SAVE NICE RADIO? REALLY?

I hear and read a lot of hand wringing about the need to “save NiceRadio.” Even Jomo Thomas, himself an oft-maligned target of Nice Radio has taken the high road, stating “Our democracy is too young for us to lose Nice Radio,” and pledging a monetary donation to help “save” it.

If you’ve been living under a rock recently, the basics of the story go like this: about 10 years ago, E.G. Lynch maliciously slandered the Prime Minister, and explicitly accused him of deliberately misappropriating public funds to take his ageing mother on a European joyride. At the time Lynch made the claim, he knew it wasn’t true, but he said it anyway. The courts found the station liable for the slander, and ultimately awarded close to $250,000 in damages. The judgement has survived multiple appeals.

Now the Comrade is coming to collect, and Dougie De Freitas, owner of Nice Radio, is saying he can’t afford to pay it. He’s offering a payment plan of $2,000 per month. Ralph, on the other hand, is countering by calling for the station to be put into receivership, so he can get the judgement while he still has his own teeth.

Journalists, NDP supporters, and more than a few moderate ULP-ites are concerned. The argument goes like this: Our democracy needs Nice Radio. It is a viable opposition voice. We must save it from the Prime Minister’s heavy-handed attempts to stifle speech and dissenting viewpoints. Let’s all make pledges to save Nice Radio.

I’m sorry. But, as Joe Biden might say, that’s a bunch of malarkey.

Let me make six quick points here:

#1. No one – repeat, no one – is “shutting down” Nice Radio. If Ralph wanted to “shut down” Nice Radio, he could have petitioned the court to sell the station’s assets – studio equipment, antennas, transformers, mixing board, generators, music library, etc. – to satisfy the judgment. Without any equipment, the station would be “shut down” and “silenced.”

That’s not what is happening. Ralph is asking for the station to be put in receivership. When a radio station is in receivership, it basically gets a new chief financial officer. That person, appointed by the court, oversees the business aspects of running the station, takes the money that the station makes – from advertising fees and costs of programming – and uses it to pay off the debt. That’s all.

If you listen to the “New Times” programme on Nice Radio (and who doesn’t), you’ll hear at the beginning when they say that it is a paid programme that is sponsored by the NDP. You’ll also hear lots of ads from Coreas Trading, Bonadie’s Supermarket, CK Greaves, etc. If the station was in receivership, the receiver would take the money that NDP pays for “New Times” and the advertising dollars, and pay down the judgment owed to Gonsalves. The programming and the advertising could continue unabated.

The listening public need not hear a single word of difference. So democracy would not be imperilled, the opposition would not lose a voice, and Dougie, EG, Arnhim and friends could continue to blame the ULP for the decline of Western civilisation.

Look it up. Internationally, even in democracies, Radio stations around the world go into receivership all the time (see here, here, here and here). Democracy marches on. It is an astoundingly lazy argument to say that just because a station is in receivership, it is being silenced. Receivership is a common legal remedy to collect debts. Our democracy is too young to be spoon-fed unadulterated bullshit by people who know better.

There are three problems with the receivership. One is that the ULP is floating the name of a known ULP supporter as the receiver. Fine. Complain about the receiver. That’s legitimate (although if the receiver is a known NDP supporter, he/she won’t exactly be trusted to aggressively collect the funds, right?). The second problem is that, if NDP stops paying for New Times and the Greaves' stop buying ads, the receiver may, ultimately, ultimately sell the radio station, thereby silencing it. But that's a loooong way away. Thirdly, the NDP and its corporate sponsors can’t stomach the idea of essentially paying Ralph for the privilege of cussing him. Apparently, the Greaves’ and Bonadies would rather eat their chequebooks before they buy advertising on Nice Radio, knowing that their ad purchases were being re-assigned to the Ralph Gonsalves slander fund.

#2. In case you haven’t noticed, this slander is close to a decade old. Nobody just dropped this judgment on Nice Radio out of the blue. You mean to tell me that nobody on Nice Radio, and no one in the NDP, did any preparation for the possibility that they would ultimately have to pay this judgment?

That’s just crazy.

Dougie De Freitas has offered to pay Ralph the $250,000 in monthly instalments of $2,000. At that rate, with the ongoing interest applied by the court, Gonsalves would get his final payment sometime after his 86^th birthday. Is this a serious offer?

On the other hand, if De Freitas decided 5 years ago to set aside $4,000 per month to deal with the possibility that he would lose the case, he’d have $240,000 today. If 10 years ago he’d started squirreling away the same $2,000 he’s offering now, he could pay Ralph in full immediately (and wouldn’t have to pay interest going forward).

In fact, exactly one year ago, De Freitas told Kenton Chance's I-Witness News that (1) He didn't know where the money would come from to pay the $250,000 bill; and (2) He'd already received contributions totaling $29,000. Where is that $29,000 now? Why wasn't he putting aside $2,000 per month last year? He'd already be up to $53,000, not counting interest. You add that to the $60,000 in pledges he's received, and I'm sure Ralph takes that $113,000 as an honest downpayment on the debt.

Why should right-thinking Vincentians (even Nice Radio supporters) be bailing out the management of the station for its lack of foresight or common sense? This debt may not have been avoidable, but it was certainly manageable.  Why isn’t anyone asking this question?? How has Nice Radio/NDP managed to seize the narrative of this story, and distract us from their own wrongdoing, recklessness, and bad management?

#3. Why didn’t Nice Radio have media liability insurance? There is insurance specifically designed for newspapers and talk radio stations that protects them from this kind of judgement. Plenty of Caribbean radio stations have it. Was De Freitas too cheap, too reckless, or too dumb to consider the fact that, eventually, he’d owe someone a big defamation judgement?

#4. Why don’t the NDP and its corporate backers simply pay the judgment? Two years ago, the NDP spent millions of dollars – millions! – on an unsuccessful four-week election campaign. Last week, they had a huge rally where van drivers were paid to transport supporters, fancy placards were printed, and everyone on the platform was sporting a snazzy, professionally-made “Save Nice Radio” T-shirt.

You mean to tell me that a party that can run through a couple million dollars in a month of campaigning can’t spend a measly $250,000 on the voice and programming that they have relied on day-in, day-out for the last 12 years? Let us suspend logic for a second and agree with them that Ralph is going to shut down Nice Radio. Can the NDP conceptualise a path to victory in 2015 that DOES NOT include an active Nice Radio? Is paying this debt something that they should even be debating or delaying?

‘Lest we forget, the NDP is the party of the moneyed Kingston elite. Not to mention the moneyed Grenadines elite. It is backed by almost all of the heavy-hitters of the Vincentian private sector. You really mean to tell me that Greaves, Bonadie, Coreas, Sprott, Mitchell and company can’t scrounge around between the cushions on their settees for enough loose change to make this little judgement go away?

Of course they can. And I think that, ultimately, they will. As much as the NDP’s corporate backers can’t stomach the idea of paying Ralph for Lynch’s excesses, they don’t want the symbolic slap in the face of having the station in receivership. It makes them look too cheap, too poor, or too divided to handle their business. And they don’t want a receiver harassing them to pay bills, or, worse yet, taking THEM to court for non-payment of past advertising bills.

But by dragging it out, by getting Jomo and friends to chip in, by having “Save Nice Radio” rallies, the NDP cleverly achieves two important objectives. First, they reduce what they will ultimately pay. Apparently, John Public has recently pledged over $60,000 to the cause. Let's not forget the $29,000 that John Public contributed last year. Great. That reduces their bill by $89,000. Why pay it all if you can fleece the public into paying some of it too?

Second, it makes zero sense pay promptly when the NDP finally has a cause that is engaging the public. People have bought into this “Save Nice Radio” shtick, which means that they are implicitly buying into the corresponding flip side of the argument, namely “Ralph is a rights-trampling despot who is stifling democracy and afraid of the NDP.” Well, if you have an issue that’s gaining traction, and no one is challenging your version of events, why would you kill your own issue by paying the bill? If I were an NDP advisor, I’d drag this out to the very day that the receiver shows up at De Freitas’s doorstep.

#5. Someone, anyone, please tell me: What substantive insight has Nice Radio provided to the Vincentian public? (I could ask the same question of Star-FM, but the only difference is that at least Star-FM doesn’t have a string of defamation judgments against it). Seriously though, isn’t 2Cool Chris’ “What does get me Vex” segment on Hot 97 infinitely more illuminating and essential to our democracy than an entire week of Nice Radio programming?

Let us say, for the sake of argument, that Nice Radio has occasionally said something important, or served as the forum for some insight or information that contributed to the strengthening of our young democracy. Was that contribution intended, or was it incidental to the general pattern of defamation and rabble rousing?

If I watch interracial porn on my computer, it might lead me to incidentally ponder the status of race relations, but I don’t think that’s what the pornographers intend. And I don’t think Obama loses the election if there is less interracial porn on the Internet. A convoluted argument? Yep, intentionally so. But no more convoluted than the fart that the “save Nice Radio” crowd is trying to blow in your face.

The lazy discussion about Nice Radio’s contribution to democracy and free expression completely ignores its own pattern of rampant irresponsibility and complete lack of journalistic or broadcasting ethics (sample ethics codes here, here, and here how many have Nice Radio violated?). Let’s not forget the obvious lack of business acumen by Dougie De Freitas. If De Freitas didn’t plan for this event, and can only afford $2,000 to “save” his radio station, then he’s an awful manager, and his station may have been going bankrupt without the Court’s help. It seems to me that De Freitas is such a financial dolt that he should welcome an astute receiver to save his business from itself.

Which brings us to another point: Suppose, for the sake of argument, that De Freitas had just run Nice Radio into the ground economically, or that it had gone bankrupt because it owed money to VINLEC and Cable & Wireless. Would it still be out democratic duty to save the station? What about if one of our newspapers – which are being stifled by the growth of the Internet and those same radio stations – suddenly goes under? Do we owe it to our young democracy to pony up to keep them solvent?

Radio in SVG is a deregulated, unregulated free-for-all. We have more radio stations than we have people to listen to them. One sprouts up every day. Anesia Baptiste could start Radio Free Thusia tomorrow. We have an unregulated Internet, where people spout all sorts of substantive and silly statements without fear of repercussions. Tell me again how the least credible, most unethical, worst run radio station in the country is suddenly the cornerstone of our fledgling democracy?

#6. Let’s not forget that there are a whole queue of other slander judgements against Nice Radio currently working their way through the legal system. Isn’t there a $155,000 judgement against Matthew Thomas/Nice Radio that’s almost out of appeals? Once we establish the principle that it’s the public’s duty to pay for the irresponsibility of unprofessional and defamatory radio personalities, everyone better get ready for these “Save Nice Radio” rallies to be a regular occurrence.