Michael Olesker, The Examiner
2008-02-25 08:00:00.0
Current rank: Not ranked

BALTIMORE -

It’s not so often that you see 300 or so people sucker-punched at once, but there it was the other night. They filed into the big Meyerhoff Auditorium at the Baltimore Museum of Art, thinking they still had some say over their allegedly public radio station, which is known as WYPR, and found out they did not. Welcome to the real world, friends.

The station changes its midday programming today. After 15 years of the most intelligent, evenhanded, insightful talk on Baltimore-area radio, Marc Steiner has been shoved out for reasons known only to those who shoved him out. You could have piled 3,000 protesters into that auditorium last week, or 30,000, and it still wouldn’t have mattered. We now know that “public” radio is a misnomer.

There sat station President Tony Brandon, huddled on the left-hand side of the front row with his back to everybody. How appropriate. Brandon was brave enough to show up, but not to stand up. This became clear about 90 minutes and maybe 30 furious speakers into the meeting when a fellow named David Nudel rose to inquire, “Is Tony here?”

Brandon did not move. “Down there,” somebody cried, pointing in his direction. Then a whole bunch of voices joined in. Down there, down there, until it became a tidal wave, and still Brandon did not move.

“Is Barbara Bozutto here?” Nudel asked. She’s chairwoman of the board at WYPR and the other big deal behind Steiner’s booting. Maybe she was hiding. “Are they listening?” Nudel asked.

They must have been. You could hear this crowd in its collective wrath all the way to Frederick. You could hear it when a fellow named Dante Wilson asked for “the resignation of those” behind Steiner’s firing, and there was a long standing ovation, and still Brandon, with his back to the crowd, did not move a muscle in acknowledgment.

You could hear it every time listeners stood up to declare they were longtime financial contributors to WYPR but would give no longer.

This included the woman who said, “They asked us to send checks as they were getting ready to fire [Steiner]. That’s false advertising.” And the man who said, “They offered him $50,000 to shut up” — a reference to money Steiner was offered if he would go quietly and say nothing negative about the station. “That’s not what we give money to the station to do.”

“A $50,000 hush fund,” said another protester.

And again and again the big crowd responded with hearty applause.

As it did when a listener from Belair said that firing Steiner was “like the Christians firing Jesus.”

What is the matter with these people who run WYPR? They don’t seem to understand their own baloney. They ask listeners to send money to support local programming. For 15 years, Steiner was the heart of that programming. They declare that these contributions make listeners part of a family, part of a community — and partners in the ownership of that station.

Then, when nobody’s looking, they shut off Steiner’s microphone — and they do it just weeks before a scheduled fundraising drive, which they have postponed while they wait for everybody’s memory to fade.

And they do it while blaming “falling ratings” for Steiner’s ouster. Again, indicating these geniuses don’t understand their own mandate. Public radio is supposed to be the great oasis in broadcasting, a place where the pressures of commercial radio do not exist.

“This reminds me,” former state Sen. Julian Lapides said, “of the time Maryland Public Television fired Louis Rukeyser. They said he didn’t ‘fit the demographic’ anymore. When they called and asked me for money, I told them I didn’t ‘fit the demographic.’ ”

But that’s not the only reason so many people showed up last week to protest Steiner’s firing. It’s not just about public radio. It’s about fair play.

Steiner’s the one who practically invented that station. He started the fundraising to buy it from Johns Hopkins University. He made his midday show a forum for all manner of views on all kinds of issues, from street-corner Baltimore to international politics. He’s the one who created a community of listeners.

“I knew there was a community I belonged to,” Doug Colbert, a University of Maryland law school professor, told last week’s crowd. “But it took coming here and seeing your faces. That’s what makes (Steiner) such a dangerous subversive. He believes we own the station. That’s what makes us different from Tony Brandon.”

He’s the one with his back to everyone.

Please send news tips to Michael Olesker at olesker@baltimoreexaminer.com