A comment from Stan
This morning’s Brownsville Herald brings the news that Betsy Price, former KMBH board member and a person deeply experienced in public radio, has stepped forward to begin to organize a new entity to sponsor public radio in the Valley, including new local productions.
We welcome Ms. Price’s enterprise and offer whatever support an arts-oriented Web log can provide.
A few weeks ago, a former contributor to KMBH circulated a draft of a letter that Fr. Pedro Briseño, long-time KMBH station manager, wrote in response to an article in Current, a magazine covering public broadcasting. In his letter, Briseño rails against the article’s author, Diana Claitor, claiming that two topics prominently discussed in the article had not been discussed in an interview with him.
One topic was Fr. Briseño’s handling of Frontline segment, “Hand of God,” which was critical of the Catholic Church’s handling of child abuse within it’s ranks. Apparently misunderstanding how journalists work, Briseño castigates Ms. Claitor for failing to discuss the matter with him in an interview that centered on the ailing station’s financial situation. Fr. Briseño’s actions and positions in the Frontline controversy were well documented in local newspapers and on the PBS Ombudsman’s Web page and did not require further comment from Fr. Briseño. He dismisses any comment on his actions as regurgitating “the opinionated suggestions of some individuals who have been irrelevant to public broadcasting and community service in the Rio Grande Valley of Texas.” Any criticism for the station was due to “prejudice about a Catholic diocese providing public broadcasting service to a large community of 1 million people in the south-most part of Texas.”
The second topic was the controversy over Briseño’s dismissal of Ms. Price and the two other board members, which brings us back to the present topic, the creation of an alternate radio voice in the Valley. When the Briseño letter to Current came around, we gave some thought to calling for the creation of a new organization to sponsor public broadcasting in the Valley. We have some reservations about Ms. Price’s proposed institutional alignment with UTB/TSC, but have seen Ball State University spin off a healthy and journalistically independent public broadcasting organization and reserve judgment on that affiliation. In the meantime, our message is this: what help do you need, Ms. Price?
3 responses so far ↓
1 Stan // Jun 8, 2008 at 2:43 pm
A too anonymous reader left comment on this post and, while we’ve disapproved the comment on grounds of its anonymity, which our experience has shown to lead to too much irresponsible behavior on public Web logs, nevertheless the comment is one we should address. It was this:
“Please explain - what do you mean ‘We have some reservations about Ms. Price’s proposed institutional alignment with UTB/TSC’
What are those reservations. Since most public radio stations are connected to Universities - KUT Austin - KUHF Houston - just to name two - what’s wrong with that?
Our biggest reservation is for institutional integrity in the new public broadcasting entity. We have seen in the case of KMBH that policy must conform to the mother institution on occasion to the detriment of truth, as in the case of the “Hand of God” segment. Yes, Mr. Briseño eventually put the piece on, but not before discrediting his own integrity and that of the station he manages.
Furthermore, the proposed mother institution, UTB, is a creature of the state and subject to the whims of the legislature. Yes, you may argue that the Austin school is independent enough to have put KUT on the air, but realize that, among the UT family, something of a red-headed step child and does not have access to the famed endowment of the Austin school.
We do not say that UTB should not be involved. Likely, given the cost of a radio startup, a project such as that proposed could not get off the ground without some such institution’s involvement.
Rather, we say its involvement needs to be limited to an initial period of production assistance in trade for using the station as a training facility for UTB’s yet-to-be developed broadcast communications program.
2 Patricia A // Jun 8, 2008 at 6:35 pm
Stan,
Maybe you could read some poetry on the radio.
3 Stan // Jun 8, 2008 at 10:20 pm
Excellent idea! And you, too! And Gene and the whole crew!
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