As a media scholar/activist for many years, I am confident that I could make a solid contribution as a member of WBAI's board. From the mid-Seventies up to the present, I have written scores of articles, often lectured, and spoken out in interviews on the urgent need for a more democratic media system—a system not in thrall to corporate ownership or major advertisers. In the Nineties, as both a scholar and an activist, I focused in particular on the civic, social and economic dangers of unbridled media concentration; and since then I have continued to speak out against the deleterious impact of such concentration throughout both the nation and the world.

My written work on media began when I was still in grad school at Johns Hopkins, continued through my five years at the University of Pennsylvania, my fifteen years back at Johns Hopkins, and then the (so far) 26 years that I have spent at NYU, as a professor of media studies. As a media scholar I now have a global reputation, my writings having been translated into French, German, Spanish, Korean and other languages.

Moreover, I have long been a champion of public radio in particular—and so I remain today, despite the global triumph of the Internet. For some years in the late Eighties and early-to-md Nineties, I did a weekly show, hosted by Lisa Simeone, on WHYY-FM, at that time the NPR affiliate in Baltimore. Those shows were devoted to my commentary as a media critic; and I also did occasional evening call-in shows on subjects of great national concern, including the the Hill/Thomas hearings, the Central Park Five and the first Gulf War.

In sum, I believe this long and various experience more than qualifies me for a seat on WBAI's board, in which position I will do my best for both the station and its listenership throughout the city and beyond.