Democrats Urged to Back ‘Rapid-Response’ Teams to Counter the GOP

Democrats need to support “rapid response” teams to counter what they consider conservative excess and lies, say producers and others involved in a documentary film about San Diego’s short-lived liberal radio station.

“The public needs to know when facts are facts … or we are subject to manipulation and propaganda,” former local TV news anchor Bree Walker is heard saying in a 15-minute clip of the film shown at Wednesday night’s meeting of the La Mesa-Foothills Democratic Club.

Filmmakers screened the “first chapter” of the documentary Saving KLSD: Media Consolidation and Local Radio.

Michael Thaller, media relations director for the San Diego County Democratic Party, told a mostly older crowd of 110: “When you see something on the news that just drives you nuts ... send us a note.”

Thaller said a “base letter” would be crafted, sent to rapid-response team members and distributed to print and online media for posting.

“Google will pick it up,” he told the La Mesa Community Center audience, “and people will discover that we are actually out there.”

Together with former KUSI reporter John Mattes, now an investigative reporter for his own website, and film co-producers Jon Monday and Jennifer Douglas, Thaller sat on a stage and took questions on the politics of broadcast media.

But Monday said that Democrats, “by our nature,” are more like “herding cats” when it comes to organized media campaigns.

Republicans, he said, are “more authoritarian, follow-the-leader.”

KLSD, a descendant of the first radio station in San Diego at AM 1360,  boasted “progressive talk” personalities such as Stacy Taylor, Randi Rhodes and Ed Schultz. It operated as an Air America network affiliate from August 2004 until November 2007, when its owner, Clear Channel Communications, changed its format to sports and branded itself XTRA Sports.

The film depicts a rally in August 2007 to “save KLSD” after rumors surfaced of its impeding format change. In production since 2008, the documentary is expected to premiere at the San Diego County Democratic Convention in mid-September, the club was told.

Afterward, the panel took questions on the changing media landscape.

The club was given a primer on media consolidation (from 50 companies owning the majority of stations to five companies in recent years) and told that the FCC had watered down licensing rules for broadcast stations—going from a standard of “serving the public interest” to “being of interest to the public.” 

Now stations can renew their licenses by merely mailing a post card, the panel said.

“The Fairness Doctrine [battle]—we’ve lost that. Net neutrality is our next big battle,” Mattes said of the ability of everyone to access the Internet at the same speed, not just big or favored customers.

“What the Fairness Doctrine did … is that you’d have a newscaster come on and tell us that the grass should be green in the summer. ... He didn’t have to worry that someone would come on and say the grass should be wilted.

“So by controlling the dialogue and setting the agenda, newscasters and media manager stifled … the real Fairness Doctrine, which was meant to encourage real dialogue. … So you never really had it in the first place.”

Monday said the Fairness Doctrine never worked.

“If management had a conservative point of view, they’d put on the liberal point of view at 2 o’clock in the morning on Sunday and say: ‘We shared both sides. What’s the problem?’ ” Monday said.

The film’s producers came to the conclusion that the Fairness Doctrine is not a real issue and “was never a good solution to begin with.”

Reasons for the format change at KLSD were never explicitly spelled out Wednesday night, although the filmmakers hinted it had to do with politics in the Texas-based Clear Channel offices and not ratings—since they said the liberal talk format did better than the sports one that followed.

“Ownership is the issue,” Monday said. “Leasing the station doesn’t count. Syndicating the station doesn’t count. You have to own it and be willing to pay the dollars it takes to run a station and gather an audience, which then can result in ad revenue. We’ve not had that kind of staying power in the liberal media side.”

Monday said he was told that Rush Limbaugh was on the air in Sacramento for nearly 10 years before turning a profit.

“I think KLSD had a two-year commitment when it started,” he said. “That’s not enough. Five years—maybe that would have been enough to build an audience” and make enough money to “overcome whatever political influence there may have been in the decision to shut it down. … Business interests are aligned with the conservative viewpoint.”

Democratic Club members also were urged to sign a petition calling on local provider Cox Communications to add Current TV to its cable offerings—so they can see the new Countdown with Keith Olbermann show, which left MSNBC in January 2011.

Chris Lavin, editor of La Mesa Today, took a turn at the microphone and addressed the panel.

Introducing himself as “the former senior editor” of The San Diego Union-Tribune, Lavin said the KLSD panel was trying to revive a radio station “that wasn’t doing news … [but] a liberal form of talk radio that you resent on the conservative side.”

That seemed illogical, he said, and probably led to the demise of KLSD.

He also touted new media, including his website.

“I was the editor of the [San Diego] paper,” Lavin said, “and I could never produce the kind of material here in La Mesa that I’ve now been able to produce in the last year.”

He concluded: “This [discussion] really strikes me as a lamentation for a bygone era.”