Wetand News

Update:  Because of this blog, my weekly weather segment on NPR radio station KNKX has been cancelled permanently.  The KNKX statement has misleading information, with claims that are demonstrably untrue. Update2:  There is a major error in the Seattle Times story.  My original blog never criticized the protesters or BLM activists.  My criticisms were limited to VIOLENT individuals who destroy property and hurt people.  Please read my original blog if you want to confirm this.  Some folks are choosing to misinterpret my words. Update3:  There are two types of mobs.  First, mobs the hurt people and destroy property.  Second, there are social media mobs that attempt to destroy those they disagree with or attack different viewpoints.  We have seen both types of mobs here in Seattle during the past months.  Neither is good. ____________________________________________ Take a walk around downtown Seattle.  You will be shocked by a shuttered, dystopian city and made angry by the inact...

Violence begets violence… violence is a descending spiral begetting the very thing it seeks to destroy, instead of diminishing evil, it multiplies it. –Dr. Martin Luther King A little over six months ago, I wrote a blog calling out political violence in Seattle. This blog, >Seattle: A City in Fear Can Be Restored , described the politically motivated violence on Seattle’s streets, its profoundly negative impact on the safety and lives of Seattle’s citizens, and noted the implicit support of the violence by local politicians. It was based on one of the most obvious lessons of history: that political violence begets political violence and thus can undermine or destabilize democratic societies. The blog was motivated by my concern for the future of Seattle, which is seriously threatened by both street violence and its tolerance by our current city leadership. I was also worried that political violence in Seattle and other cities could damage U.S civil society, weaken our political sy...

  Public radio station KNKX is in trouble.   Last month, KNKX Director of Content, Matt Martinez resigned.    Online access to the station is plummeting.   KNKX news content has become highly politicized. Racial and identity politics has made deep inroads into the station.   Diversity of viewpoint is being suppressed.   And a new social justice reporter is spreading anti-Israel tweets. Resignation at the Top   A month ago, Matt Martinez, Director of Content for the station, resigned abruptly, leaving a highly powerful/responsible position to become a producer at On Being , a non-profit Minneapolis podcast producer.    There was no official announcement of his leaving KNKX.   Over the past five years, Mr. Martinez has supervised all station content including news, music, on-air production, and web offerings.   During that time, the newly reborn station has suffered steady declines in on-air ratings and online traffic.    But most seriously, Mr. Martinez took the station in a po...

Our democracy is threatened. It is threatened by rioters using violence as a political tool, by individuals intimidating politicians through aggressive home visits, by Presidential debates where name calling and incivility rule, by the loss of a sense of physical safety that is a necessity for a civil society, by destructive hyper-partisanship, and by the suppression of freedom of speech and diversity of viewpoints . There are few better examples of the suppression of freedom of speech and viewpoint diversity than the recent partisan actions by the management of KNKX, and this blog will review this issue.  I will discuss the termination of my weekly weather segment because of KNKX management’s unhappiness with my personal political free speech in social media.  And I will demonstrate the extreme hypocrisy of their actions, with their leadership’s use of nearly identical language for their own political advocacy. Freedom of speech and respect for viewpoint diversity is the foundation of...

It is time for me to speak about my firing from KNKX and I will reveal much that is not known publicly about the station, its leadership, and the events that have occurred. This is a particularly sad task for me, considering that I played an important role in saving the station a few years ago and have worked hard for its success.  This is a long post, so let me give you a quick overview of the key points I will cover : 1.   The leaders of KNKX justified my firing based upon my August 5 th blog post  that criticized violent individuals in downtown Seattle, criticized the City Council, supported Chief Best, and noted some similarities to what happened in Germany in the 1930s. 2.  The leaders of KNKX terminated me the next day without speaking to me before they made the decision.  They also did not discuss the matter with the KNKX Advisory Council. 3.  KNKX put out a statement that was factually untrue and easily can be proven false. 4.  Activist groups have been try...