Radio

"And you people who live (...) near Rugunga, (...) go out. You will see Inkotanyi's straw huts in the marsh (...). I think that those who have guns should immediately go to these Inkotanyi. (...) encircle them and kill them (...)."

"It is 7.35a.m. here in Kigali. They will be struck by misfortune, they will be struck by misfortune (...). (...) those living in Mburabuturo, in the woods of Mburabuturo, look carefully see whether there are no Inyenzis inside."

"[Dallaire] is working for the Inyenzi-Nkotanyi and he is himself an Inyenzi. (…) Canada will learn the news of Dallaire’s death. (…) In fact, Dallaire is the basis of this war. This is known."

"There is no end to Rwanda's misfortune. Soldiers were entrusted to a man called Dallaire (…). He showed his true colours right from the [start]. How is he going to lead these men? How is he going to lead them? Anyway we are going to stay behind a man called Roger Booh-Booh, this son of Cameroon, whom you cannot really complain about."

"What we know at RTLM, the radio loved by the Interahamwe, the radio that supports the Interahamwe, the radio that supports the youths of all republican parties (...), as General Bizimungu says, the youths are in the frontline."

"We have used the Interahamwe who have just routed [the Inyenzi] with stones, clubs, guns, grenades and clubs. (…) Remain vigilant at the roadblocks, wherever the Inyenzi are. Greetings to those who man the roadblocks."

"What type of person got it into his head that the RTLM hates the Tutsis? (…) Radio RTLM does not hate the Tutsis. It has no conflict with them. In fact we do!!"

"It is not only today that the PRF’s Inyenzi Batutsis want to take and monopolize power in order to oppress the Hutus and cast democracy out of the window, the Batutsi’s superiority complex has been around for a very long time."

"Listening to a foreign radio station is something that declines when local media become freer and provide what local people most want to hear. According to BBC audience research, in most cases the BBC achieved large audiences (20% and more) only where the choice of local services was limited to 5 or fewer stations. As choice grows, BBC audiences fall."

"First radio, then television, have assaulted and overturned the privacy of the home, the real American privacy, which permitted the development of a higher and more independent life within democratic society."

"Radio has contributed to our ‘growing lack of attention.’ .?.?. This sort of hopscotching existence makes it almost impossible for people, myself included, to sit down and get into a novel again. We have become a short story reading people, or, worse than that, a QUICK reading people"

"The FCC, the Federal Communications Commission, decided all by itself that radio and television were the only two parts of American life not protected by the free speech provisions of the first amendment to the Constitution. I'd like to repeat that, because it sounds... vaguely important! The FCC—an appointed body, not elected, answerable only to the president—decided on its own that radio and television were the only two parts of American life not protected by the first amendment to the Constitution. Why did they decide that? Because they got a letter from a minister in Mississippi! A Reverend Donald Wildman in Mississippi heard something on the radio that he didn't like. Well, Reverend, did anyone ever tell you there are two KNOBS on the radio? Two. Knobs. On the radio. Of course, I'm sure the reverend isn't that comfortable with anything that has two knobs on it... But hey, reverend, there are two knobs on the radio! One of them turns the radio OFF, and the other one [slaps his head] CHANGES THE STATION! Imagine that, reverend, you can actually change the station! It's called freedom of choice, and it's one of the principles this country was founded upon. Look it up in the library, reverend, if you have any of them left when you've finished burning all the books."

"In 11 countries surveyed across Africa, local commercial radio grew by an average of 360 percent between 2000 and 2006, whereas community radio grew by a striking 1,386 percent, on average, over the same period."

"For many people in the future, radio will take the place of an inner life."

"Beware of the radio if you want to improve your mind."

"Books are the friends of solitude. They develop individuality and freedom. In solitary reading a man who is seeking himself has some chance of finding himself. … Radio, on the other hand, is now the chief agent of imperialism. It does not purify the spirit of man, does not, like the book, bring him back to the sanctuary of solitude, but throws him to the lions, subtly preparing his mind for the blood and chains of public sacrifice."

"Radios are everywhere, with at least 75% of households in developing countries having access to a radio."

"The Brazilian radio market is the second largest in the Americas, being one step behind the United States. According to data from the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics (IBGE) of 2009, radios are present in 88% of homes, 80% of cars in circulation, and in 36% of mobile telephones."

"The most significant meaning of freedom of the radio is the right of the American people to listen to this great medium of communications free from any governmental dictation as to what they can or cannot hear and free alike from similar restraints by private licensees."

"The basic principles of the Fairness Doctrine date back to the 1940s and the Mayflower Doctrine, but its fundamental principles trace back to the formative years of the FCC itself. Congress created the FCC and its predecessor, the Federal Radio Commission ("FRC"), in response to an untenable situation created by the explosion of innovative radio enthusiasts and the electromagnetic cacophony that followed. With the regulation of radio also came the responsibility of determining who received a license and who did not. Consequently, licensing regulation created a situation where the majority of Americans were prohibited from broadcasting their voices at the expense of the few who retained exclusive rights to the same. Hence, fairness was a primary pre-occupation of the Commission from its inception, and was linked to the pursuit of the public interest. In the late 1920s, the FRC stated: It would not be fair, indeed it would not be good service to the public to allow a one sided presentation of the political issues of a campaign. In so far as a program consists of discussion of public questions, public interest requires ample play for the free and fair competition of opposing views, and the commission believes that the principle applies not only to addresses by political candidates but to all discussions of issues of importance to the public."

"White finds “striking parallels” as he explores the way law’s history was brought to bear on the question of the regulation of radio. Faced with an evolving and developing First Amendment jurisprudence, courts nonetheless had little trouble, White argues, upholding the Radio Act of 1927, through which the Congress asserted government ownership of the airwaves. They focused on radio’s potential to reach vast audiences as well as the scarcity of radio frequencies. They drew an analogy to film and claimed that, like the former, radio was intrusive and pervasive in its reach. Yet today, somewhat paradoxically, the latter is subject to a far more restrictive regulatory regime than the former, though today new analogies and new precedent prevail. Film and radio are now regarded not simply as property; the new analogical structure provides greater First Amendment protection by treating them as like the print media."

"It is impossible to understand the American public without taking into account the tremendous psychological effect of bringing up a generation of people in a daily environment of advertising. It is impossible to escape the advertising man; his sales talk assaults us in the morning newspaper, in the street car, with billboards along the highways, and in his shameless use of the radio. This means that from morning till night, in the midst of our work as in our recreation, we live constantly in an atmosphere of intellectual shoddiness. Every popular prejudice and vulgar conceit is played upon and pandered to in the interests of salesmanship. Everywhere material interests and herd opinion are strengthened to the loss of personal independence. The tendency is to think and speak for effect rather than out of one's inner life. There is a marked decline the ability to play with ideas, or to live the spiritual life for its own sake. Hence a decline in civilization of interest, humor and urbanity. Advertising tends to make mechanized barbarians of us all."

"All this, I said, just as today was the case with the beginnings of wireless, would be of no more service to man than as an escape from himself and his true aims, and a means of surrounding himself with an ever closer mesh of distractions and useless activities."

"Of the untold values of the radio, one is the great intimacy it has brought among our people. Through its mysterious channels we come to wider acquaintance with surroundings and men."

"By the 1930s the radio was becoming a staple in many American homes. For the first time, citizens did not have to wait until the evening paper to get the latest news -- radios brought breaking news right into people's living rooms. The airwaves carried talk about jobs and the economy during the Great Depression, but Americans also heard news about incredible advances in science and technology, celebrities of aviation exploration, and political changes afoot in Europe."

"For the words of the profits were written on the studio wall"

"Let the future tell the truth and evaluate each one according to his work and accomplishments. The present is theirs; the future, for which I really worked, is mine."

"The total number of community radio stations in Latin America are around 10,000, with Peru having the largest proportion and Ecuador, Bolivia, and Brazil in second, third, and fourth place. If unlicensed stations are also taken into account, the overall numbers are much higher. Recent surveys by UNESCO, for example, show there are more than 10,000 community radio stations still waiting for licenses in Brazil alone."

"In Southeast Asia, Thailand tops the region’s charts with about 5,000 community stations–most of them operating without licenses. In populous Indonesia, community radio has also taken off rapidly, but the number of stations is in the hundreds rather than thousands. The Philippines counts more than 55 community radio stations independent of government and commercial interests operating outside the cities and using low powered transmitters."

"In science fiction novels, the main thing was radio. With it, happiness of mankind was expected. Here is radio now, but there is no happiness."

"Radio destroyed distance and connected all the ships and all the cities of the earth with an invisible but strong link. Then it embraced trains, automobiles and airplanes… Then it entered homes. It entered as a teacher, a friend, a reference book, a newspaper and a musical instrument. Now it brings cinema into homes, and soon it will be able to break out of the globe, and create thousands of things that we cannot even foresee."

"Didn't wireless start out to be just a way to beat the cable monopoly? Then some guy started playing dance records on a ham sender, and look at radio now — it's made the country into one big vaudeville house. You engineers and inventors never learn. You can give the public any damn gadget you want, but sooner or later the public is going to find a way to use it to have some fun."

"Radio is much more than television without vision. Incomprehensible, but it is so."

"When in the dead of night only one window dimly lit up the huge house, we could unmistakably say that there, nestled in the corner near his homemade devices, having arranged the lamp so that the light would not disturb the sleeping household, a radio amateur was performing his sacred rites. And indeed, there was something to be carried away by, it was worth giving up sleep for such an exciting activity. Imagine. In a plywood structure, stuffed with lamps and wires, a radio wave is born at your will. Here it runs along the wire to the roof, there it breaks off and with incomprehensible speed, piercing the clouds, rushes into the stratosphere to the reflective layer. There, at an altitude of hundreds of kilometers, the wave, created by your hand just a fraction of a second ago, changes direction, returns to the ground at a certain angle, is reflected again and again goes up, encircling the globe in giant leaps. Who will hear it and answer? Most likely, a similarly suffering enthusiast from the neighboring block. But the antipode can also respond with the same probability. True, it was rare to establish contact with the antipode. But still, it was possible. Isn't it worth sitting past midnight in front of the radio for this? After all, a person waits his whole life for happiness. And it can be, but it can also pass by. The whole meaning of life, perhaps, is in active attempts to achieve, and sometimes in patient waiting."

"Radio is a wonderful invention! One movement of the hand, and nothing is heard."

"I only had the radio for a short time before I heard Elvis; it was a game changer for me... It's hard to say whether or not I would have done what I do now if it hadn't been for the transistor radio…I really loved it, it was my favorite gadget… I think it was why rock 'n roll got so big."

"The landlord went into the house and returned with a small object, like a cigar box. The inevitable skeleton was burned in the lid. “You want to try it? It works as well as a regular receiver with valves.” He quickly arranged the leads and the earphones, and put a plug into a jack built under the table. It costs three marks seventy-five pfennigs, without earphones, of course.” He offered the earphones to Khlinov. “You can listen to Berlin, Hamburg, and Paris, if you like. I’ll tune you in to Cologne Cathedral, there’s a service on there now, you’ll hear the organ. Kolossal!”"

"I am Radio, the all-knowing, invisible, and omnipresent God which have brought thee out the house of bondage of Time and Space. Seek me and thou will find me everywhere and always. But do not demand from me what I myself am not yet capable of giving thou."

"A paperless newspaper without distances you are creating will be a great thing. I promise to provide you with every possible assistance in this and similar works."

"On March 3, 1900, Lieutenant V. A. Kanin transmitted the first wireless telegraph message from Gogland Island, and Lieutenant A. A. Remmert received it on Aspe Island (30 miles from Gogland), using antenna masts they had erected themselves and homemade apparatuses built by Torpedo Class lecturer A. S. Popov."

"Radio is a beehive in which the whole world buzz can be heard."

"Even more than telephone or telegraph, radio is that extension of the central nervous system that is matched only by human speech itself. Is it not worthy of our meditation that radio should be specially attuned to that primitive extension of our central nervous system, that aboriginal mass medium, the vernacular tongue? The crossing of these two most intimate and potent of human technologies could not possibly have failed to provide some extraordinary new shapes for human experience."

"Radio affects most people intimately, person-to-person, offering a world of unspoken communication between writer-speaker and the listener. That is the immediate aspect of radio A private experience. The subliminal depths of radio are charged with the resonating echoes of tribal horns and antique drums. This is inherent in the very nature of this medium, with its power to turn the psyche and society into a single echo chamber. The resonating dimension of radio is unheeded by the script writers, with few exceptions. The famous Orson Welles broadcast about the invasion from Mars was a simple demonstration of the all-inclusive, completely involving scope of the auditory image of radio."

"The mission of NPR is to work in partnership with Member Stations to create a more informed public — one challenged and invigorated by a deeper understanding and appreciation of events, ideas and cultures. To accomplish our mission, we produce, acquire, and distribute programming that meets the highest standards of public service in journalism and cultural expression; we represent our members in matters of their mutual interest; and we provide satellite interconnection for the entire public radio system."

"The largest share of migrant detainees are held in longer-term centers run by Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Currently, about 52,000 migrants are held in ICE custody. A majority of them — 71%, according to the National Immigrant Justice Center — are housed in facilities operated by private prison companies. Immigrant activists say such secrecy has enabled the detention industry to grow with little oversight."

"CoreCivic and GEO Group's revenues totaled a combined $4.1 billion last year, and detention contracts made up about a quarter of that. Both companies are contending with increased competition and declines in their prison businesses, but that's been offset by growth in the detention business... The ACLU... said the expansion of migrant detention in recent years has been driven by private business, not by the federal government."

"In October, David Beasley, head of the U.N. food agency, tweeted a cheeky congratulations to Musk for reportedly earning $36 billion in a single day. "1/6 of your one-day increase would save 42 million lives that are knocking on famine's door," he wrote... Musk tweeted: "If WFP can describe on this Twitter thread exactly how $6B will solve world hunger, I will sell Tesla stock right now and do it." ...Beasley quickly clarified that his earlier tweet referred to feeding "people on the brink of starvation" and not solving world hunger, he invited Musk to meet "anywhere—Earth or space" to discuss the potential donation. So far, Musk has made no commitments to the agency. Still... How much of a dent would $6 billion make when it comes to feeding millions? ...WFP raised $8.4 billion last year, yet the global food crisis has only worsened. In fact, since Musk and Beasley first started their Twitter conversation, the total number of people at risk of famine has risen to 45 million... Elon Musk asked Twitter followers if he should sell Tesla shares. They said yes."

"As children under 5 wait for FDA approval of a COVID-19 vaccine, some kids still need to catch up on routine vaccines for other diseases, including measles, mumps, and meningitis. According to UNICEF and the WHO, 23 million children globally missed out on basic childhood vaccines that are typically received through routine health services in 2020. Some children in the U.S. caught up last year, but the vaccination rate was still 7 percent lower than years before the pandemic. That’s according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention."

"We are confident any review of our programming and underwriting practices will confirm NPR's adherence to these rules [...] We have worked for decades with the FCC in support of noncommercial educational broadcasters who provide essential information, educational programming, and emergency alerts to local communities across the United States."

"When was the last time the US Marines were called upon to defend the homeland, in the homeland? Perhaps in the War of 1812 and arguably in the Civil War, but otherwise deployed abroad ever since. Missions include toppling reformist governments in this hemisphere and confronting Middle Eastern towel heads who supposedly hate our freedoms, presumably including our constitutional right to mow down fellow Americans with licensed large-caliber weaponry... Perhaps I’m being unnecessarily harsh, but couldn’t NPR just sometimes question what all this preparedness, both domestic and foreign, is about?...NPR’s due diligence is missing in action. No matter what military or veteran hardship story NPR covers, there’s no questioning of assumptions that our armed forces are a force for good, everywhere in the world.... The estimated 1000 or so US military bases scattered throughout 156 countries..."

"I never thought I’d be the target of an NPR attack piece. Through my twenties I even looked to NPR as an outlet full of good, progressive, thoughtful reporting – You know, the soothing voices occasionally interrupted by music no one really listens to but that sounds good between soft-spoken ivy league journalists over the age of 50. Everything about NPR subtly reinforced the idea, “Everything is fine. You’re probably a middle to upper class white person or you hope to be one day, and that’s just great. Everything is fine.”.. Then I woke up. About the time NPR was avoiding Occupy Wall Street – or when they did cover it, acting like those of us who supported it were brainless hippies without a point or at least none that would fit easily into the lives of suburbanites with two kids, one cat, and a robust retirement account. In hindsight I should’ve woken up sooner. I should’ve seen the truth about the time most NPR shows were pushing for war in Iraq, buying into the WMD lie. Or maybe I should’ve realized the truth when Kevin Klose took over as President of NPR in 1998. Klose came straight from a nice seat as director of the US Information Agency, described as “a United States agency devoted to ‘public diplomacy’ (AKA propaganda).”"

"In her five-minute interview with Ursula Wilder, a CIA psychologist whose job there is debriefing returning spies, NPR’s Mary Louise Kelly (their alleged National Security Correspondent) spoke of what makes someone who reveals state secrets tick. Kelly failed big-time to probe Wilder about whether she ever thought an insider might ever have a patriotic motivation to inform the public of illegal behavior on the part of the agency. Based on Wilders’ profile of leakers, the answer would surely have been No, but it sure would have been nice to ask. Instead, the official story is simple. Each and every leaker, Wilder maintained, suffers from some DSM psychopathy, such as impulsiveness, narcissism or drug addiction, often compounded by exigencies such as marital discord or gambling debts. Leaks all stem from character defects, Wilder says—and Kelly doesn’t contradict—not to blowback by thwarted careerists or misdeeds the agency wants to disappear....If they’re stressed, it’s likely that their personal lives are out of control, their problems self-inflicted. Any time you have a problem with power, the problem is you. Hear for yourself..."

"On any given day, you can listen to the news on CNN or National Public Radio, then tune in to a Pacifica station. You would think you were hearing reports from different Planets. We inhabit the same planet, but we see it through different lenses."

"I certainly consume NPR news more than any other mainstream source, usually listening to it at least twice daily, though I abhor its coverage of international events. For these reasons, and with the reader’s forbearance, I have chosen to single NPR out to look at how we in the U.S. are collectively misled into ignoring or accepting our own government’s atrocities. This week, NPR has had some significant segments on the world’s refugee crisis, the worst since World War II."

"While Syria is always mentioned in these segments and gets much mention on NPR in general, there is barely a mention of the refugee crisis emanating from Yemen. And, this is a big omission, for as the International Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC) has recently reported, Yemen had more people displaced last year due to conflict than any other country on earth. Thus, 2.2 million people were displaced by the armed conflict in Yemen in 2015, a figure which accounts for over 25% of the 8.6 million people displaced around the globe due to conflict last year. In addition to Yemen’s refugee crisis, the IDMC also notes that over 14 million Yemenis are on the verge of starvation as a result of the current conflict."

"...The only discussion I have found that NPR gave to Yemen in the context of the world refugee crisis was one, solitary piece back on May 11, and that piece was very telling in what it refused to say about the causes for Yemen’s mass displacement problem... The result of this disproportionate news coverage is that the listener could very well miss out entirely on any discussion of such issues as U.S.-backed crimes in Yemen. And, even if one does hear a segment or two on this matter, this issue will be easily forgotten and certainly not taken as seriously or treated as urgently as the misdeeds of the U.S.’s ostensible enemies, such as Syria’s Assad government, to which NPR gives nearly obsessive attention."

"In this way, we in the U.S., who may otherwise be moved to care about the fate of millions in Yemen whose lives are being upended with our own government’s complicity, are lulled into complacency, with our comfortable feeling about our nation’s inherent goodness fully intact. The result is that those in power in our ostensibly democratic government are given a free hand to aid and abet such atrocities as the near-total destruction of Yemen without the fear of any reprisal or approbation."

"In the past few years, listeners to National Public Radio have been hearing frequent announcements that “America’s natural gas” is an underwriter of NPR programming. These spots, created by America’s Natural Gas Alliance, an industry group, claim that increased use of gas is reducing greenhouse emissions and making the world a greener place... There is very little discussion anywhere in the media about the desperate necessity for very rapid, very deep reductions in greenhouse emissions worldwide if we are to keep the rise in global atmospheric temperature to less than 2° C—the threshold beyond which warming could go into unstoppable overdrive. One can listen to countless hours of news reports, including those on Morning Edition and All Things Considered, without hearing anything about the impossibility of achieving those necessary reductions if the world does not resolve to leave a large share—perhaps two-thirds or more—of global fossil fuel reserves in the ground."

"In her recent book This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs the Climate... Naomi Klein notes, Corporations and their allies in the big environmental organizations know that leaving most fossil fuels, including natural gas, in the ground in order to stop runaway warming would deal a serious if not mortal blow to big-business-as-usual, so they will never go along with it. We also can’t seriously expect the corporate media to report reliably on this situation. But we can and should demand that NPR and other public media be fully supported by public funds so that they can declare independence from the corporate world and get some relief from their gas problem."

"Producing features on a diverse range of civic and political activities is far below NPR's and PBS's funder-friendly range of entertaining programs. On weekends, to counter the commercial vapidity and the ditto-head Sunday interview shows, PBS and NPR are just not there. They simply do not look for, or listen to, the rumble of people who are on the ground, acting with conscience, organizing to break through power. Meanwhile, smaller programs-such as Democracy Now with Amy Goodman-are picking up the slack of these larger outlets, despite their comparably modest budgets and staff size."

"On November 8, 2002...National Public Radio’s All Things Considered aired a story by longtime correspondent Tom Gjelten. “A war against Iraq would begin with a bombing campaign, and the resources for that phase of action are largely in place already,” he reported. The tone was reassuring: “Defense officials are confident the U.N. Timeline will not get in their way. For one thing, they’re going ahead in the meantime with war preparations. Says one senior military officer, ‘When the order does come, we have to be ready to rock ’n’ roll.’” It was a notable phrase for a highranking officer at the Pentagon to use with reference to activities that were sure to kill large numbers of people. The comment did not meet with any critical response; none of the news report’s several hundred words offered a perspective contrary to the numbing language that distanced listeners from the human catastrophes of actual war. Such reporting is safe. Chances are slim that it will rankle government sources, news executives, network owners, advertisers or—in the case of “public broadcasting”—large underwriters. While NPR seems more and more to stand for “National Pentagon Radio,” objections from listeners have apparently mattered little to those in charge. This should be no surprise. NPR’s president and CEO, Kevin Klose, once served as director of the International Broadcasting Bureau, the U.S. government agency responsible for the Voice of America, Radio Free Europe, Radio Liberty, and Radio and Television Marti."

"I think [alternative rock becoming mainstream] made it worse [for bands]. It made it such big business. Made it harder to get played on most alternative stations. There was a lot of money to be made and they got a lot more focused and they started narrowing down their playlist to like twenty songs."

"Soon after punk hit, intense, speed-driven hardcore bands formed in California and New York and DC, and their fans built an infrastructure — a coast-to-coast network of clubs, mimeographed fanzines, college radio stations, record shops, and small record labels that would make indie possible. Some of them (Camper Van Beethoven, Pixies) sounded like the indie that would come after; some of them (Black Flag) didn’t. But the movement — whether called alternative rock, modern rock, college radio, or whatever — was now grounded."

"[I] found a positive reinforcement with radio that was lacking in the rest of my life. I could make it work when nothing else in my life did."

"Good radio is a feedback system, providing society continuing information about itself so that society can be self-correcting. Like society, a servomechanism without negative feedback goes wild, cannot function, hunts and oscillates. Correct information can set the system back on the correct ‘course’ – like an aircraft autopilot. KDNA, when it was functioning at peak efficiency, had such a self-adjusting system. It was the four telephones which could be linked together and put on the air. It was the people who called in on these telephones, commenting on our programs, correcting our factual or interpretive errors, adding, constantly adding new bits of information and details, feeding their ideas back into the society serving and served by our constantly changing signal. The listener fed back and became KDNA. KDNA became a self-correcting servomechanism of the community that was part of it …”"

"Having a subversive country station was always a dream of mine"