Word: wbai
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...WBAI-FM, New York City's radical, listener-sponsored radio station, has 20,000 subscribers. In the last two months, however, it often seems as though the rest of New York's 18 million inhabitants would like to wipe it off the airwaves. Never too comfortable with the right wing, nobody was much surprised when several years ago WBAI was accused of "subversion" by the Senate equivalent of HUAC; those who knew were more likely to be flattered. But almost all of the station's latest attackers would be proud to call themselves "liberals," and would even more proudly defend...
They want WBAI off the air--or at the very least have asked the FCC to conduct an "investigation"--for having permitted an anti-Semitic poem to be read by a black schoolteacher. And when the same people who are supposed to be fighting suppression of various freedoms start trying to suppress yours. liberals suddenly become part of the whole bad joke...
ACCORDING to Molly McDevitt, public relations director for WBAI, there was no trouble until Jan. 15 when the UFT filed a complaint with the Federal Communications Commission, simultaneously informing the New York Times of their action. "On Jan. 16 the storm broke," Miss McDevitt said. "Within the next few days all the people who hadn't listened to the broadcast but who read the Times Post or the Daily News were sending us hate mail and bomb threats...
...WBAI was picketed by about 200 members of the Jewish Defense League, the publishers of the inflammatory Jewish Press, a weekly warning of pogrom plans. The JDL demanded immediate cancellation of the Julius Lester Show, and apology from WBAI, and a written pledge that "no more time will be granted these haters." "This was a demand for censorship," Miss McDevitt said. "Of course it was rejected...
...problem WBAI faces is not with the FCC. The result of the inquiry now being conducted by the seven-member Commission headed by Rosel H. Hyde is likely to be favorable. In a similar case in 1966, station KTYM, a branch of Pacifica Radio in California, was also charged by the Anti-Defamation League with anti-Semitic broadcasting. It was the judgment of the Commission that "the public interest is best served by presenting any views that are not a clear and present danger and evil . . . free speech that we abhor and hate is as legal as that which find...