The MSM Media's Transparent 'El Lector' Act
07/01/2026
Here we are again.
There are two bills, A11199A and S10079, open in New York State now designed to concentrate access to encrypted public safety radio transmissions to whomever the state designates as legitimate newsgatherers. They are a re-worked A3516 which was vetoed by Governor Kathy Hochul last December.
The travesty of these and of previous efforts in New York State is how narrow and blatant they are at protecting the principle of information commodification to the direct benefit of just a few corporations involved in the framework of profit-driven news gathering.
Motions to preserve a free view into a benevolent public safety apparatus should absolutely exist; there is a legit effort to do something about keeping public safety operations in the clear, and a legit hope of and value to codifying through law said access.
But, these and the previous bills, completely fuck it up.
Guaranteed transparency should be fought for the public. Not just a few well-resourced wealthy mainstream media corporations so aware of the stakes with respect to their own survival against social media, they can't even bring themselves to posture as advocates for a truly free press, as anyone would expect them to. If you were hoping for some James Stewart-esqe personality within the TEGNA, Sinclair, or FOX corporations to emerge on the floor of a congress, horse-shoed by corrupt legislative fat cats who sneer and chuckle among each other while he pleads in a croaking tired voice for the trust in each and every American to listen in on police calls -- you can forget it.
Corporate media does not believe in a free press; it believes in a shaped press with "free press characteristics." Ones you can still talk about under 4th of July fireworks but favor their side of the ensuing lopsided circle.
Establishing the free press distinction between themselves and anyone else without the bucks to afford liability insurance, which is someone's clever "moo hah hah" in coming up with this as a defining criteria for "newsgatherer" in these bills, is corporate media's play to assume the role of a sole trusted "El Lector" who reads the daily news to a half dozen rows of factory workers who are expected to keep their heads down and producing.
Extraordinary sanctimonious principles do not make for-profit media exceptional. Money does. And money is exactly what NY State Assembly Bill A11199A and Senate Bill S10079 are all about. Advocating for the siloing of information will make their insights and access, their newsgathering farming, both special and super enriching.
The thousands of personal freelance newsgatherers? The thousands of Facebook community and scanner pages likely many of you and readers rely on more today (as a fact, not hypothesis) - Well guess what: Fuck'em.
Oh sure: All these forms of newsgatherers certainly have a right to exist and to emote, but once a bill like those under consideration pass on to law, only in the shadow of mainstream media's voice. Mainstream media will be the only ones with the story, acquired cheaply, first.
Ultimately BuffScan does not oppose a signing of these bills into law; it just does not support it. To outright oppose after all means not supporting a chink at the armor of public safety push-to-talk radio encryption, which would be the only good thing about it. BuffScan's suspicion is, as it mentioned elsewhere in its channels, that the logistics of providing selective access will prove so burdensome and costly, most public safety agencies will at the end of the day keep relevant push-to-talk traffic public as a way to meet compliance. In such a case, the outright selfishness of corporate media's play here could be overlooked if not laughably ironic.
Or put another way, if any law should be signed it should be one that dismisses the concept of a gold mine's stake in the ethereal passing of valuable airwave chatter, and fairly acknowledges the reality that, tasteful or not, everyone is a "newsgatherer" contributing to a level hive of the everyday narrative.
Police tape. Yes, simple flimsy police tape, seems like an incredibly cheap way to regulate against the dreaded exaggerated idea of the random un-washed masses showing up to critical incident events based on some overheard police call, should that be anyone's genuine concern. Police tape has been super effective for decades upon decades. About as much time as has been the open air broadcasting and access to public safety radio that people used to routinely tune into on their AM home radio sets.
Press organizations should they want to be involved, and legislators, should pursue a law that simply keeps certain push-to-talk public safety communication truly and absolutely public.
By BuffScan for BuffScan.
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