Professor Ifill Resigns from WYPR CAB

Open Letter to the Community Advisory Board and Board of Directors of WYPR

by Sherrilyn A. Ifill

Professor of Law, University of Maryland

April 7, 2009

Today I received a copy of a report from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) concerning WYPR. The report is an audit performed by the Inspector General of the CPB in response to requests made by concerned citizens in Baltimore after last year’s firing of radio host and WYPR founder Marc Steiner. I did not receive the report from the WYPR Board of Directors or from any official entity, although it is evident that the Board has been in possession of the report for some time. The receipt of this report, and the findings contained in it, has solidified for me my long-held intention to resign from the Community Advisory Board of WYPR, effective immediately.

As you all know, the CAB only became fully engaged over the last year after the firing of Marc Steiner. Prior to Steiner’s firing, many of us had been CAB members in name only. The precipitous and (many of us believe) ill-advised dismissal of Steiner, and the callous and insensitive handling of it, convinced many of us that WYPR had lost its way, and that the leadership of the Board of Directors of the station did not fully appreciate or respect the central role of the public in informing the direction of local public radio. I became active last February in the CAB order to help provide a conduit for the community to express not only its outrage about Steiner’s firing, but also because I became alarmed at what appeared to be a profound lack of understanding by some members of the Board about the critical role the public plays in public radio. Both the letter and spirit of the federal Communications Act, and the guidelines of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, contemplate the dynamic and active engagement of the public in the operation of public radio. The reason for this is simple. The public airwaves are owned by the public, and regulated by the federal government, which grants licenses to non-profit entities to operate radio stations. Those entities serve as stewards of a critical, community resource. Over the course of several CAB meetings with Board members, it became apparent to me that key leaders on the Board simply did not share this understanding of public radio.

I remained on the Board of the CAB with the hope that I could participate in its revival, and in helping create a structure for the CAB that would strengthen its hand with the Board. At key moments along the way this past year I came to doubt that this could truly be possible. One such moment was when the Board of Trustees provided draft by-Laws for the CAB [later adopted] that named the Station Manager (Tony Brandon) as the CAB Coordinator. Brandon also serves as President of the station. As contemplated in the by-laws, the CAB Coordinator (Brandon) would constitute the sole conduit through which the CAB could communicate with the Board. I expressly objected to this provision when it was suggested in a draft by management. Nevertheless this provision was adopted along with other objectionable provisions. For example, the new by-laws further provide that in some instances, members of the public who wish to speak at CAB meetings will need to make a written or telephone request to speak at the meeting to the CAB Coordinator five days before a meeting. These and other provisions in the by-laws reflect either a refusal to understand or a complete disregard for the ways in which Mr. Brandon’s credibility with the community had been fatally damaged by his handling of the Steiner matter, and demonstrate, in my view, the continued effort of Brandon to manage and control the ability of the community and the CAB to have a real voice in the charting the direction of the station.

The release of the CPB’s audit is confirmation of my intuitions. The final report is dated March 20, 2009. Mr. Brandon’s correspondence with the Inspector General reveals that he received a draft copy of the report on January 23, 2009, and he responded in writing to the findings in the report on February 19, 2009. The fact that this report was not shared with the CAB, even as the Board sought last week to obtain RSVPs from CAB members for a “Meet the New Team” reception to welcome new CAB members reveals the continued and, I now believe, fundamental inability of the Board to communicate effectively with the CAB, or to take seriously the contributions of the CAB. [Update April 9, 2009: It is only now that the report has begun to circulate among members of the community that Mr. Brandon has publicly spoken about it. Knowing that the Baltimore Sun was scheduled to run a story on the audit, Mr. Brandon sent an e-mail to CAB members about the report on the morning of April 9, 2009].

More important still, are the substantive findings set out in the report. The CPB auditor found that WYPR was not in full compliance with the provisions of federal law regarding public meetings, the CAB, open financial records and compliance with Equal Employment Opportunity requirements. According to the audit, “[d]espite these omissions, WYPR certified its compliance with these requirements annual when it applied for the CSG [Community Service Grant].”[1] The auditor concluded that WYPR’s failure to comply with requirements regarding open meetings and public records, “did not provide the public with the informational transparency envisioned under CPB’s guidelines.” [2]

These critical findings are deeply disturbing. They reveal a lack of transparency about key issues, and are indicative of the ongoing failure of the Board to fully appreciate its obligations to the public in the operation of the station. That YPR certified that it had complied with these requirements when in fact it had not, is even more troubling. I find the explanations for these failures offered by Mr. Brandon in his February 19, 2009 response letter to the Inspector General, to be unconvincing. Over the past year, Board members have cited the radio expertise of Mr. Brandon as the reason that they have deferred to his judgment in running the station. Indeed it was deference to Mr. Brandon’s judgment that resulted in the Board’s support for Steiner’s firing. And yet despite this “expertise,” WYPR sought government funding and represented that they were in full compliance with critical reporting requirements when in fact they were not. In fact, the Inspector General’s report revealed that “[d]iscussion with station officials disclosed that they were not fully aware of [Communications] Act requirements.”[3]

As I leave the CAB, I wish to express my continued concern and hopes for WYPR. This station served a critical role in introducing me to Baltimore in all its complexities when I first moved here 15 years ago. Much of this was due to the Marc Steiner show – a program that exuded the spirit of a complex, and dynamic city, and that examined a broad range of local, national and international issues through the lens of an authentic American city. I am so thrilled that Marc continues to capture the spirit of Baltimore in his new program on WEAA-FM, and that the public has an opportunity to continue to engage in the kind of dialogue that Marc brought for so many years to WYPR.

I believe that with an aggressive and proactive Board of Directors and CAB, and with a commitment to transparency and respect for community input, WYPR could regain its footing. I sincerely hope that this will happen. I continue to be concerned about the talented staff at WYPR, who may be unable to fully express their views and concerns about the running of the station, and who most likely possess valuable information that would greatly enhance the station’s ability to respond effectively to the needs and desires of the public.

It has been my observation that there are some Board members at WYPR (and I admit that I do not know the new Board members), who operate in good faith and who understand the particular obligations that public radio has to the community it serves. It is my view that in the past those Board members have been outmatched or overwhelmed by the very deliberate strategy of key Board leaders, who have their own vision of the station – a vision that I regard as being at odds with the public mission of this station, and contrary to needs of the community it serves. I hope that those Board members who have experience working for and with the public will free themselves from the paralyzing deference to “expertise” that appears to account for the passive acceptance of decisionmaking that has fundamentally undermined the “YPR” brand in the eyes of the community, and that according to the audit report has resulted in the station’s failure to comply with CPB requirements. Expertise is often not all it’s cracked up to be. Our country – and indeed the world – is currently living through an economic crisis created by so-called “experts.” It is the obligation of those of us who are entrusted with stewarding critical community resources to ask the proper questions, to search until we find truthful answers, and to demand excellence and integrity from those who hold the public trust. Start with the Inspector General’s report, which indicates the CPB’s intention to continue to monitor the station’s compliance with the requirements identified in the report. These are matters that should be examined closely by the Board over the next year.

It is my hope that the new members of the CAB, along with those who continue to serve, will be diligent and firm in representing the community – in asking tough questions, in listening to the community and in speaking truth to power. My hope that such efforts will yield real change at WYPR is not sufficiently strong to support my continued involvement with the CAB in this effort. I wish you the very best.

Sincerely, Sherrilyn A. Ifill

FOOTNOTES: [1] Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Office of Inspector General, Special Review of Your Public Radio Corporation, Report No. ECR901-903, March 20, 2009 at p. 3. [2] Id. at 4. [3] Id. at 8.