Jennifer Strange Case Finds End, Entercom Forfeits License

originally published in the Sacramento Bee April 4, 2017
 by Dan Morain

From her home outside the no-stoplight settlement of Fiddletown, Sue Wilson tilted at a corporate windmill, and a funny thing happened.
.
Sue from Fiddletown won, on our behalf. You can hear the sound of that victory at the end of the FM radio dial in Sacramento. Where there once was commercial pop music, hooting deejays and stupid radio stunts, there’s static.
.
“We the People own the air waves,” she said, and repeats: “We the People.”
.
The start of this story probably is vaguely familiar. On a Friday in January 2007, Jennifer Strange, a 28-year-old mother of three and a regular listener to 107.9-KDND, The End, entered a contest called “Hold your wee for a Wii,” the Nintendo gaming console that was all rage at the time.
Strange, who wanted to win the console for her kids, was one of 18 contestants who gathered at KDND, which was owned by Entercom Communications Corp., the nation’s fourth largest radio chain. The person who gulped the most water without having to urinate would win. It was such a clever idea, sure to draw an audience.
.
“Can’t you get water poisoning and, like, die?” one of the disc jockeys asked, 16 minutes into the show. A caller who identified herself as a nurse practitioner warned that a person could die from water intoxication.
.
“Oh, my God,” Strange told another competitor, “I feel so awful, I’m about to pass out.”
.
The deejays worried that the contest wouldn’t conclude by the end of the show, and increased the size of the water bottles. Sixteen of the 18 had dropped out when Strange accepted the second prize, tickets to a Justin Timberlake concert. Her stomach was distended and she had a splitting headache, but she managed to drive home. She fell into a coma and died that afternoon.
.
A friend of Strange’s called the station with word of her death. Rather than call the other contestants to check on their welfare, the station’s management called Entercom headquarters in Bala Cynwyd outside Philadelphia and spoke to company lawyers. When the deejays arrived for work on the Monday after Strange’s death, they were told to hire attorneys and were fired.
.
The Federal Communications Commission, which licenses radio stations, opened an investigation, as did the Sacramento County District Attorney. Nothing came of either of them. The family, having hired Sacramento attorney Roger Dreyer, sued and received a measure of justice in the form of a $16.5 million judgment.
.
That might have ended the matter, except that Wilson couldn’t let go.
.

Chris Matthews is No Kingmaker - Nor Queenmaker Either

June 2, 2016

.
Why is MSNBC's Chris Matthews, and apparently the entire corporate media apparatus, colluding to coronate Hillary Clinton as the Democratic nominee on June 7th, even though there is no way for her to win the necessary 2383 pledged delegates for victory?
.

Coronation
(image by maxcosworth)   License   DMCA

.....They're not just the begging lapdogs I thought they were. Instead, corporate media players, perhaps to protect their fiefdoms, are trying to become de facto King (or Queen) makers.
.
We all know about the $2 Billion in free coverage the corporate media has given to Master Media Manipulator Donald Trump (but not to other candidates,) and Trump is correct in saying that he is doing the networks a favor by raising their ratings. Could unbalanced media coverage have helped Trump win enough delegates to clinch the Republican nomination? Ya think?

Scott Walker and the GOP Turning First Amendment Rights Upside Down

May 22, 2015

originally posted at BradBlog.com

It's been an entire year since the First Amendment suffered a gigantic blow as a result of the 2012 Scott Walker recall campaign in Wisconsin, though it's one that very few Americans above and beyond astute BRAD BLOG readers, even know about. And now, there is another threat to Free Speech, stemming from that same recall of GOP Presidential hopeful Walker looming at the Wisconsin State Supreme Court.

Walker's attorneys are now arguing at the Wisconsin State Supreme Court that it is a violation of the First Amendment rights to even investigate whether the Walker campaign broke state law by the controversial candidate personally soliciting funds from non-profit, tax-exempt 501(c)(4) groups so donors to his campaign could remain secret. In a separate gambit, they also tried to make that case to the United States Supreme Court, which early Monday sent the case back to Wisconsin.

And it now appears that Right Wing Radio talkers --- at the core of a very real First Amendment blow suffered one year ago --- are, once again, in the thick of all of it.

FCC: No More Equal Time Requirements for Political Campaign Supporters Over Our Public Airwaves.

May 19, 2014

Originally published at the BRADBLOG

The 2014 FCC has now spoken [PDF] in response to a complaint filed by my not-for-profit, the Media Action Center (MAC). Unfortunately, their response comes as little surprise.

It might, however, come as a surprise to the 1972 FCC. That year, the Federal Communications Commission discussed a ruling that became known as the "Zapple Doctrine". The rule extended the federal agency's interpretation of the equal time provisions, Section 315 of the Communications Act, to apply to supporters of candidates, as well as candidates themselves. If airtime was granted to a candidate over the public airwaves, equal time had to be made available to his or her opponent, if it was requested.
.
Zapple expanded the equal time provision to apply to supporters of candidates as well. It only made common sense, as the FCC explained in 1972...
.

What we were stating in Zapple was simply a common sense application of the statutory scheme. ... If the DNC were sold time for a number of spots, it is difficult to conceive on what basis the licensee could then refuse to sell comparable time to the RNC. Or, if during a campaign the latter were given a half-hour of free time to advance its cause, could a licensee fairly reject the subsequent request of the DNC that it be given a comparable opportunity? Clearly, these examples deal with exaggerated, hypothetical situations that would never arise. No licensee would try to act in such an arbitrary fashion.

"Exaggerated, hypothetical situations that would never arise?" Really? "No licensee would try to act in such an arbitrary fashion"?
.
Hey, 1972 FCC, please meet the 2014 FCC.

"McCutcheon" Mints Millions for Mass Media

April 9, 2014

Originally Published at BradBlog.com

Guess who is popping the champagne cork over this week's Supreme Court ruling in McCutcheon vs. FEC, which will allow wealthy individuals to donate virtually unlimited dollars to candidates, political parties, and political action groups?

.

Why, broadcasters, of course. The same companies which operate on our publicly owned airwaves stand to gain the most from McCutcheon and its earlier obscene counterpart, Citizens United.
On Thursday, the radio industry newsletter Inside Radio wrote [subscription req'd] that the McCutcheon decision was "likely to boost [ad] spending" in 2014. They explain that the 2010 Citizens United decision "opened the floodgates to more dollars in politics and the result was record campaign spending on radio in 2012." They predict that the Court's ruling this week "could help spur even more spending.
.
In another piece this week [also subscription req'd] the newsletter trumpets:
.

Political ad spending forecast upsized.

More competitive races, combined with a greater number of outside groups that don't qualify for the lowest unit rate, have the potential to make the 2014 mid-term election cycle more ad intensive than first thought. So much so, that the analysts at Kantar Media's Campaign Media Analysis Group (CMAG), have boosted their political spending forecast. Kantar estimates radio could see $180 million in political ad spending by Election Day."

.

$180 million? That's chump change when it comes to what the television industry stands to make. Bloomberg reports that TV stations will make in excess of $2.5 billion --- with a "B" --- from political ad sales in 2014. And that's nothing compared to what they expect to make in 2016 during a Presidential race.
.
And of course, many, if not most of those ads mislead or outright lie to the very public in whose interest the broadcasters are licensed to serve.
.
Am I the only one who sees something wrong with this picture?
.
Overturning Citizens United and McCutcheon may take years, decades even, if it ever happens at all. But given that We the People have real power as the owners of the airwaves, I see some ways we can reduce at least some of the political ad spending, and perhaps take a lot of money out of politics...

Thoughts on McCutcheon v FEC

April 2, 2014

Today, the Supreme Court ruled in McCutheon v FEC that wealthy individuals may donate unlimited funds to candidates, political parties, and political action groups. Where does most of that money go?  Into local TV stations for political ads.

.

I have written about a remedy before. When will we hold our broadcasters who are supposed to serve the public interest accountable for lying political ads?  

courtesy freedigitalphotos.net

 

Excerpted from the BradBlog,
originally published June 8, 2012

Truth in Advertising
.
Back to Citizens United: there is another obscure legal concept which could provide the citizenry with a tool for change --- without a Constitutional Amendment --- before the 2012 general election.
It turns out that if a candidate wants to buy airtime from a TV or radio station, the station must sell the time, and it may not vet or censor the ad in any way. (So, legally, candidates may lie to public as much as they want.)
.
But third party ads, the ones which have been loosed by the Citizens United decision, are treated differently. Stations do not have to take those ads. If they do, and if those ads lie to the public, the stations may be held liable.
.
Pause and think about holding your local TV station liable for lying third party ads. I can feel the shudder running through the halls of broadcast management right about now.
.
Typically, it is a candidate who is being defamed in an ad that would file such a suit. That person, attorneys tell me, has the standing to file, as they are the ones being harmed by the ad.
.
But when ads lie to public, over our publicly owned airwaves, aren't we the people also being damaged? Isn't our very democracy being damaged when local broadcasters, who are licensed to broadcast only if they serve the public interest, putting giant profits ahead of making certain that the ads are factual? We should have the standing to develop a class action suit asserting our right to factual campaign information over our public airwaves. Our First Amendment rights are paramount in broadcasting, after all, at least according to the United States Supreme Court.
.
So stand up and exercise your rights! Set up meetings with your local radio and TV stations and demand fact checking of ads by local management. Sometimes they will respond positively. But realize that local licensees are owned by giant corporations, which often care little about service to the local community. So if they will not serve your needs, exercise your rights in any way you legally can. Send people in to do daily file inspections (which causes stations to hire extra staff), boycott their advertisers (which sends a financial chill through any station), challenge their licenses.
.
Bringing about parity over our public airwaves is about finding narrow targets, aiming high and true, and educating the public for their support. Our motto at Media Action Center: "Know your rights. Be empowered. Put boots on the ground. And publicize."
.
What the Scott Walker recall in Wisconsin teaches us is that broadcasting is the number one benefactor of the money in politics. But broadcasters are legally supposed to be benefiting their owners, We the People. It's time to stand up for the rights of the real owners of broadcasting - us.
.

The FCC: Actually Enforcing Its Own Rules?

There is a new sheriff at the FCC, and it looks like Tom Wheeler is here to protect the townspeople, not the outlaws.
.
As new chair, Wheeler explained in a statement last Thursday, "Protecting Television Consumers by Protecting Competition," the FCC is required by law to assess its media ownership rules every four years to determine if they need to be modified to serve the public interest. His predecessor, Julius Genachowski, ignored that law completely, meaning it's been six years since a review has been completed. But Wheeler seems to be taking this responsibility seriously, and states, "motivated by evidence that our rules protecting competition, diversity and localism have been circumvented, we will consider some changes to other Commission rules to enforce existing rules."
.
We haven't heard an FCC chairman talk about enforcing rules since, well, since well before this writer started paying attention back in 1987.
.

Note Wheeler's willingness to close the "Joint Services Agreement" loophole, which has allowed two TV stations in one town to be operated, if not owned, by the same owner. (TV viewers experience this when they watch the same news and reporters on two different channels in their towns.) He is also looking at local radio and TV ownership rules, which I have written about at length before, as well as the current prohibition on the cross-ownership of newspapers and television stations.
.
If broadcast station owners held the same standards of fairness and duty to the public interest they did at the onset of broadcasting, we wouldn't need all these rules. But these times, they are a changing, and both profit and politics too often trumps the public interest.
.
This can best be seen in the state of Wisconsin.

Who Controls the Corporate Media Message?

 Originally posted on BradBlog.com 3-5-2014

.
The question I hear time and time again from audiences who see my documentary film, Broadcast Blues is, "Why did you leave your lucrative career in broadcasting to become a media reform activist?"
.
The truth is that, once upon a time, I worked in a newsroom where a corporate owner ordered me, a reporter, to skew my reporting to purposely make a man on trial for murder --- look guilty.
In an instant, my entire life changed. The trust I'd had in my news organization vanished. And the deeper I looked into the way corporate owners manage the message they want the public to hear, the more disillusioned I became.
.
There is more to that story --- so much more --- but you'll have to wait for me to finish my book to get all the chilling details on it.
.
But this is the kind of story that many reporters could tell, if only they dared. But when they dare, as Jane Akre and Steve Wilson did, they can get fired for telling the truth. (Who can forget the story of these Fox affiliate investigative reporters who tried to report on Monsanto Bovine Growth Hormone being injected into cattle, only for it to then be found in the milk supply, which experts said could cause cancer? WTVT fired them after Monsanto complained to Fox "News" chief Roger Ailes.) The reporters filed a whistleblower suit, and Akre won. But Fox won in the end, by getting a court order that, legally, news does not have to be true. Akre and Wilson lost not only their jobs, but ended up having to pay Fox' attorney fees. (See my story from Broadcast Blues on this case, including courtroom footage here.)
.
This is the kind of information I suspect the FCC was hoping to tease out in their planned "Multi-market Study of Critical Information Needs" [PDF] which, as I wrote last week at The BRAD BLOG, sparked a right wing firestorm in recent weeks when Republican FCC Commissioner Ajit Pai went public with a Wall Street Journal op-ed accusing his colleagues of "meddling with the news" by simply asking voluntary questions of newsrooms. The study was part of the FCC's statutory requirement to report to Congress every three years, as they have for decades, on identifying "barriers to entry into the communications marketplace faced by entrepreneurs and other small businesses."
.
The question for reporters from the CIN study that was most disturbing to Pai: "Have you ever suggested coverage of what you consider a story with critical information for your customers that was rejected by management?"...

The Agitprop of Ajit Pai: The Republican FCC Commissioner Calls Out the Troops

This article originally published Feb. 27, 2014 by The BRAD BLOG...

The entire right-wing mediasphere flexed its powerful muscles last week against its only regulator, the Federal Communications Commission.
.
It started when Republican FCC Commissioner, Ajit Pai, ignored traditional inter-agency channels and went straight to the Rupert Murdoch-owned Wall Street Journal to accuse his colleagues of "meddling with the news."
.
That was all it took.
.
Pai's beef? That the FCC would be conducting a "Multi-Market Study of Critical Information Needs" (CIN) to question radio and TV reporters and editors about how they determine which stories to run and which not to run. The study would also ask ask about "perceived station bias" and "perceived responsiveness to underserved populations."
.
As I reported at The BRAD BLOG way back in 2011, "The FCC is tasked with making sure the broadcast media --- via the limited broadcast spectrum which is owned by we, the people -- serves the public interest. Every four years, as required by the 1996 Telecommunications Act, the FCC must revisit the issue of public interest in media ownership." Despite the right wing hyperventilation over the nefariousness of the CIN study, it's simply part of the FCC's statutory mandate, as explained here.
.
What's most interesting, however, is that Pai enlisted the very same right wing Pied Pipers who have long taken control of and, indeed, dominate the very airwaves we ALL own, and which most of us agree need more diversity and public oversight -- in hopes of intimidating the new Democratic FCC Chair Tom Wheeler into providing less diversity and public oversight. That bit of upside-down policy jujitsu was, ironically enough, enabled by the tremendous power of broadcasting over our publicly-owned airwaves.
.
Following the siren call of Pai's piping, both Rush Limbaugh and Glenn Beck dutifully took to those airwaves coast-to-coast to work their 30 million or so radio listeners into a frenzy to prevent the FCC from following the agency's decades-long mandate for determining whether local broadcast news organizations are serving the "public interest" or whether they are merely producing news stories mandated by their corporate owners.
.
Pai's ploy appears to have worked...

Who's Accountable for Reckless Broadcasting?

November 12, 2013

Who is Accountable for Reckless Broadcasting?

.
A couple of weeks ago, through my non-profit project, the Media Action Center, I filed a Petition to Deny the renewal of the broadcast license of a radio station in Sacramento because, simply put, they killed a woman.

While the radio station's insurance company paid millions after they were found guilty for negligence in a lawsuit, the station itself never paid any price, as you or I would, if we had killed someone, even accidentally. The death, however, can barely be called an accident, as the jury discovered.

And now, it's up to the FCC as to whether they force real accountability in this matter, by denying renewal of the station's license to broadcast over our public airwaves. 

In 2007, Entercom Sacramento's KDND sponsored a water drinking contest called "Hold Your Wee for a Wii." The idea was to compete to see who could drink the most water without peeing; "last man standing" would win a Nintendo Wii!  But the stunt went bad, so bad that 28 year old mother of three, Jennifer Strange, died as a result. 

Her family hired a lawyer, who did two things:  he filed a lawsuit against Entercom and he wrote to the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) asking that the station's license be revoked.

The attorney, Roger Dreyer, won his lawsuit and a $16.6 million dollar award for the family in 2009.  The jury in William A. Strange v Entercom unanimously decided Entercom Sacramento was 100% liable for Mrs. Strange's death. 

The jury understood that her death was caused by no mere accident, but rather more like by a reckless driver careening down the wrong side of a busy freeway doing 120 mph. 

Media Action Center Files Petition to Deny KDND's Broadcast License

November 1, 2013

PRESS RELEASE

contact: sue@mediaactioncenter.net 

The Media Action Center has published its "Petition to Deny" the renewal of the broadcast license of KDND-FM, the Entercom radio station in Sacramento found liable for the 2007 death of Jennifer Strange in a water drinking stunt.   November 1 is the final day for the public to challenge California radio stations' licenses in the 2005 - 2013 license renewal period.

.

The pleading documents that not only did KDND staff know they were promoting a stunt that could kill someone, they never informed contestants of that fact. It further documents that Entercom staff and management had no training in safety procedures for contestants, and completely ignored contestants who became violently ill throughout the course of the contest.  Furthermore, the pleading shows that once Entercom management learned of Mrs. Strange's death, they chose not to call other contestants to warn them of potential hazards to their health, choosing instead to call attorneys.  In addition, it shows that Entercom has engaged in a pattern of conduct which proves it does not have the character qualifications to hold an FCC license to broadcast, including indecency violations, payola, defamation of character, deceiving listeners, and more.

.

"The question is not whether Entercom deserves to lose its license to broadcast, but rather will the Federal Communications Commission act?" says MAC director Sue Wilson.  "Another 'Petition to Deny' KDND's license was filed November 1, 2005, and has never been adjudicated.  If it had, it possible that Jennifer Strange would be alive today."

.

The FCC is the Federal agency tasked with overseeing broadcasters so they serve the public interest.  Wilson will go to the FCC November 13 and 14 to insist that the agency acts on this Petition, as well as many others that have languished for years.

.

The "Petition to Deny" can be found here: http://www.mediaactioncenter.net/p/blog-page_760.html

Step Up to the Microphone!

September 9, 2013

Originally published in the Huffington Post

Scan across just about any radio dial in the entire country, and you'll hear exactly the same big city, big corporate programming: Rush Limbaugh, Fox Sports, Top 40, NPR.
.
But what about local programming? Where are the reporters covering the city council or the county board of supervisors? High school football or Little League? Bake sales or community events? This kind of homegrown programming was once the heart and soul of radio. It formed a public square that informed listeners about the community's very identity.
.
We've missed that spirit of radio since 1996, when Bill Clinton and Congress decided to allow a few national companies to program the entire nation with their corporate choices of music, sports, and political talk, local needs be damned.
But thanks to activists ranging from the Philadelphia area Prometheus Radio to the Davis, California non-profit Common Frequency, the true heart and soul of radio may be coming back -- if people in local communities choose to be the media they want to hear.
.