Chemeketa agrees to cease spending with Salem-based right-wing radio station

Publicly funded community college announces it will not renew contract with KSLM

After a profile piece on hate-radio station KSLM revealed that publicly-funded Chemeketa Community College was an advertising supporter, college leadership announced they will not renew the advertising contract with the Salem-based AM/FM station.

It remains unclear how much money Chemeketa spent with KSLM, but a senior administrator at the college confirmed that they had only started advertising this year.

In an email exchange in mid-December, Chemeketa District President & CEO Jessica Howard suggested this year would be the first, and last, year they would support KSLM with advertising dollars (emphasis added):

“At Chemeketa, we believe it is important to reach everyone in our district to encourage them to pursue higher education, an experience that exposes individuals of all stripes to diverging viewpoints and develops critical thinking skills.  We are also a public institution and therefore apolitical, and advertise through many means to reach as many constituents as possible.  

We will not be renewing our advertising contract with KSLM after the current contract expires.”

Chemeketa doesn’t have policies, strategy or guidelines for advertising spending

When asked about the advertising relationship with KSLM, senior Chemeketa officials admitted that there isn’t really a process in place to vet prospective marketing partners. Marketing decisions are made through a “fairly informal” process, with no mention of strategy or communications planning.

Officials said KSLM approached the college about advertising and, citing “affordable rates” to reach a broad local audience, Chemeketa signed a contract to pay KSLM for advertising.

When asked what type of vetting steps or strategy would guide the decision to advertise with KSLM, officials suggested the “fairly informal” process was executed on a case-by-case basis.

Why should a public institution like Chemeketa be careful about spending money to support a station like KSLM?

This local talk radio station is a pipeline of dangerous misinformation into our community. From promoting christian nationalist hate rallies in Keizer to airing a conspiracy theorist famous for harassing the families of children killed in a tragic school shooting (Alex Jones) - KSLM is perhaps the top purveyor of this dangerous propaganda aimed at radicalizing impressionable folks in the Willamette Valley.

After we first wrote about KSLM in November 2022, several users in a Reddit thread were specifically disappointed that Chemeketa was among their advertisers. That’s what prompted further outreach to to both Chemeketa officials, and interested elected officials via social media.

What does this accomplish? Isn’t this censorship?

Chemeketa is a publicly-funded community college. KSLM makes money by piping dangerous disinformation into our community.

We shouldn’t be supporting conservative propaganda with public money.

It’s not any more complicated than that.

No one is asking (or forcing) KSLM to stop airing hate and lies. But public money shouldn’t be involved in funding the spread of divisive disinformation.

So, no - not censorship. Everyone’s first amendment rights are fully intact. And the public can take comfort in knowing our money is no longer funding hate in our community.

The crazy part is, this wasn’t hard to accomplish

A few emails targeted to the right people with some concise messaging. A chance tweet (screencapped above) may or may not have contributed. A couple hours total.

But the real reason this was so easy was because it was the right decision to make for Chemeketa. If I had to guess (and this is purely a guess) - I’d say the “informal process” Chemeketa uses to vet advertising partners allowed KSLM to slip through. And once they realized the mistake, decided to do the best thing for the community.

What’s next

We’re going to keep an eye on Chemeketa and KSLM to see if the college does follow through on their commitment to discontinue advertising. And we’re still working on this database to better understand what organizations and companies are supporting efforts to divide our community and spread hate & fear.