They love to call WBAI a free speech station, but the once applicable phrase has had a hollow ring in recent years—reduced to a carrot dangled whenever they solicit money.
These delusional deceptive bozos are averse to truth when it gets in their way, as it often does. Having just finished a grueling five or six weeks of feeding listeners a plethora of race-laced lies and distorted history, WBAI's marketers have momentarily ceased pushing their bogus products (most of which will not be delivered), so now they try to sell people on WBAI itself.
Here, too, they find a need to deceive, so they describe the principled WBAI that that they and their predecessors have rendered insignificant over the years. They obviously feel that prospective listener-sponsors want a trustworthy source of wide-based information that tells it like it was, is, and probably will be. Why then, one wonders, do they take the station in the opposite direction?
WBAI once served an eclectic community of achievers and aspirants in a broad variety of fields. Today, that is no longer the case. The current occupants have taken the race-dictated policies of recent predecessors a fatal step down, diluting content as well as quality. The station no longer serves a community that represents New York's so-called melting pot. It has lowered standards and narrowed its scope to focus on a small segment of the area's black population. Bland music, mindless chit chat, anti-white racism, phony spirituality and shallow philosophy has cut listenership down to a pathetic few, but—with fine but powerless exceptions—this is a group of morally bankrupt amateurs with a featherbrained manager who has not made a positive decision in his six or seven years there.
Getting back to free speech—which they have unashamedly declared proprietary, but long since ceased to practice— here is Michael Haskins taking a call Monday morning. It is from a regular listener who clearly hears the thread of black nationalism that now characterizes WBAI.
Confronted with a truth, Haskins becomes ever so upset. Did that man really say that white people also get shot in the street? How dare he lie like that? Stricken with severe denialitis Haskins pleads with the caller to never again call in with "that thing", plays a tape of his father, and hangs up. So much for the much touted "free speech". Hear it for yourself.
WBAI once served an eclectic community of achievers and aspirants in a broad variety of fields. Today, that is no longer the case. The current occupants have taken the race-dictated policies of recent predecessors a fatal step down, diluting content as well as quality. The station no longer serves a community that represents New York's so-called melting pot. It has lowered standards and narrowed its scope to focus on a small segment of the area's black population. Bland music, mindless chit chat, anti-white racism, phony spirituality and shallow philosophy has cut listenership down to a pathetic few, but—with fine but powerless exceptions—this is a group of morally bankrupt amateurs with a featherbrained manager who has not made a positive decision in his six or seven years there.
Getting back to free speech—which they have unashamedly declared proprietary, but long since ceased to practice— here is Michael Haskins taking a call Monday morning. It is from a regular listener who clearly hears the thread of black nationalism that now characterizes WBAI.
Confronted with a truth, Haskins becomes ever so upset. Did that man really say that white people also get shot in the street? How dare he lie like that? Stricken with severe denialitis Haskins pleads with the caller to never again call in with "that thing", plays a tape of his father, and hangs up. So much for the much touted "free speech". Hear it for yourself.
Yet another reminder that in our time as in all times hate is its own reward.
ReplyDelete~ 'indigopirate'
Indeed.
DeleteHay-tie Haskins is just an idiot, and he showed it here, yet again, providing NO evidence to substantiate any of his claims. I have no respect for people who can't debate.
ReplyDeleteBy the way, since election night, I have been blocked by over forty Twitter accounts of loonie lefties, religious righties, faketheists (what I call atheists who still think like the religion they were raised on), and other sundry true believers of various ilks. yeah, I'm proud of myself!
SDL
This morning the illustrious Pam Brown commented, "the majority of our listeners are black...". That is exactly the damn problem at WBAI Ms. Brown!
ReplyDeleteThe schedule on wbai.org is being updated periodically and is linking to program descriptions. I don't know when it started but its a good first step. I've been talking to staff, CAB, LSB members and some people at other stations about finding ways to evaluate programming. I won't pretend it will be easy but there has been some positive feedback. This program grid is simply not working by any metric you want to use. The election is a case in point. Instead of talking about why a Democrat can't win Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan, Trump supporters are blithely dismissed as racists from flyover country and folks like SDL are blocked from social media accounts. The sooner we can update the program grid and get away from these long fundraisers which make it difficult to assess programs which get pre-empted every two months, the better off we'll be.
ReplyDeleteThe schedule improvement is recent and, as you note, a good move—that said, and I know you agree, the programming begs for revamping and and weeding out. Professional management, including an experienced PD would have been a logical first step. Fundraising should include an ongoing, seamless membership drive and one or two major off-air events. First, however, the program grid must become an incentive.
DeletePipe dreams at this point. We need more people like you on the LS and PN Boards, Michael.
How did he ever end up on the radio?
ReplyDeleteA good question, Justine, one that can be applied to many of WBAI's inmates.
DeletePerhaps it is because I hear that show regularly, often enough to note how he changes his spots and that veneer of golly gee comes off. Then there's his growing ego, which false humility cannot conceal, and—apart from the fact that Haskins, after all his years at the station, remains painfully inept at just about everything—he either ignores or hasn't grasped the concept that blossomed into a WBAI he never experienced.
DeleteThe station has many hosts whose racism is more overt, but Haskins has a choice time slot, which he misuses and wastes on an obsessive agenda to turn WBAI low-level black. He has help, of course—including Reimers'—and the success of this effort increases with each listener lost.
There is much more, suffice it to say that I consider Michael Haskins to be uniformly unfit to hold any position at a Pacifica station... well, I can see him holding a broom.
Michael was a buddy of Dred Scott Keyes. He is also a former bus driver for NJ Transit. You can blame Dred Scott Keyes, the thief, for Michael G.
DeleteYou miss Monroe?
ReplyDeleteKGB
I don't, not for a second.
DeleteNothing different about this archive programming . Looks like they are cherry picking all the
ReplyDeleteblack racist crap that they play everyday almost all day. Just a different set of racist ,airing it.
I haven't been listening, but what I heard was not racist—in fact, it was an interesting interview with vibist Terry Gibbs.
DeleteSo much for the ewport...
ReplyDeleteSDL
Typical. Did anyone hear an announcement regarding this particular lapse of professionalism?
ReplyDeleteReggie came on and said it was rescheduled to November 30th.
DeleteSDL
What happened to today's Report to the (one) Listener (that's left)?
ReplyDeleteKGT
They should have played Hoagy Carmichael.
ReplyDeleteKGT
Perhaps Reimers was attending Dr. Ron Daniels first day of "The State of the Black World" conference in Newark, NJ hosting a workshop.
ReplyDeleteAn old friend of mine took some pictures there—it looked like only a handful of people attended. Well, at least the "professor" didn't have to pay for his radio commercials.
DeleteI met Tony Bates yesterday. We talked about programming and program evaluation in general and about creating blocs of programs that will feed audiences to the next program. He talked about making a distinction between the first and second hours of the morning show. He was the third person at the station to tell me Trump's election is an opportunity for the station.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Michael. Did you ask Bates if WBAI is going to reintroduce a policy of honesty? It has been a very long time, but they might learn how to stop deceiving the listeners. Bates, himself, is chronically guilty of ignoring the truth. As I recall, he was also barred from the station ofter Reimers reluctantly received a signature-laden petition from staff and volunteers.
Delete