[Imc-nyc-wbix] Between The Lines featured in Hartford Courant 2/26/03

[Scott Harris]

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Feature article on Between The Lines in the Hartford Courant, Feb. 26, 2003

http://www.ctnow.com/entertainment/tv/hc-radioattack.artfeb26,0,610933.story?coll=hc%2Dent%2Dheadlines%2Dbreaking 
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Giving Voice To Dissent

Bridgeport's WPKN Radio Covers The News With Left-Of-Center Takes Not
Found In The Mainstream Media
By JOHN JURGENSEN
Courant Staff Writer

February 26 2003

In a mongrel studio at Bridgeport's WPKN-FM, Scott Harris and his
production crew compete for space with old televisions, record players,
cardboard crates and even suitcases. For more than 10 years, this
clubhouse of grass-roots radio has been the home of a weekly half-hour
newsmagazine meant to provide "a platform for individuals and
organizations generally ignored or marginalized in mainstream media."

"Between the Lines," created in 1991 by Harris and co-producer Denise
Manzari as a response to the Gulf War, could soon mark another
anniversary of sorts: the onset of a second war with Iraq. To its
producers, the show's mission is just as critical during this historical refrain.

"Then, like now, the voices of dissent were being drowned out," Harris said.

At a time of unprecedented conglomeration in broadcasting and news
production, WPKN (89.5) operates on the fringe, shunning commercial
underwriting, subsisting on the generosity of listeners. The station's
fiscal independence has bred a checkered program schedule that runs a
musical gamut from "jazz adventures" to "spoken soul." 

In that anarchic environment, "Between the Lines" has staked out turf
far left of center.

The show exists within a motley network of alternative news outlets,
many of which come together under Internet clearinghouses such as
alternet.org and radio4all.net. Reporting on radical aspects of
environmental, human rights and globalization issues, it's a news
community that exists beneath the radar of most consumers of, say, CNN. 

In Harris' view, the potential of this alternative press was on display
during the recent massive peace rallies. "The power of this ever-growing
network of folks is demonstrated in the numbers that turned out on Feb.
15," he said. "There's this new blood that's especially come in during
the last couple of years [since the riots at the Seattle WTO conference
in 1999]. But so much of this information bypasses the media. If you
just paid attention to them, you'd hardly know that there's a movement
out there. On one level, people were probably shocked to see all these
people turn out [on Feb. 15]." 

Speaking through the major news outlets, the Bush administration is
spreading an aggressive message about Iraq. If people rely only on these
outlets for their information about the potential conflict, Harris and
other outsiders argue, they're not getting the whole picture.

The many aspects of that picture emerge across the political spectrum
and across the dial, where a chorus of voices are weighing in, from the
radical activism of non-commercial stations like WPKN to the
conservative hotbeds of AM talk radio.

"I'm not there to mold someone's opinion," Manzari said. "The goal is
just to get somebody on that will never, ever have a voice on the
mainstream shows and to give them their 15 minutes, so to speak."

Until just a few years ago, Harris and Manzari, directing a staff of 12
volunteers, were painstakingly splicing the show together on
reel-to-reel tape, long after most of the broadcasting world had
converted to digital editing tools. Since then, computers have brought
"Between the Lines" a step closer to the mainstream media. But in
content and ideology, the show has kept its distance.

Unlike the bare-knuckled harangues of many radio talk-show hosts,
"Between the Lines" largely lets its guests articulate the attitudes of
the producers. But the show doesn't stay off the soapbox completely, as
shown in this non-sequitur introduction to last week's interview with
Greg Palast, a reporter with BBC television:

"With France and Germany taking a firm stand against a U.S. war with
Iraq, officials of the Bush administration, conservative columnists and
right-wing radio talk-show hosts have begun a campaign to demonize
European nations who are resisting Washington's agenda."

"We're always up front with the fact that this is advocacy journalism,"
said Harris, 47, who grew up in Norwalk tuning into the political
discussions about Vietnam and other inflammatory issues on New York radio.

The voice of radio has changed since those years. In fact, an
unprecedented broadcasting consolidation occurred after a 1996
congressional change in ownership caps. Since then, the total number of
radio stations increased by just 5.4 percent, but the number of station
owners decreased by 34 percent, according to the Federal Communications Commission.

Produced on Tuesday nights at WPKN, the completed shows are sent on
compact disc to be uploaded to the satellite carrying the Pacifica Radio
Foundation's feed. By Wednesday afternoon, Web editor (and Harris' wife)
Anna Manzo loads the show onto the "Between the Lines" site
(www.btlonline.org). About 20 radio stations across the country
regularly broadcast the program.

Reaching an estimated 20,000 regular listeners directly via WPKN's
modest 10,000-watt signal (which extends to the midstate area) and
untold others via the Internet, "Between the Lines" aims to supply the
tools of activism to its listeners, said Sasha Summer Cousineau, who
often reads the show's roundups of "under-reported" news. 

"The media has a way of making these issues seem bigger than us," she
said. "This is a tangible way of putting power back into the hands of
the citizens, [by demonstrating that activism] is about everyday things.
It's clicking on a link, it's making the call, it's writing the letter."

Collectively, the staff's own efforts add up to an estimated 60 hours
required to produce and distribute each week's show, time carved out of
busy work and family time. 

Power had deserted WPKN during the President's Day blizzard, so Harris,
by day the director of a Norwalk halfway house, and his crew arrived at
a cold, dark studio last Tuesday evening. As a space heater purred and
jazz trickled out of the adjacent studio, elements of the show came together.

Arch Currie, a director of project management and construction at Yale
University, recorded narration that would introduce and conclude the
week's segments. They included Harris' interviews with attorney Nancy
Chang of the Center for Constitutional Rights, who spoke of the dangers
to civil liberties inherent in the sequel to the USA Patriot Act;
veteran activist Angela Davis and protest organizer Leslie Cagan at the
Feb. 15 gathering in New York; and BBC's Palast, who investigated
funding by U.S. ally Saudi Arabia of Iraq's nuclear weapons program in
the 1980s.

Bob Nixon, who's also been with the show since its start, had assembled
the five-minute summary of news he felt had been neglected by the
mainstream press. Then Summer Cousineau, a counselor at the Center for
Women and Families in Bridgeport, recorded these reports on obstacles to
hydrogen power, hunger in the occupied Palestinian territories and the
environmental threat of sprawling ski resorts.

Under a battered, glowing "On Air" lamp, Harris directed from behind the
console, patiently pausing whenever WPKN DJs tromped across squeaky
floorboards outside the not-quite-soundproof studio.

Wearing headphones and a frequent wry grin, he edited on the fly,
discarding flubbed takes and bookending his prerecorded interviews,
which often originate on Monday nights during his live two-hour program
"Counterpoint." 

By 11 p.m., the staff had departed, leaving Harris to pare his
interviews to five-minute segments and patch together the rest of the
show. He kept at it until nearly 4 a.m. 

This is how Harris defines his dissent. At the Feb. 15 march in New
York, he wielded a microphone and a tape recorder, not a banner. 

"I practice my activism by trying to get this stuff on the air," he
said. 



Copyright 2003, Hartford Courant
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