Ethnic Media Serve as Lifeline Amid the Chaos

Her neighborhood in flames around her, the Korean-born woman stood trapped inside her beauty shop as rowdy mobs descended. Panicked, she did what hundreds of Koreans started doing the moment riots began ravaging Los Angeles: She picked up a telephone and called Radio Korea, 1580 on the AM dial.

And then unfolded a drama repeated time and again at the height of last week’s revolt: An urgent message, in Korean, was broadcast over Radio Korea’s airwaves. “Woman in trouble. This is the address. Please help!”

The call heard, rescuers rushed to the beauty shop, fought off the attackers and saved the trembling, grateful woman.

In these days of crisis, ethnic and foreign-language radio stations, newspapers and television are serving as both lifeline to and voice of communities that have been devastated disproportionately by the mayhem.

Many media feel they have a responsibility that goes beyond journalism. They are the forum for airing emotions and grievances; the vital source of information that so-called mainstream or English-language press may ignore.

And they can speak to their audiences with a moral command that the other newspapers and radio may not have.

“The Latino community has a great responsibility to call on its members to abstain from acts of violence and vandalism,” the Spanish-language newspaper La Opinion editorialized. “It is imperative in this anguishing time.”

KTNQ-AM Radio Fiesta told its Spanish-speaking listeners: “We have seen pregnant Latina women breaking windows to steal. This goes beyond sad; this is shameful. It is a terrible example for our children.”

During the 1965 riots in Watts, KGFJ-AM became the voice of Watts, the only station allowed into neighborhoods that were at the heart of the upheaval. Today, black-owned KGFJ is once again taking on the role of conduit and information clearinghouse for the black community.

As buildings across the street from the studio were burning down, KGFJ switched from its all-music format and broadcast eight hours straight of news and information. It opened its lines to callers and dispatched a news crew--made up of public relations and sales people--into the streets to report.

The station also relayed scores of public service announcements on where to buy milk, where to find gasoline and other tidbits from black churches and neighborhood organizations, which turned to KGFJ to get the word out.

“They (such organizations) would not think to call KNX or KFWB,” said General Manager Bill Shearer, who as a young sales rep roamed the streets of Watts in 1965 to report news for the radio. “That’s not a criticism, but the bottom line is that’s not their focus. We are worried about black people.”

Los Angeles’ principal black newspaper, the weekly Sentinel, in its first edition since the verdict and riots, plans to dedicate most of its coverage to analysis of the root causes of the looting and violence, Publisher Kenneth R. Thomas said.

“We want to emphasize the ‘why,’ ” Thomas said. “We will analyze what was hit and what wasn’t, and why. It’s going to be a larger picture. . . . What happened was much, much more than just the reaction to a verdict. This was an expression of the desolation these people have felt.”

Thomas said that while the edition will encourage the spirit of rebuilding, “we also want to push the decision-makers to understand the motivation behind all of this destruction.”

The Sentinel staff had to remove its computers from its offices in the 1100 block of East 43rd Street when the riots began. The office itself was not touched.

“We were spared,” Thomas said. “We had put up signs saying ‘black-owned.’ When we came back, there were signs in English and Spanish saying, ‘Leave this building alone.’ ”

Future distribution of the paper, which publishes on Thursdays, is going to be a problem, however, because many of the neighborhood stores and markets that sell the Sentinel have been destroyed.

Like KGFJ, black-owned radio station KJLH-FM abandoned its all-music format and became an open mike for listeners to vent rage and seek answers. The agenda, executives said, was to calm tensions and discourage violence.

Karen Slade, general manager of KJLH, said the radio station avoided telling its listeners and callers they were right or wrong but tried to encourage them to clean up and move forward.

“We’re trying to offer solutions,” Slade said. “We’re not judging . . . them or preaching to them. We’re trying to defuse the anger.”

She instructed the disc jockeys to allow the listeners to express outrage, but “if they went too far left or started advocating violence, they were to be cut off.

“However, I’m sure some of that did get through,” Slade said.

Several of the black radio stations turned over part of their air time to figures such as Jesse Jackson and various musicians, who delivered a range of messages.

“This is something that’s been under my skin for the whole 10 years I’ve been rapping,” Ice-T, an actor and rapper, said on KJLH-FM, “and I screamed at the top of my lungs across the United States about this situation, and this is a real messed-up way to say I told you so. But for a brother to be vindicated in this way is not what I really wanted.”

When singer Barry White visited, he nearly got caught in the firestorm.

“As Barry White came down, they were torching the building across the street and I was scared,” KJLH’s Slade said.

“The firemen weren’t here. The police were just riding by, but he was calm and kept talking. He took phone calls and he took a calming approach. And I think people appreciated he came into the neighborhood. . . . When the mayor says something, a lot of people just go ‘uh,’ but when Barry White says it, the kids know his voice and they can relate to this man.”

At KCB 93.5-FM, a Korean-owned radio station, the studio was converted into a veritable command center, taking urgent reports of Koreans threatened by roving bands of looting vandals. As it became increasingly apparent that police were not responding adequately, the radio took it upon itself to broadcast appeals for help and direct volunteers to the rescue.

The station expanded its on-air hours to nearly round-the-clock broadcasting, and volunteers staffed a 20-line phone bank to take calls from Korean-American merchants in distress.

Inside the studio, hand-lettered signs were taped to the wall offering free food to victims of looting, free baby-sitting and a number to call for volunteer security guards. One sign offered a contact for buying ammunition.

Spread out on a cluttered table were stacks of Korean-English dictionaries and reams of Associated Press wire copy. The English-language wire stories were translated into Korean and read on the air; reports of damage from Korean-American residents who called in were translated from Korean to English and sent to the AP offices.

From KCB’s broadcasting booth, on the 20th floor of a Mid-Wilshire building, a wide picture window offers a panoramic view of Koreatown. On the night trouble started, the radio station’s employees watched in dismay from this vantage point as Los Angeles burned.

Radio Korea, the other major Korean-language station in Los Angeles, had a similar set-up of taking panicked calls from listeners and alerting merchants to hot spots. In some instances, a phone line and the radio signal were merchants’ only means of escape. And sometimes the callers were put on the air.

“Radio broadcasts were the only thing telling Korean people what was going on,” said David Kim, legal counsel for Radio Korea. “They were emotional. They were irrational. Sometimes they erred, but they were all we had. There is absolutely no doubt, that they helped us survive.”

The help that Korean radio stations orchestrated often involved armed volunteer security guards who rushed to trouble sites. This posed something of a moral dilemma for some reporters.

The advice dispensed during the most dire periods may have “gone beyond the media ethic,” Kim said.

“The feeling was no one was going to help Koreans, so we had to help ourselves,” he said. At least one friendly fire casualty has resulted from this kind of radio work. One man was killed when volunteers, responding to a broadcast plea for help, were fired upon by Korean security guards, according to an engineer at KCB. Each group apparently mistook the other for looters.

Some ethnic media believe they are covering elements of the devastation that are getting short shrift in the rest of the press.

Central American immigrants, who have seen their neighborhood, the Pico-Union district, gutted turn to La Opinion. In banner-headline coverage, the Spanish-language newspaper has emphasized anecdotes from that area and Latino victims.

But Spanish-language television did not interrupt afternoon soap operas to provide live coverage of the three-day rampage, although such reports dominated their regularly scheduled news broadcasts.

The Korea Times Los Angeles Edition published a special edition Saturday in which the top half of the front page was dominated by an article on President Bush, saying he was disturbed by accounts of the damage done to Korean businesses. “Riot, looting: suppressed. The Korean loss lamented,” reads the banner headline.

Shearer of KGFJ said some listeners believed only a black station could give them an accurate and “sensitive” picture of what was happening. It is a matter of historical trust, he said. Blacks traditionally believe they truly share in a radio station that targets them, more than the general audience media like big newspapers and television stations.

“People don’t feel part of Channel 2,” he said. They may watch it, “but it doesn’t belong to them--mentally, spiritually, or soulfully.”

Times staff writers Greg Braxton and Claudia Puig contributed to this story.