The management of KUSP Radio has decided to terminate my “Land Use Report," which has been presented as a local "insert" into NPR's "Morning Edition" program for the last nine years.
That placement of the Land Use Report, during "drive time" on Morning Edition, gave land use policy issues a high visibility on KUSP. I very much appreciate having had the opportunity to "spread the word" about the importance of land use policy, and I am going to miss the opportunity to provide these 90-second commentaries. The land use policy decisions we make, at the local government level, are critically important to the economic and environmental future of our local communities, and they have a big impact on whether or not we will accomplish our social equity goals. Without a doubt, our land use decisions do “legislate” the world in which we most immediately live.
The staff person who informed me of the station's decision to terminate the Land Use Report said that KUSP had concluded that a “preponderance of discussion of land use policy is not appropriate throughout so much of our schedule.” From my perspective, a 1.5 minute comment each weekday morning (even if repeated once, as it has been, adding up to 3.0 minutes per weekday morning) is not what I would call a “preponderance” of land use policy programming, appearing “throughout” KUSP’s programming schedule. There have definitely been some other factors at work, too, beyond a concern that the station is giving too much coverage to issues of land use policy.
As I understand the chronology, KUSP's decision to terminate the Land Use Report, and to reduce the visibility of land use policy issues, began with complaints about me. City and/or University representatives have apparently complained about Land Use Reports focusing on UCSC growth and City water policy issues. In addition, and much more specifically, advocates of a proposed Monterey County wildfire protection plan, sponsored by the Monterey County Fire Safe Council (the President of which group serves as the Vice President of the KUSP Board of Directors), apparently came to a KUSP Board meeting and complained that I had made misstatements about the plan, and demanded that I be removed from the air.
Surprisingly, I was never informed of the complaints, or allowed to respond to them, but the station did investigate the complaints independently, and concluded that no actual misstatements were made. I also provided "transparency" statements on the air, at the request of the station, to document my employment related relationships with both the UCSC/City water and growth issue and the wildfire protection plan issue.
Decisions about what sort of programming to feature on the station, and when and where to feature it, are absolutely the prerogative of the station management, and I do wish KUSP well with its replacement programming. From what I have been told, there will be a staff-produced feature discussing land use, but it won't be daily, and it won't appear during "drive time" and Morning Edition. To me, that sends a pretty clear message that station management doesn't think that citizen involvement in land use issues should be as “high profile,” or as “big a deal” as KUSP has implicitly indicated they were in the past, by running the Land Use Report so prominently each weekday morning. Since I do think land use policy is a "big deal," vital to our future, I'm sorry to see the station head in the opposite direction.
In addition, to the extent the station cares about this (and I think it ought to), the facts here send a message that someone who doesn’t like a particular programmer, or something that the programmer said on KUSP, may be able to get the station to remove the programmer, or to change the station’s programming mix, by making loud complaints to the Board, the Station Manager, or other staff (even if the complaints turn out to be unjustified). In this case, complaints about my supposed "misstatements" were not only successful in having me removed personally as a programmer, they are going to result in a new programming mix that puts less emphasis on land use policy. While those who complained got to play a role in the decision making process that has resulted in the termination of the Land Use Report, I didn't have a chance to participate in that process, nor were listeners ever consulted, to see what they thought.
To my mind, this is probably not a good message to send, if you are trying to protect the station’s editorial independence.
Not only did listeners and KUSP volunteers have no say in the process, KUSP staff was excluded as well. This decision was made by two senior staff members, with no involvement from the rest of the staff.
ReplyDeleteThe Anonymous comment above surprises me not in the least. KUSP has been doing its best to run itself into the ground for the last 5 years. By becoming an almost full-on NPR clone, dropping most of its non-jazz & classical music programming, and going for the bland. It's like the Democratic Party following the DLC mold of Republican-lite — KUSP is engaging in an extirpation of its 'pataphysical beginnings.
ReplyDeleteSorry this happened to you, Gary. Damn the headlong rush to ignorance.
Gary- You are really missing the point. The reason why your program was canceled was not because of the topic, it was because of your inability to abide by the Society of Professional Journalists Code of Ethics. Specifically, shaping public opinion on topics for which you get paid to represent as an attorney. That is a big no-no and you have been doing it for 9 plus years. Once the Board of Directors of KUSP realized how egregious your lapses in ethical judgement were, they had no choice but to have station management conduct an inquiry. You say that KUSP terminated
ReplyDeleteyour program over it's content. If I were you, I'd look inward for the answer for why the program is coming to an end.
I do disagree with the second, and different from the first, "Anonymous" commenter, who I assume has some association with the KUSP Board or management. Anyone who wants to see my correspondence with the station, which discusses these issues, should contact me directly.
ReplyDeleteThe Board "inquiry," if there was one, was conducted without ever informing me that such an inquiry was underway. Thus, I did not get to comment on what the second "Anonymous" claims have been my "egregious" lapses in ethical judgment.
In fact, I began doing the Land Use Report (at the station's request) when I was the paid Executive Director of LandWatch Monterey County, which actively lobbies on land use policy in Monterey County - and I routinely commented on the Land Use Report about the very same issues I was working on in a paid capacity; I continued as the paid Executive Director of the Planning and Conservation League, and was paid to lobby on issues that I covered on the Land Use Report. I am now Of Counsel to an environmental law firm that is paid to represent clients on environmental and land use issues, so nothing really has changed. All the Land Use Report segments come with a "disclaimer," and I am more than willing to make my paid and other affiliations a matter of record, as I recently did, at the station's request, with respect to the law firm's involvement in the Monterey Wildfire Protection Plan and the UCSC growth and water issue controversies.
Query whether it was "egregious" ethical lapses on my part that were really the issue. If they were, elemental due process suggests that I should have been told that new standards were being set,and that the station thought that I wasn't' meeting them, so I could have discussed the matter before the station made its determination. The jourrnalists' Code of Ethics was provided to me a week or so ago, after, I am gathering, a decision was made to cancel the Land Use Report. I have no problem with the Code, though the Land Use Report has never pretended to be "journalism."
The station has every right to change its programming priorities, and I continue to be grateful for having had the opportunity to raise the profile of land use policy issues for Central Coast listeners to KUSP.
How disappointing! KUSP is losing a bet here. I hope they will reconsider and that your fans will rally to your support...
ReplyDeletehttp://www.metrosantacruz.com/metro-santa-cruz/09.23.09/news4-0938.html
ReplyDeleteGary,
fyi...I was one of the "complainers", too. You used your radio spot inappropriately to further your own personal and very and surprisingly (after 20 years as supervisor and 10+ local eco nonprofit ED) misguided and uninformed environmental and social agenda. Could you please answer the question posed in my Santa Cruz Weekly Op-ed regarding our groundwater supplies and explain why you never followed your own law?...
"Weighing in on the desal debate, Doug Deitch of the Monterey Bay Conservancy and multiple runs for supervisor wonders why nobody mentions a 1987 well ordinance that could have been invoked to stop aquifer overdraft.
By Douglas Deitch
ON JAN. 6, 1987, then--Supervisor chairman Gary Patton signed into law the "County Well Ordinance." This law, one of many conceived and designed by Mr. Patton, was intended to protect our groundwater from contamination from a number of possible causes. In this ordinance, saltwater intrusion from basin overdraft was and still today is specifically noted and covered by this law.
Mr. Patton's law was carefully crafted by him as a part of our local coastal plan so, notwithstanding the promise of desalination or anything else, the natural limit of local water supplies could not legally be ignored by our supervisors. This was achieved by requiring that the Board of Supervisors immediately declare a groundwater emergency and take specific remedial measures in any county groundwater basin which is in overdraft and drawing water beyond that basin's sustainable yield.
Although quite possibly all county basins were actually in overdraft in 1987, the first comprehensive County Water Resources Report in 1998 officially established these overdraft conditions in all our local aquifers. In this report, saltwater intrusion resource loss in Soquel Creek's and PVWMA's shared basin, the Aromas Red Sands, was estimated to be 15,000 acre feet of loss per year. Water use was quantified at a massive yearly 200 percent or three times overdraft, around 90 percent used and exported in 25 percent of this country's berries. No remedial or any actions have ever been taken by our supervisors, as required by Mr. Patton's law.
To replace this amount of water loss would require construction and full time operation of around seven new $40 million to $100 million Santa Cruz desal plants. Put another way, Soquel Creek Water District is draining the equivalent of seven desal plants a year to saltwater intrusion, year in and year out for 20--30 years, at one end of their district, and they want to partner with SCMU to build one plant by 2015 at the other end to address this problem?...
I have heard and read with much interest a number of Mr. Patton's recent letters and statements on the radio and in news articles in this paper last week and elsewhere relating to our water, the new desal plant, UCSC expansion, Atkinson Lane development in Watsonville and other local land use matters in the Greater Monterey Bay Region. Yet, since 1998, I have never one time heard one word from Mr. Patton mentioning his well rdinance and its requirement, crafted by him, that our Board of Supervisors declare a "groundwater emergency" and implement the reasonable and required remedial measures he designed into the law to protect our water supply for us, our children and our grandchildren. I wish he would please explain to us all why he hasn't and why he remains silent while his well ordinance and the water supplies it is designed to protect and conserve is ignored and disregarded continuously since 1998 by his successors, supervisors Wormhoudt and Coonerty, and, apparently, by himself as well.
Aptos resident Doug Deitch is executive director of the Monterey Bay Conservancy."
http://www.metrosantacruz.com/metro-santa-cruz/09.23.09/news4-0938.html
ReplyDeleteGary,
fyi...I was one of the "complainers", too. You used your radio spot inappropriately to further your own personal and very and surprisingly (after 20 years as supervisor and 10+ local eco nonprofit ED) misguided and uninformed environmental and social agenda. Could you please answer the question posed in my Santa Cruz Weekly Op-ed regarding our groundwater supplies and explain why you never followed your own law?...
"Weighing in on the desal debate, Doug Deitch of the Monterey Bay Conservancy and multiple runs for supervisor wonders why nobody mentions a 1987 well ordinance that could have been invoked to stop aquifer overdraft.
By Douglas Deitch
ON JAN. 6, 1987, then--Supervisor chairman Gary Patton signed into law the "County Well Ordinance." This law, one of many conceived and designed by Mr. Patton, was intended to protect our groundwater from contamination from a number of possible causes. In this ordinance, saltwater intrusion from basin overdraft was and still today is specifically noted and covered by this law.
Mr. Patton's law was carefully crafted by him as a part of our local coastal plan so, notwithstanding the promise of desalination or anything else, the natural limit of local water supplies could not legally be ignored by our supervisors. This was achieved by requiring that the Board of Supervisors immediately declare a groundwater emergency and take specific remedial measures in any county groundwater basin which is in overdraft and drawing water beyond that basin's sustainable yield.
Although quite possibly all county basins were actually in overdraft in 1987, the first comprehensive County Water Resources Report in 1998 officially established these overdraft conditions in all our local aquifers. In this report, saltwater intrusion resource loss in Soquel Creek's and PVWMA's shared basin, the Aromas Red Sands, was estimated to be 15,000 acre feet of loss per year. Water use was quantified at a massive yearly 200 percent or three times overdraft, around 90 percent used and exported in 25 percent of this country's berries. No remedial or any actions have ever been taken by our supervisors, as required by Mr. Patton's law.
To replace this amount of water loss would require construction and full time operation of around seven new $40 million to $100 million Santa Cruz desal plants. Put another way, Soquel Creek Water District is draining the equivalent of seven desal plants a year to saltwater intrusion, year in and year out for 20--30 years, at one end of their district, and they want to partner with SCMU to build one plant by 2015 at the other end to address this problem?...
I have heard and read with much interest a number of Mr. Patton's recent letters and statements on the radio and in news articles in this paper last week and elsewhere relating to our water, the new desal plant, UCSC expansion, Atkinson Lane development in Watsonville and other local land use matters in the Greater Monterey Bay Region. Yet, since 1998, I have never one time heard one word from Mr. Patton mentioning his well rdinance and its requirement, crafted by him, that our Board of Supervisors declare a "groundwater emergency" and implement the reasonable and required remedial measures he designed into the law to protect our water supply for us, our children and our grandchildren. I wish he would please explain to us all why he hasn't and why he remains silent while his well ordinance and the water supplies it is designed to protect and conserve is ignored and disregarded continuously since 1998 by his successors, supervisors Wormhoudt and Coonerty, and, apparently, by himself as well.
Aptos resident Doug Deitch is executive director of the Monterey Bay Conservancy."