Pirate Stations: People's Radio or Hate Noise?
Caroline | 19.07.2004 11:51
Some local pirate radio stations broadcast homophobic dancehall reggae music. Should activists use state means to silence them?
The June issue of Red Pepper magazine has a good feature on Brighton's superb radical pirate radio station Radio 4A.
However, not all unlicensed stations have the same commitments to ethics. In my home city there have been various pirate stations - activist, pop, Asian, urban - on the air for years, with a wide mix of programmes. The output on most is enjoyable, but one station has a continued policy of promoting hardline Jamaican dancehall artists, such as Buju Banton, Beenie Man and Bounty Killa whose tracks advocate the assault or killing of gay people (and occasionally women). The station's announcers also occasionally make similar verbal comments.
With free media, there is bound to be output that you find offensive or disagree with, but after years of turning a blind eye to dancehall artists on the local pirates, there is mounting evidence to suggest that some of this music is fuelling physical attacks on gay persons in Jamaica and having a negative impact on black lesbians and gays. Today, the gay media site Rainbownetwork.com reports that the artist Buju Banton himself is on the run and sought by police in connection with a vicious hate crime in Jamaica.
Given this background, do you think it would be an appropriate response to report the offending station to Ofcom (which now enforces radio regulation and raids pirate stations) or leave them be on grounds of freedom of speech? What do Indymedia readers reckon?
www.y2kpirates.co.uk - for news of landbased pirate radio stations in your area
However, not all unlicensed stations have the same commitments to ethics. In my home city there have been various pirate stations - activist, pop, Asian, urban - on the air for years, with a wide mix of programmes. The output on most is enjoyable, but one station has a continued policy of promoting hardline Jamaican dancehall artists, such as Buju Banton, Beenie Man and Bounty Killa whose tracks advocate the assault or killing of gay people (and occasionally women). The station's announcers also occasionally make similar verbal comments.
With free media, there is bound to be output that you find offensive or disagree with, but after years of turning a blind eye to dancehall artists on the local pirates, there is mounting evidence to suggest that some of this music is fuelling physical attacks on gay persons in Jamaica and having a negative impact on black lesbians and gays. Today, the gay media site Rainbownetwork.com reports that the artist Buju Banton himself is on the run and sought by police in connection with a vicious hate crime in Jamaica.
Given this background, do you think it would be an appropriate response to report the offending station to Ofcom (which now enforces radio regulation and raids pirate stations) or leave them be on grounds of freedom of speech? What do Indymedia readers reckon?
www.y2kpirates.co.uk - for news of landbased pirate radio stations in your area
Caroline
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Impossible Dilemma
19.07.2004 12:43
As someone who was involved in a land-based pirate station back in the 1970's, I can tell you that there's always been a tension in pirate radio because stations have been run for all sorts of different motives. In the 1960's there was a whole fleet of pirate radio stations from ships and wartime gunning towers around various European countries, which existed just to make money, really. Then there have been pop music stations run by radio enthusiasts, ethnic minority stations, specialist music stations and openly polemical outfits. Radical / left wing pirates have included the anarchist Our Radio in London, Tree-FM during the Newbury bypass protests and Radio Arthur, which broadcast during the Miners Strike. On the other hand, there have also been pirate broadcasters for the far right, including Radio Enoch (yup, after Mr Powell) and a shortwave station simply called Right Wing Radio. I recall that in the later 1970's, when Radio Enoch were regularly broadcasting in the West Midlands, a lot of other music stations ganged up to jam their signals because they believed they were misusing the freedom associated with pirate broadcasting. That way, they fought the right wing station without calling in the Post Office (Ofcom as it is now) who were the enemies of all the unlicensed stations.
If a pirate radio station is misusing its transmitter to broadcast music which says to attack gays, then that is as out of order as if someone was playing records by Skrewdriver. I don't know if you should complain about them to Ofcom, because then the other pirate stations in your area, will probably also get raided too, and you say that you enjoy them and they're not a problem.
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