By: Diane Benjamin
What relationship should exist between government and media?
We know WGLT employee RC McBride was on the Normal Town Council until he was defeated last April.
We know WGLT employee Mike McCurdy is the chair of the Connect Transit Board and appointed by the Town of Normal.
Does WGLT ever do any negative reporting on the Town of Normal? If they do they are risking this:
If the Town of Normal wasn’t in the entertainment business they wouldn’t have a need to pay media.
Why is Normal paying $1,200 for Uptown Partners holiday marketing? On January 6, 2020 the Town wrote Uptown Partners a check for $10,000. When Pam Reece was asked how much the Uptown businesses contribute to Uptown Partners, she didn’t know.
Is Uptown Partners like Bloomington’s defunct Downtown Business Association? Bloomington taxpayers funded it instead of the downtown businesses.
Follow the money. Don’t expect hard-hitting investigative reporting from WGLT with anything negative about the Town of Normal or Connect Transit. The one exception is reporting on Trustee Stan Nord. WGLT is free (if not encouraged) to do negative stories on Nord.
They obviously have a conflict of interest. Therefore reporting by WGLT should be suspect and not only with regards to Connect Transit and the Town of Normal. They have allowed themselves to be compromised.
WGLT, the radio propaganda arm of the Koos administration. Check out Bikey Mikey @MikeMcCurdy twitter profile. He has a level 6 case of Trump Derangement Syndrome. It looks as though he would want to put most of us here in Gulags for (reeducation) or something much worse. Check it out….. He is a radical leftist.
I was dismayed to see the Chambet of Commetce CEO WGLT article from Jan 12. I shouldnt be surprised at such blatant one sided reporting at this point.Thank you Diane for pointing out the reporting which is biased against Stan Nord.
Sounds like what the Pantagraph has with the city of Bloomington. They don’t do any negative reporting on Bloomington.
The Town is supposed to provide public services. WGLT is supposed to provide information to the public. If the public truly needed to know whatever was conveyed by those spots and views, WGLT should have been happy to do them for free. Plus, unless the town made similar purchases among all local radio stations, another example of the Town in appropriately picking winners and losers in the marketplace.
Waste of money, conflict of interest, inappropriate quid pro quo, or another easy $10K towards avoiding the ‘absolutely unavoidable’ property tax increase? Pick one or more…
Once upon a time the Pantagraph and WJBC had investigative reporters. Diane, you come up with more questions than Alex Trebek. And all of your questions deserve answers. Corruption and incompetence are rampant and are not “the right fit” news.
https://www.wglt.org/wglt-friends-council#stream/0
🤔🤔🤔🤔
Wow. Town of Normal employees part of “friends”.
There was a time when public radio was much more severely regulated in the type of and presentation of spots. They were only able to say this program is underwritten by “blah blah—put your name here”. It was to avoid such incestious relationships. There was also a time when “for profit” radio and tv would not allow their news to be influenced by advertisers. That also is long past as we now live in the golden era of fake news. Integrity has been long dead.
….another point. Taxpayer money should never be used to advertise things like the BCPA. Movie theaters, radio stations and TV stations vie for advertising clients and people to use their product, they also pay taxes to the city. This creates a situation where they are being forced to subsidize their competition. However looking at the non audiences that frequent the BCPA the pain is minor.
What’s $10K between “HOMIES”
Birds of a feather..
WGLT used to disclose in Connect Transit articles that McCurdy worked there, just as they did with RC McBride when he was on Council when publishing Town of Normal stories. I noticed as they were trumpeting spending less on a new app that they did not. I also noted the headline sensationalized cost savings that was really just them paying less. It appeared like they were trying to paint Connect Transit in as positive of light as possible.
It’s interesting that they are paying a ton more for a payment app when they collect a very small fraction of revenue compared to expenses. Did they even do a study to see if this expensive app was worthwhile?
No relationship should exist between government and media. Yet here we are, with the media in the back pocket of the Progressive Marxist Democrat party, and vice versa. Thankfully, we have Diane and the ECW locally. Many others nationally.
Another question from this: where is the spending to promote businesses who are not part of uptown? Where are the thousands of dollars in advertising for those businesses on Main Street? What about those by Veterans Parkway? What about those on Ft. Jesse? The area where Mayor Koos’ business is gets the money.
The businesses on or near Main Street, Veterans Parkway, and Fort Jesse stand on their own. They are stronger because they are built for and cater to the demands of the marketplace and their customers, not the ideology of government. Businesses in Uptown are dependent on government handouts and are unduly influenced by government, which explains why they are inherently weaker.
Not sure I can recall any article or audio segment from the local media outlets that was openly critical of a decision, budget, or action taken by Koos or Renner. That speaks for itself.
They will go after Stan however!