The June 13 issue of the Weekly Dig con­tained a fea­ture on Boston’s pirate radio scene. By one esti­mate, Boston’s air­waves are home to about 50 unli­censed FM broad­cast­ers. These sta­tions play what they want, say what they want, and they even advertise—all with­out the req­ui­site license from the Fed­eral Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Com­mis­sion. The arti­cle out­lined sev­eral cases in which the FCC “dis­cov­ered” these stations—if one might “dis­cover” some­thing so clan­des­tine as a 500 watt trans­mit­ter and a huge rooftop tower—and fined them. These sta­tions ignored the fines and con­tinue to oper­ate unhin­dered. Unlike other fed­eral insti­tu­tions gov­ern­ing inter­state com­merce, the FCC’s pow­ers of enforce­ment are quite limited.

Of course, things have changed since the Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Act of 1934. Fre­quen­cies have been mostly gob­bled up—new broad­cast licenses are dif­fi­cult (and expen­sive) to come by. The tech­ni­cal and book­keep­ing bur­dens on broad­cast­ers have grown. Radio sta­tions, once as var­ied and inde­pen­dent as bar­ber­shops and laun­dro­mats, have become increas­ingly con­sol­i­dated and dom­i­nated by a few large play­ers. The com­mis­sion shows signs of “agency cap­ture.”

Broad­cast­ing was intended as a pub­lic ser­vice. Adver­tis­ing was nec­es­sary to make it a viable com­mer­cial enter­prise, but sta­tions were always meant to serve their com­mu­ni­ties. Any­one who has worked in a tele­vi­sion sta­tion will know the mod­ern rem­nants of those ideals: sta­tions are required to air pub­lic ser­vice announce­ments and in some cases a ration of children’s pro­gram­ming with edu­ca­tional value. Dur­ing the elec­tion cycle, they are required to give fair treat­ment to all the can­di­dates. At license renewal time, they are expected to demon­strate involve­ment in com­mu­nity affairs. But some of this rings hol­low. Does ClearChan­nel really give a shit about your friends and neighborhood?

In a way, pirate radio sta­tions ful­fill the expec­ta­tions that we once had for broad­cast­ers. They serve diverse and com­mer­cially under-represented com­mu­ni­ties. (Nearly all pirate radio sta­tions in Boston are minority-owned and oper­ated.) They are part of the city. We should find a way to accom­mo­date them under the arm of the law.

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A recent Pew Research Cen­ter study shows that peo­ple who watch The Col­bert Report and The Daily Show cor­rectly answered 54% of ques­tions about cur­rent affairs, whereas view­ers of reg­u­lar TV news cor­rectly answered only 35%. I’m not sure what to make of that finding.

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Last week the Econ­o­mist had a spe­cial fea­ture on Hong Kong’s econ­omy. The Atlantic Monthly ran a fea­ture about China’s indus­trial rev­o­lu­tion. What tick­les me most about these arti­cles is not so much the con­tent, but the fact that only a few years ago I would have com­pletely tuned them out.

The Atlantic Monthly fea­ture really res­onates with me, as it pretty much describes my expe­ri­ences in Asia. I’ve met peo­ple just like those he describes. I’ve seen the same scenes played out. I’ve even been to the places depicted in the pho­tographs. In fact, the arti­cle appears to have been writ­ten simul­ta­ne­ously with my April trip, from a neigh­bor­ing hotel. The author describes read­ing the same issue of the English-language China Daily that both­ered me so much that I kept it—the issue in which the shoot­ings at Vir­ginia Tech dom­i­nate page 1, while a Chi­nese fac­tory dis­as­ter in which 32 work­ers are burned alive by molten steel is rel­e­gated to page 7.