or chancellor pronouncements on perverted teachers, as though they are characteristically twisted.

Yet, on other topics WNYC can run pieces that are closer to the verve of real citizens. Its Radio Rookies included interviews with Bronx residents in preparation for its story on police stops. The reporters included quotes of an immigrant in the Bronx on the disturbing overreaction on the part of the New York City Police Department (NYPD).

WNYC News: Radio Rookies: The Effect of Stop and Frisk in the Bronx
Friday, August 31, 2012
WNYC
By Ephraim Fromer / Veralyn Williams / Courtney Stein / Temitayo Fagbenle

Listen to Rookies’ conversations with Bronx residents and their frank meeting with Police Commissioner Ray Kelly in the audio above.

Five Radio Rookies walked the streets of the Bronx recently to learn more about how residents of the borough, which is 90 percent black and Latino, interact with the police.

Earlier this month, a WNYC investigation revealed that prosecutors in the Bronx drop almost a quarter of all cases if a victim isn’t interviewed within 24 hours after an arrest. This happens in part because the victims don’t cooperate.

Some Bronx residents said they don’t talk to law enforcement out of fear of retaliation. But Radio Rookies found in their roughly two dozen interviews with residents of the Bronx that stop and frisks have also soured relations with police.

A Ghanaian immigrant in the West Bronx said police pulled him over in his car and accused him of talking on the phone. He said he was then frisked by police.

"They used force and twist my arm, so I said, 'Woah! Officer why you doing that for?'" he said.

Later, he said they threw him to the ground and charged him with resisting arrest.

Police in the 44th precinct in the West Bronx use force during stop and frisks more than anywhere else in the city, according to a New York Times report.

When Rookies sat down with Police Commissioner Ray Kelly he said crime has gone down 80 percent over the last two decades and that stop and frisk is one tactic that has helped bring the rate down.

When pressed about police interactions with the public, Kelly said "the best thing for a person to do when being stopped is cooperate. Accept it as a fact of urban life. It overall is helping to keep New York City safe."

Kelly said that being a police officer is a tough job.

"We teach officers to interact with people with courtesy and respect," he said. "I believe most officers certainly strive for that but it's important to keep your eye on the big picture."

Kelly was asked if he gives equal importance to protecting the city and maintaining a good relationship with its people.

"We’d love to have a great relationship with people but sometimes because of the decisions that we make, the things that we have to do, people may not be happy with the police," Kelly said.

Radio Rookies Temitayo Fagbenle, Veralyn Williams, Ephraim Fromer, AJ Frazier, Bree Person and Vikky Cruz contributed reporting
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Radio Rookies is a New York Public Radio initiative that provides teenagers with the tools and training to create radio stories about themselves, their communities and their world.

No Support for WNYC, Basher of Public School Teachers

We are in a period of right-wing bashing of funding for public broadcasters, National Public Radio and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. This is outrageous; the right controls the agenda on corporate airways. Public broadcasting provides an alternative with mature content as opposed to the infantile attachment to cute news or celebrity news. I support the preservation for public broadcasting. It is essential for the preservation of the non-corporate news in isolated perts of the country that have a lopsided presence of FoxNews-like news-talk radio outlets and a paucity of mature, professional news.

However, when we hear pleas for support from New York City's National Public Radio affiliate, WNYC, we should withhold giving any individual contributions to the station. For when we hear WNYC's Brian Lehrer introduce segments on education we wince. He have to brace ourselves. Lehrer features charter school entrepreneur Eva Moskowitz with great frequency. When he chats with her there is an atmosphere of Moskowitz as the sole voice, with no recognition that she has an intense (personal, entrepreneurial) bias in the discussion of charter versus public school.

Last August Lehrer had then-New York City Schools Chancellor Joel Klein on the air. He let Klein speak soliloquy style on his views of the schools.
When we hear Klein or Moskowitz it is a solo presentation. On plenty of issues Lehrer has balance, opposing voices. Why no diversity of opinions on education? He has not had Sam Anderson, Betsy Combier or Norm Scott, or representatives of the burgeoning parent-teacher alliances, Campaign for Public Education or Grassroots Education Movement.

It has been suggested that money from the Broad Foundation's donations to WNYC influences this bias. We should have an open discussion: who funds WNYC? Why is there an apparent bias for the case for charter schools?

One week left, then the end of NY Times-Bloomberg radio relationship

Listen to the news portions of WQXR and you hear the annoying introduction, "Bloomberg News."

In one week's time, October 8, this will end: at 8 PM WNYC will assume full control of WQXR and there will be no more formal imprint of mayor-king Michael [Bloomberg]. (And the station will move from 96.3 FM to 105.9 FM.) Pity that this was a New York Times radio station and that they gave up news responsibility. This commercial relationship compromised the independence of the New York Times and the mayor. If one reads the reportage of city affairs in the Times one will notice a lack of strong, independent reporting on New York City mayoral politics during the last several years.
By the way, one can google Thomas Middlehoff of the German media giant, BMG, and conjecture a connection: Middlehoff-[Joel] Klein, formerly of BMG-Times-Bloomberg. Alas, too much work right now.
Keywords: bias, quid pro quo, influence buying

WQXR, as WNYC property, will move to 105.9 in October

IN an update to my earlier post, WQXR (formerly New York Times radio) will move, as a WNYC property, to its new location, 105.9, in October. The WNYC official blog still swears that the change will not disturb the classical music format.
keywords: Changeover, transition, station move.

NYT sells WQXR radio to ... WNYC & Univision!

The New York Times has decided to sell its classical radio station, WQXR, presently at 96.3 FM. (Personally, I credit Hugh Hamilton, the host of WBAI's "Talk Back," for bringing this news to the radio airwaves this afternoon.) The station began as a mainly classical music station in 1936, it launched its FM station in 1939, and it had been a Times property since 1944, from wikipedia.

And purchasing the station is the listener-supported, National Public Radio affiliated station, WNYC, and the Spanish-language commercial television network, Univision.

This appears to be a desperate arrangement from a number of angles. First, from the Times' side, it has been losing millions in the current freefall collapse of commercial daily newspapers. So, it sought to sell off one asset.

And from the side of the station, it will be a great loser. It will shift from the middle of the FM dial to the top or right edge of the dial, to 105.9 WCAA, a Univision radio property will move from that upper range position to WQXR's position.
The 96.3 signal broadcasts from a transmitter with 6,000 watts, reaching 42 miles and 17.1 million people. The 105.9 transmitter has a 600 watts signal, reaching 30 miles and 12.6 million people.

And the employment-side of the equation is reminiscent of restructured companies or restructured schools: the nineteen full-time and two part-time employees will have to reapply for their jobs.

The Times article, the source for the above information intimated that the ownership change "could alter its character." Yet it quoted WNYC's chief executive officer, for reassuring words, “We will not only look to continue those relationships [with the New York Philharmonic, the Metropolitan Opera and the Julliard School], but to extend and expand and deepen them.”

But one cannot but help think that WNYC's acquisition of WQXR could carry a different perspective of music and mission. First, the station has a record of curtailing music: in the early 1990s the station carried an over-night music program, and it carried daytime music, albeit with an extremely disconcerting host, Steve Post. This features were curtailed over the course of the 1990s, and the final death blow came amidst the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center's Twin Towers.
Also, the station has been trending away from the standard presentation of classical music or concert music. It replaced the more traditional David Garland with the more modern and eclectic Terrance McKnight. (I enjoy his creative juxtaposition of music selections, but as one can see from the message board pages at the station, the replacement with McKnight has not been without controversy.) And in the late night hour, and particularly on weekends, it has broadcast canned music with canned-sounding voices, as opposed to the warm, spontaneous voices of local hosts.

Alas, with public school systems' wholesale elimination of music programs, particularly music appreciation programs, particularly in New York City, the mission of classical music stations is a precarious one. The elimination of music appreciation or school bands/ orchestras has meant the growth of generations of students with little appreciation for classical music --or jazz music, for that regard. Is it any wonder that popular music these days usually lacks the playing of instruments, or that rap, the chanting upon repeated sound-machine sounds, represent the leading trends of popular music these days?
(Some other things we can expect to vanish from the new WQXR: the markers as the station of the upper classes: the stock reports, the occasional ads for bonds or other investment vehicles. Some great features have already left the station: the lower-tech announcements of the next day's Times front page and editorials have been replaced by announcements from Bloomberg News. --Any wonder that there are fewer damaging articles on the administration in the Times than in the Daily News??)
So, more than buttressing the Philharmonic, the Metropolitan Opera or the Julliard School is at stake. The new WQXR could serve as a platform for re-generating an audience for "concert music."
There is no word yet as to when the actual transition of stations (WQXR to 105.9 and WCAA to 96.3) will take place.

WNYC's Beth Fertig reports on how NYC teachers want less mayoral control

New York City teachers are chafing under mayoral control.

WNYC radio's (820 AM, 93.9 FM) Beth Fertig reported on how New York City teachers are reacting to mayoral control.

NEW YORK, NY February 05, 2009 —City teachers are sending a strong message to Albany: They want the law granting Mayor Bloomberg control over city schools to be weakened when it comes up for renewal this June. WNYC's Beth Fertig has more.

REPORTER: Delegates to the United Federation of Teachers voted overwhelmingly for a proposal to strengthen community involvement in the schools. The union wants to reduce the number of mayoral appointees to the existing panel on educational policy. Armando Blasse of PS 67 in Brooklyn calls it a good compromise.

BLASSE: It applies accountability. There are checks and balances involved in the whole situation.

REPORTER: But Patricia Pan, who teaches in Queens, says the mayor would still have too much power.

PAN: There isn't any educator going to be on the panel and there isn't going to be any parent representative on the panel either.

REPORTER: The politically powerful union hopes to influence state lawmakers with its proposal. But Mayor Bloomberg has said that strong leadership is essential to reforming the schools, and that weakening his involvement would take the city back to the days of the old board of education. For WNYC I'm Beth Fertig.

Click here, to hear the MP3 podcast on her news report: