Page 371 - Battleground The Media Volume 1 and 2

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PiraTE raDio arounD ThE worLD
There is a tendency to write off pirate radio stations as one-off projects of
hacks and kids interfering with legitimate radio stations just for fun. Or in Brit-
ain, the common narrative around pirates is that of a haven for gang culture,
drugs, and underground garage and reggae clubs. While there are certainly
examples of pirate stations that fit both these stereotypes, the failure of many
media scholars, policy makers, and the general public to adequately account for
the impact of pirate radio is a disservice to an important site of the battle over
media ownership and “citizen” access to the airwaves.
As such, pirate radio exists in many shapes and sizes. Radio Venceremos
(“Radio We Will Win”), for example, broadcast as an underground guerrilla
radio station in opposition to the government from the highland jungles of El
Salvador during the country’s civil war in the 1980s. The station was a crucial
means of information for peasants and indigenous people, transmitting news,
playing music, and serving as witness to war, airing live reports of air attacks,
civilian massacres, and battles between guerrillas and government troops. The
station broadcasts today from the capital city with a license. Pirate radio stations
were also vital sources of news and information across Eastern Europe under
communism, and in former Yugoslavia in opposition to Slobodan Milosevic. In
Chiapas, Mexico, pirate radio continues to be an important communication tool
used by the Zapatistas.
Pirate broadcasting is at times a dangerous business. Stations have been
bombed or been the target of sustained government attacks and intimidation.
Even in Tampa, Florida, pirate operator Doug Brewer had his station raided in
1995 by heavily armed agents from the Federal Communications Commission
(FCC), FBI, and local police. During the raid, Brewer and his wife were held at
gunpoint on the floor while their equipment was raided and house ransacked.
“I had absolutely no political agenda—at least not until they came in here with
guns,” Brewer told the Los Angeles Times. “I just thought Tampa radio sucked
and we had to do something to improve it” (Bennett 1998).
There are pirate stations like Galway Pirate Women in Ireland, broadcasting
a range of programming made by and directed at women, the former KBLT in
Los Angeles, a station that became an influential outpost for alternative music
and hipster culture during its short life on air, or Radio Limbo in Tucson, which
provided a cultural oasis in the city by playing a range of eclectic music not
otherwise on air in the city. There is Reverend Rick Strawcutter of Radio Free
Lenawee broadcasting in Michigan from a small room inside the Church of Our
Lord Jesus Christ, battling the government over his right to broadcast, or patriot
broadcaster Lonnie Kobres, who has the distinction of being the only person in
the United States who actually went to jail for unlicensed broadcasting (typically
the FCC confiscates equipment and may also levy fines). There are progressively
radical or anarchist stations like Steal This Radio in New York, Freak Radio in
Santa Cruz, and the San Francisco Liberation Radio, and radically conserva-
tive and sometimes survivalist or even white-supremacist stations. Despite deep
ideological differences, these groups share a frustration with the government’s