by KKFI 90.1 FM Kansas City Community Radio
A locally produced program where activist groups in the Kansas City area present interviews, commentary, editorials, and other thought provoking content on a weekly basis.
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April 22, 2025
Canadian journalist Marc Edge summarizes his research on the evolution of media and democracy internationally including different media policies that have been attempted and their impact on political corruption and the quality of life of the bottom 99 percent of humanity. He is interviewed by Spencer Graves.<br /> <br /> Edge distinguishes "Accountability reporting" from "Access journalism": "Accountability reporting" helps the public understand corruption in the political economy, like the muckraking of the "Progressive Era" in the US (1890-1920). "Access journalism", by contrast, is media produced to maximize advertising revenue. This includes, e.g., suppressing discussion of research linking cigarette smoking to cancer to avoid offending tobacco companies, which have been major advertisers; this distortion has been documented from the 1930s. Distortion like this has also been documented to protect airlines, automobiles, travel, real estate and other industries against the well-being of the public at large. Some newspapers have assured advertisers that their watchdog press would protect the advertisers at public expense.1<br /> <br /> Increasing numbers of experts are recommending public subsidies for journalists but not for existing news outlet, especially not for legacy media owned by vulture capitalists, who have in the past lobbied effectively for public subsidies that have increased their profits at public expense.2<br /> <br /> Edge also recommends independent media councils that take complaints from members of the public who claim they have been victims of unfair coverage. The media councils judge the complaints and require that their rulings be published by the publications involved.3<br /> <br /> In 2012 Edge was run out of Fiji by a social media smear campaign orchestrated by the Washington-based public relations firm Qorvis, which had been hired by the country’s then-military government to polish its image after Edge organized a two-day symposium on media and democracy. Edge organized that symposium as head of the Journalism program at the University of the South Pacific there. In 2016 he accepted a job in Malta. Shortly after he arrived there, the country’s only real investigative journalist, Daphne Caruana Galizia, was killed by a car bomb.4<br /> <br /> Edge is a Canadian journalist, author, and academic with a PhD from Ohio University. He has taught at universities in five countries and is the author of eight books.<br /> <br /> A moderated discussion of the issues raised in this interview is supported in an article describing, "Canadian journalist Marc Edge on media reform to improve democracy" under "Category: Media reform to improve democracy" on Wikiversity.<br /> <br /> Copyright 2025 Marc Edge and Spencer Graves, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike (CC BY-SA) 4.0 international license.<br /> <br /> Notes<br /> <br /> 1. Edge (2024, p. 158; 172 of 240 in pdf).<br /> <br /> 2. Edge (2023, 2024).<br /> <br /> 3. Edge (2024, 142; 156 of 240 in pdf).<br /> <br /> 4. Edge (2024, p. xi; 11 of 240 in pdf).<br /> <br /> Bibliography<br /> <br /> * Marc Edge (2023). Postmedia Effect: How Vulture Capitalism Is Wrecking Our News (New Star Books).<br /> * _______ (2024). Tomorrow’s News (New Star Books).
April 20, 2025
Unionists Garth Stocking, American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) local 1336, and Daniel Scharpenburg, VP, National Treasury Employees Union (NTEU) chapter 66, join Bill Clause, AFGE retired, to discuss the devastating impact that DOGE attacks have had on morale and efficiency of IRS, SSA, and the entire federal workforce.<br /> <br /> They discuss waste, fraud and abuse that they claim have been created by multiple actions by President Trump and his supporters. These actions include reckless, chainsaw cuts to probationary federal employees. They also include corrupt plans to fire thousands of career employees and replace them with “their people”.<br /> <br /> Is this a return to the "spoils system" used in the US until the Pendleton Act of 1883 largely replaced it with a nonpartisan civil service merit system?<br /> <br /> Stocking, Scharpenburg, and Clause claim that the actions of Trump and his supporters are intended to terrorize and traumatize civil servants.
April 2, 2025
UMKC Constitutional Law Professor Allen Rostron1 discusses major policy changes mandated by President Trump since his second inauguration with Radio Active Magazine regulars Spencer Graves and Craig Lubow. To what extent are these changes consistent with the US Constitution and previously established law?<br /> <br /> Prior to joining the UMKC law school faculty in 2003, Rostron worked as a Senior Staff Attorney at the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence in Washington, DC.1 Since joining UMKC, he has received multiple awards for excellence in teaching. In 2010 he was named the William R. Jacques Constitutional Law Scholar at UMKC. He has served as a guest professor of law at Peking University in China and a guest lecturer at Wasada University in Japan. He has also filled various administration roles in the UMKC Law School including as Associate Dean for Students between 2015 and 2020.2 He also maintains a list of roughly 200 law journals in joint with UMKC law professor Nancy Levit to help law scholars submit articles for review to different outlets.<br /> <br /> In 2018, he published a comment that a "New constitutional convention could be detrimental to democracy".3<br /> <br /> In 2013, he supported a "Donna's Law" bill in Missouri: That would allow someone with suicidal ideations to voluntarily put themselves on a "do-not-sell list for firearms". They could later take themselves off that list after a waiting period.4 Donna's Law was named after Donna Nathan, who "bought a Smith & Wesson revolver from a gun store near her home in New Orleans and then went to a park, where she shot herself" on 2018-06-26, shortly after leaving her third voluntary hospitalization for bipolar disorder that year.5 Rostron said, "Everything with guns is very controversial, but I think this is the least controversial provision you would think, because it's voluntary. ... Even if someone felt very strongly about gun rights and they being protected, we generally let people waive their rights if they choose to do so." He said that this bill could see bipartisan support.4 On 2024-08-22, Delaware became the fourth state to pass such a law.6<br /> <br /> _______<br /> <br /> 1. "About Allen Rostron", UMKC School of Law (https://law.umkc.edu/docs/vitae/rostron.pdf), accessed 2025-04-01.<br /> <br /> 2. "Allen Rostron CV" (https://law.umkc.edu/docs/vitae/rostron.pdf).<br /> <br /> 3. Allen Rostron (2018-09-10) "New constitutional convention could be detrimental to democracy" (https://www.kansascity.com/article218141540.html).<br /> <br /> 4. Megan Abundis (2023-11-29) "Missouri legislator pushes Donna's Law, a voluntary do-not-sell list for firearms that aims to curb self-harm", KSHB 41 (https://www.kshb.com/news/local-news/missouri-legislator-pushes-donnas-law-a-voluntary-do-not-sell-list-for-firearms-that-aims-to-curb-self-harm).<br /> <br /> 5. Agya K. Aning (2024-11-12) "To Prevent Suicide, States Want to Let People Ban Themselves From Buying Guns", The Trace, (https://www.thetrace.org/2024/11/donnas-law-suicide-prevention-gun-buying).<br /> <br /> 6. "Delaware Becomes the Fourth State to Enact Donna’s Law", 2024-08-22 (https://law.ua.edu/delaware-becomes-the-fourth-state-to-enact-donnas-law/)
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