I left a comment on an
OP here (entitled "Just some of the calls for violence against Democrats/Liberals, Gays, Pro-Choice, etc") that drew some supportive comments itself. My original post was rather late at night and reflected a certain amount of frustration that has built up over the last 5 or 6 years in trying to draw some attention to the problem and to a solution (albeit a very small contribution) that I had offered toward it some time back. The original comment was:
About 5 years ago I put up a site with some volunteers where we analyzed FCC data and hate radio. We crossed low-power licenses with ownership and noted a huge trend toward cultish churches and small groups snapping up low-cost and free licenses to propagate hate-speech. We tried to get the word out about the FCC hiding ownership data and how it was damnear impossible with the "public" databases to ascertain true ownership and stockholder share information. In short, the "public" FCC databases are intentionally useless. We did our best to geolocate and pinpoint incidents of hate activity with hate radio.
Nobody gave a shit way back then, so I finally gave up and closed the site.
I'm sitting on a mountain of old data if anyone still gives a shit and wants to revive the project. I'm telling you now that it involves a load of computing power and a load of manual work. The FCC public databases are intentionally bullshit and it takes a lot of combing through to get ownership to match actual stations and actual locations. It takes a load of computing power and a load of programming (which I did and am still sitting on) and a load of care and manual checking to get it all to trace back to incidents of hate crimes to hate radio broadcasts.
It can be done, I'm willing to revive the project, but it takes people to do it. The data can be refreshed and the programming polished, but I can. Not. Do it alone. It's just too big.
Three DU posters, TheMartyred, PaulHo and tburnsten, suggested that I make this into an OP to see if we might generate some interest in reviving the project. It was fairly massive to start with and involved some interesting and tricky database programming to manipulate the raw data into something that began to tell a story. The problem with the original project is that I was the only experienced programmer and the original volunteers weren't that motivated back in the day when the lower-cost and free FCC licenses were just beginning to be snapped up and media consolidation wasn't at the insane level it is today. Hate-speech radio wasn't nearly so entrenched, and even though I was sounding an alarm then, it wasn't being taken so seriously. The volunteers just didn't keep up and I couldn't do the project by myself.
The internal layout consisted of raw public FCC files that were reformatted and fitted into post-relational database files for easy cross-relating. I chose a post-relational database first because I am most familiar with it having worked with post-relational/multidimensional/multirelational databases for over 30 years. Secondly, with a post-relational database, any datum can be related to any other datum in the entire system at any moment without having to build formal relationships, as must be done with clumsy relational databases such as SQL-based types. This allows infinite flexibility and infinite ways of examining data, allowing more
information to be gained, simply by altering queries. Additionally, I colocated geolocation information so that areas or hot-spots of incidents could be tracked with relative ease.
The missing link to the project has been the eyes and ears to track and record specific incidents and peg them to specific stations and link them with specific owners and shareholders. It is my opinion that the only reason that hate-speech radio survives is specifically because most people don't know -- or the FCC intentionally protects -- owners and shareholders of hate-speech radio. It is also my opinion that it is no mistake that hate-speech benefits a specific agenda, the fruits of which we have recently and painfully begun to see accelerate in ripening.
In the last five years, technology has moved forward and there are even better tools. The FCC databases, I will say again are intentionally obfuscated and ownership is disguised to protect the guilty. At this late a date, it is entirely too late to stop the flood, but it is never too late to bring awareness that
public, citizen-owned airwaves have been hijacked and used for nefarious agenda, propaganda and out-and-out brainwashing. It is my opinion that this is a pitiful and shameful state of affairs, a misuse and abuse of public trust, and a misuse of publicly-owned property; specifically, the use of publicly-owned property to promote violence, division and hatred against citizens of the United States of America.
Again, my time is limited, since I am having to work three jobs in order to keep month and money matched up. Usually, I'm successful. As winter approaches and farming and weddings slow down, I'll have more time to lay the data out again and to be specific with the analyses and approaches. If this project is to re-launch, however, I will need seriously experienced database, analysis and journalist people to handle a good deal of the footwork. I will also need eyes and ears everywhere who are willing to make entries with specifics. It would be my strongest desire to post the findings in the form of periodic reports back to DU in the appropriate forum. It would also be one of my strongest desires to coordinate this effort with the DU owners and mods, since it is a project that may further Democratic and Progressive agenda. That is entirely up to them; otherwise,
if this project takes life, then results or findings can take the form of posts just like any other news or findings post.
I don't mind hosting the databases (they're rather huge, but I have a good-sized server with room), but I'd feel more comfortable if parts were shared-out and backed-up all over against disaster scenarios.
IF and only if there is any real interest in reviving the project. I spent many hundreds of hours programming, shuffling data, making gold out of the turd-databases that the FCC offers publicly, designing web pages, writing AJAX to feed a custom data transport to a UniVerse database, writing thousands of lines of code, only to have volunteers find other things to do because listening to hate-radio is a vile occupation. Documenting comments and pegging those to hate crimes is an even worse one.
I understand that, fully. But either we continue to wring our hands after the fact as we're once again doing now, or we'll put rubber to the road and
do something. I'm willing, but I do currently feel so very alone.
And finally, being a newcomer to DU, can someone advise me on the proper way to cross-post to the database forum and if that would be appropriate? Thanks!!
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