WYPR Closes May 21 Board Meeting
May 8, 2008
WYPR sometime in early May has closed its board meeting to the general public. They are increasing their penchant for secrecy and deception ever since they fired radio host Marc Steiner on Feb. 1, 2008, and then lied to the public and the media and claimed it was ratings and that they “own” the station.
WYPR’s Web site now announces that the 3 p.m. board meeting will be broadcast online “due to space considerations.” I guess they are just being polite.
WYPR is a news and community organization; they should say what they mean. Their board of directors–which judging by the last meeting is made up of people from old-money Baltimore families–just does not want to face the public. They don’t want to be disrupted. They don’t want to reject the CAB recommendations with anyone not of their click around.
WYPR board chair Barbara Bozzuto already said at the April 15 WYPR board meeting WYPR will not even consider the CAB recommendation to bring back Marc Steiner.
Their non-consideration likely is a violation of their federal funding according to CPB guidelines that require WYPR to have a Community Advisory Board (CAB) and also to consider CAB “advisory” recommendations before accepting or rejecting them. Of course I bet the WYPR board will meet on May 21 and present some facade of considered decision-making to meet these requirements.
WYPR’s Web site previously said the meeting would be at The Family Tree. I don’t think that public-interest group should associate itself with this dubious “public” radio management team.
The Family Tree
www.familytreemd.org
733 W 40th St
Baltimore, MD 21211
(410) 889-2300
Entry Filed under: Uncategorized. .
4 Comments Add your own
Leave a Comment
Some HTML allowed:
<a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <pre> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>
Trackback this post | Subscribe to the comments via RSS Feed
1.
Sarah | May 9, 2008 at 1:13 pm
Are we sure this really is allowed by the CPB? I think we should call and continue to complain to the Ombudsman.
2.
Sarah | May 9, 2008 at 1:17 pm
Also, there is no need for there to be 50 members of the CAB…they are just trying to water it down. The BoD has just one or two members from outside of the Baltimore metro area. The CAB need only find one or two more members from Frederick and the Eastern Shore areas…the CAB must remain independent and not allow the BoD to control them…it is unclear to me what role the CAB has in choosing its own new members.
3.
Joe in Waverly | May 10, 2008 at 4:38 pm
This is a godsend from the bumbling Brandon-ites who are “running” this station. John Machan must be an awful attorney if he thinks this may 21st decision to close the board meeting to the public is a legally safe strategy. It is a clear violation of the Section
396 (K) of the Communications Act. By the clear lang of that statute they are risking cutoff of all CPB funding with this cowardly retreat.
We need to complain to the sunpapers and to the CPB ombudsman about this. They need to provide us the opportunity to participate in the meeting not just observe it passively on the Internet.
Doug Colbert, what do you think?
ps check out sun blog critcal mass report on Rodricks ratings plunge: 55% decline in 24-55 age group w the Dim Dan.
4.
saveWYPR | May 17, 2008 at 12:50 pm
This Family Tree address is incorrect. It is at 2108 N. Charles Street, not far from WYPR offices.