at least i can listen to WHYY online...
it's pledge drive season again at WDUQ, pittsburgh's big NPR station. this means that every morning during "morning edition" and every afternoon during "all things considered", i am bombarded with pledge breaks and ira glass telling me that giving to NPR is the "right thing to do" and all. OKAY! I GET IT!!! but now that i know that the economic powerhouse that is the catholic church is behind WDUQ, i feel a lot less responsible to support the station...
here. from (of all sources!) the pittsburgh tribune-review.
and here it is in the post-gazette.
i'm sorry, but since when did my NPR station have an allegiance to the catholics? i know that the "DUQ" in WDUQ is for duquesne university, but i had no idea that the university and the church had such a presence in the station's programming or fundraising efforts. WDUQ has no catholic (or religious) programming. WDUQ, for all intents and purposes, touts itself as an NPR station, not as a mouthpiece of catholicism.
this is from the FAQ section of WDUQ's website:
What affiliation does DUQ have with Duquesne University?huh. but look at this excerpt from the above article in the trib:
Duquesne University holds the broadcast license for DUQ's 25,000-watt broadcast signal. The station is a non-academic unit reporting to the Provost and Academic Vice President. Duquesne University provides DUQ with annual in-kind support (facilities and services) and 6% of cash funding. DUQ is considered self-sustaining. This means that DUQ must raise its direct cash operating support from sources outside of the University, such as membership and program underwriting.
Hanley said a donation to DUQ is a donation to Duquesne. He said this is the first time this type of situation has arisen.the "hanley" mentioned in that quote is scott hanley, DUQ's station manager.
"The university's president felt very uncomfortable with accepting gifts from Planned Parenthood," said Hanley, who emphasized the school never has interfered with the station's editorial integrity.
Bridget Fare, a Duquesne spokeswoman, confirmed that the university told DUQ to halt the broadcast of Planned Parenthood's underwriting messages and refund the organization's $5,252.
"Planned Parenthood is not aligned with the university's Catholic mission and identity," said Fare, who cited the organization's support of abortion as an example. "DUQ operates under the university's (nonprofit) status and it can legally accept or decline funding from any organization. Accepting or declining funding from an organization is a separate issue from DUQ's ability to cover controversial news issues."
it's disturbing enough that WDUQ is denying support from planned parenthood. that's enough to raise my feminist hackles. but what takes this one step further, into the realm of propganda, is the promotion and insistence on the catholic mission! uh, what? a donation to WDUQ is a donation to duquesne university? are you kidding me? if that had been more obvious, i highly doubt that planned parenthood would have made its donation in the first place.
well, if duquesne and the catholic church, an organization of extreme wealth and influence, are supporting my public radio station, i guess ira glass is right after all -- it really doesn't matter if i pledge my support or not. the show will go on.
nice knowing you, WDUQ. good luck with this.
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if you want to send an e-mail to the folks at WDUQ in protest of this, go here and fill out the form!
posted by emily @ Tuesday, October 16, 2007
4 comments
4 Comments:
i have trouble getting exercised about this. sure, i don't like duquesne to the extent it resists basic ideas about reproductive freedom, but what matters to a station is its license and its editorial freedom. hanley has honored the stewardship of duquesne, a fact of life, in his public comments, and much of the sturm and drang has ignored the fact that no one has disputed the station's editorial autonomy. that's what matters. and anyone who listens to NPR knows that no more than five or ten minutes of talk-related programs ever really passes without something airing that's at least indirectly offensive to doctrinaire catholicism.
if you don't want to donate, don't, and if you want to be pissed off, do, but it's still the best game going for news in pittsburgh radio. and don't kid yourself that it isn't worth the donation, or that your donation is supporting duquesne university in any material regard -- neither is true.
i hear you. i was thinking yesterday how difficult it would be not to listen to WDUQ. it's my morning staple -- clock radio goes off and there's steve inskeep. as public radio stations go, WDUQ is my least favorite of all the places i've lived in my adult life (there's way too much jazz and music for me), but it is the best thing going for NPR in pittsburgh, and i do want to support a continued NPR presence.
regardless, i don't approve of DUQ's decision to return planned parenthood's donation, especially given the actual content of the PP messages that were aired on DUQ (you can read these at the end of the trib article). these weren't pro-abortion or pro-contraception messages -- they were pro-health messages.
duquesne university is entitled to promote its catholic identity to whatever extent it wants with things that are uniquely its own. but i'm not convinced that just because it owns the broadcast license for WDUQ that means that it's a duquesne university station. WDUQ provides a service to the greater pittsburgh area, and i'd venture to guess that the majority of its listeners are noncatholics. and the political bent of your typical NPR listener is gonna be towards the left. i guess what i'm suggesting here is that WDUQ, despite the catholic mission of the organization that owns its broadcast license, really ought to be, if you will, preaching to the choir.
WBUR, boston's public radio station, has a similar relationship with boston university. BU doesn't have the parochial identity that duquesne does, but BU is a private university. i'm now curious about the relationship that exists there between the viewpoint of various higher-ups at the university and funding sources for the station...
i can't speak to BU, but this --
"regardless, i don't approve of DUQ's decision to return planned parenthood's donation, especially given the actual content of the PP messages that were aired on DUQ (you can read these at the end of the trib article). these weren't pro-abortion or pro-contraception messages -- they were pro-health messages" --
strikes me as advocating a showdown between DUQ and the university that, in (unlikely) victory, would be terribly costly in legal fees and attendant expenses, and in defeat would cost DUQ its broadcast license. given hanley's utter acquiescence to this from minute one, i'd be willing to wager that the contractual provisions pertaining to this are entirely clear, and any such legal confrontation would be expensive, counterproductive, and futile (except insofar as you want DUQ to fall on its sword), a token gesture ten times more expensive in every reasonable regard than returning the $5K to planned parenthood. in light of these considerations, i believe the content of the messages is irrelevant. and again, i'll go the mat for DUQ's editorial integrity, and until i find otherwise, i'll continue to expect the station to do the same. this is not that; underwriters are not editorial content, and if i thought they were i'd probably stop donating due to the pervasive underwriting they accept from sundry corporate villains.
what would be interesting is if DUQ or NPR (whoever benefits from the bigger donations) decided not to accept underwriting from, e.g., ADM (Supermarket to the World (tm)) because its a multinational conglomerate with as much influence as a permanent member of the UN Security Council that i'm quite certain would poison the environment, line up and hang every small farmer it could get its grubby little claws on, and sell us Soylent Green, provided only that it could get the requisite approvals and the (genetially-altered-)bean-counters promised that it would increase profits by 10% in the next quarter.
i'd bet dollars to donuts i consider ADM ten times more dangerous to the world than most catholics consider planned parenthood.
OUCH! i just pulled a muscle from rolling my eyes at you!
sometimes i hate you lawyer types!
xoxo,
e
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