Someone stole a Jasper radio station’s 200-foot tower, owner says
al.com
al.com
The media did not really care much about accuracy then, and its even worse now.
One notable exception I have found is this channel https://www.youtube.com/@wildwestfaces The narration is often of first person memoirs of historic events and the images are relevant and sync well with the narration.
It isn't about money or resources. Even the biggest budget Hollywood productions regularly pass off incorrect ships in full understanding that most viewers cannot tell a sloop from a brig. Sometimes it is about cost or practicality, but more often it is about which ship comports with audience expectations.
I mean, as a viewer, if I spot a naval historiographer routinely using wrong footage, then how certain can I be they're not also playing fast and loose with what they're saying? After all, the only piece of clear evidence that I have points towards them not caring.
As for what "comports with audience expectations", maybe this is an extreme position, but to me, intentionally choosing something incorrect but more recognizable is gaslighting at scale - it reinforces the misconception in those already exposed, and introduces it to those new (usually young) to a topic.
Now, the abysmal nature of name brand corporate history videos is another matter.
Not doing so is exactly the same as the Hollywood thing; focusing on the narrative rather than the actual teaching, which seems to me psychotic behavior for anything purporting to teach. If you’re misrepresenting the image of the object for narrative convenience, the immediate question is how much of the other material has been butchered for that same convenience? The priorities are out of order.
It’s a violation of viewer trust, and it’s only acceptable in the sense that the viewer often doesn’t know they’ve been tricked… because they were viewing it for the precise reason that they don’t have the knowledge to differentiate between a truth and a lie on that subject
To say that, you would also need to know the actual accuracy rate of media over time. I don't think anyone really knows that without perhaps having done a PhD thesis on the topic.
What's more, good media publishes citations & corrections: https://www.theguardian.com/info/complaints-and-corrections
They will correct things like that when pointed out. On the other hand, honest mistakes of the wrong photo is not that uncommon. In this case, I think the resource was looking for just a stock photo. I did not read the article and immediately think, "Oh yeah, random tower in the middle of nowhere USA, this is for sure a picture of that tower". Perhaps just me..
Regardless, on wrong image, I've certainly noted that a few times - for example reading protest signs that are clearly for a different time/issue than what is being documented (EG: protests in Russia in like 2010s and the news was running images from things that happened 15 & 20 years earlier).
God forbid they just write their article with no photo at all. Better to use a wrong one apparently.
basically, not looking good for the future of reliable media
How does one even measure accuracy? Number of corrections might indicate it, but who is to say that all of media is forthcoming with corrections. How does one control for digital vs non-digital distributions? Is the rate of accuracy different per medium, and how would that roll-up for the overall organization?
I think the meta-observation still holds. The response to "media organizations are all inaccurate and this has gotten worse!" - is asymmetric compared to the effort to make the statement. Happily hacker news has a culture where statements are assumed to be opinions (unless otherwise presented with a citation or somethign), and opinions are generally not held to be worth much in this discourse.
I think this is hypercritical. If there is a story about some dolphin, if there is a picture of 'any' dolphin to give context, is that then the "wrong one" and suddenly a ding against the newspapers accuracy worthy of running a correct? Particularly when there is a context line stating "this is just a random dolphin to give you an image of a dolphin."
> Better to use a wrong one apparently.
Humans are very visual creatures - in some ways - yes. Even conceding that the picture is the "wrong" one, which again I think is a hypercritical judgment.
Yeah, I'd assume it's just you. My default assumption for a photo next to a piece of text is that the two are directly related, in particular the photo being the subject of the text.
Okay, so maybe they wanted to have a photo, but there's no way to frame this that makes the journalist or the outlet look good. Intentionally or not, choosing a wrong photo is still screwing with readers' perception of reality.
> Okay, so maybe they wanted to have a photo, but there's no way to frame this that makes the journalist or the outlet look good. Intentionally or not, choosing a wrong photo is still screwing with readers' perception of reality.
Doing a search for how other news websites reported this story, only the CNN used the "correct" image. A few others used different images without even giving context it was a different tower. A few of the other ones are certainly more egregious, not labelled at all..
Other/wrong image:
https://www.fox9.com/news/radio-tower-stolen-wjlx-alabama
https://nypost.com/2024/02/11/news/alabama-radio-station-wjl... (about a minute into the top clip, there is B-roll with generic radio tower images)
https://boingboing.net/2024/02/09/200-foot-radio-tower-stole...
Actual image:
https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/08/us/stolen-transmitter-radio-t...
No image:
https://www.al.com/news/2024/02/someone-stole-a-jasper-radio...
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2024/02/09/radio-...
> Okay, so maybe they wanted to have a photo, but there's no way to frame this that makes the journalist or the outlet look good. Intentionally or not, choosing a wrong photo is still screwing with readers' perception of reality.
Choosing a "wrong" photo that is CLEARLY labelled, I don't agree with this opinion. I find that hypercritical. Seemingly we simply disagree.
As you say, it also waits until a reader notices factual mistakes, the other ones just slip through. Last point, you don’t have any backing to conclude that their mistakes are honest, and not the result of intent of bias. Given their bias is always in the same direction, I do not believe for a second that The Guardian isn’t putting its thumb on the scale when they only reproduce the part of scientific studies that goes in their editorial direction, conveniently leaving the rest unsaid.
I don't believe I said that. My impression is that they certainly do pro-actively correct mistakes and do not rely on just readership. At the very least, the 'corrections' section is discoverable from their home page. I can't find the corrections part of some other news websites.
Please provide evidence that the Guardian does not do any of their own corrections.
> Last point, you don’t have any backing to conclude that their mistakes are honest, and not the result of intent of bias.
I don't think you have any backing for that either. Though, what backing would anyone need for any kind of slant for "we published a generic picture of a radio tower" (with clear context note on the image) - how is that a slant due to bias?
> I do not believe for a second that The Guardian isn’t putting its thumb on the scale when they only reproduce the part of scientific studies that goes in their editorial direction, conveniently leaving the rest unsaid.
I would ask you please provide backing for this assertion/opinion. (It's going to be difficult to determine whether it's your bias in reading something to think an extraneous assertion is an omission compared to something you think that is related but is either unrelated or incorrect. But, if you have a good resource that has done the systematic research, and relies on reproducible science, that would be an interesting read)
This is not true. A single counter-example is all that is needed to disprove the assertion "the guardian never.." Counter-example:
https://www.theguardian.com/science/2024/feb/10/asthma-of-th...
In this section, the source article is linked (which is: https://ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4035232/), that section is:
> When Attwood first identified EoE in the late 1980s, it was vanishingly rare, with estimated rates of less than 10 per 100,000 people. But just like food allergies, which are also mediated by eosinophils, EoE has become increasingly common in all age groups, from young children to the over-70s, for reasons we do not fully understand.
> Estimates from the British Society of Gastroenterology suggest that it now affects approximately 63 in 100,000 people, which Attwood says is sufficient to make it technically “a common disease”.
The same article links other studies..
A clearly labelled image of a radio tower for a sensationalist story that a radio tower in Alabama was stolen, that.. that clearly labelled image is evidence of "left wing bias" and the "the guardian... putting its thumb on the scale." I don't think this is the story to choose for that particular hill to die on.
> "A different radio tower, which has presumably not been stolen"
If you can't meet that standard, don't run a photo, or don't run the story. The world won't come to a standstill because a partisan rag from a provincial backwater didn't run a filler item about a wacky heist halfway across the world.
I feel like that would be part of the bare minimum of your job for a newspaper.
I would just not include a photo at all.
There's a world of difference between an old free-standing Long Lines tower and the straight-and-narrow guyed tower that actually disappeared, just as there is also a world of difference stature between Roseanne Barr and Gwen Stefani.
A picture may be worth a thousand words, but each of those thousand words has negative value when they're simply wrong.
Like others said, I too would choose to not include any photo at all - there's no way to frame inclusion of a wrong photo as something good.
W.T.F.?
I've been following this story, and as a ham operator I am usually a big fan of the FCC. But I don't understand why the loss of the station's AM tower should require their FM transmissions to also be taken down.
I must be missing something here. Can anyone help me understand this?
"Loss of primary station's signal. The translator must be set up to go off the air if the main station's signal is lost." [1] and cites regulations [2][3]
[1] https://www.fcc.gov/media/radio/fm-translators-and-boosters
[2] https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-47/chapter-I/subchapter-C...
[3] https://www.ecfr.gov/current/title-47/chapter-I/subchapter-C...
There are issues with FCC public licensing to be certain, but the way a lot of stations deal with translators isn't quite above the board considering many stations attempt to follow the regulations (IMO).
I must be missing something, because this seems an arbitrary rule that has no purpose except to increase the FCC’s licensing revenues by allowing them to charge more for “real” spectrum allocation that for a “translator” allocation.
All that said, in terms of economic waste and lost opportunity, this isn't the hill I'd die on.
https://www.nytimes.com/1981/12/04/us/around-the-nation-two-...
On a serious note, a short term exposure like this probably wouldn't be that harmful*, and they seem like risk-takers already so the hazards are factored in for them.
My feeling is that metal theft is getting out of control. If the news reporting on it is to be trusted, cases are in fact rising. Thieves have probably always hit junkyards and stolen wire, but now there seems to be more and more infrastructure hit as well.
The oddest aspect of this is that scrap steel isn't even worth that much. How many tons could that be? Let's say it's 400 tons, that's maybe $100k. And it seems like extremely high risk, because they're going to be looking for this everywhere now. Why would they not just steal two or three cars, which would never make the news. They must be skilled to pull something like that off in a night.
Edit: Another user linked the street view, apparently the article image wasn't the actual tower. So based on that it's much less metal even.
People are why we can't have nice things, apparently.
There. Is. Always. An. Asshole.
Always.
Around here, it's mostly organized gangs doing the stealing, not random poor people... If that were the case, the city wouldn't have a single light fixture left unscathed.
Of course not. It would be absurd to assert otherwise. You always get some scofflaws, but I don't see a reason to assume you get more scofflaws in a weak economy than a strong one. More lawbreakers, yes, but breaking laws for economically rational reasons isn't the same as doing so for its own sake.
I would be curious to know where the people who join such groups come from, and what other prospects they might have had such that difficult, dangerous, and illegal work still ends up looking preferable.
Gangs start recruiting young. It's a fast way to get "friends" who have more than you do- the illusion of power, material wealth, so on.
Furthermore, attempting to do well in school means your fellow students will bully you for "acting white".
If your parents didn't do well in school, they are less likely to pressure you to do well. They might be working long hours to make ends meet, or living on disability or either form of welfare. This will exclude you from many extracurricular activities which require parental support as well.
If you see your parents barely making ends meet, and gangbangers offer you the illusion of more, and everyone around you says you'll never amount to anything by studying or trying to get good grades, it isn't hard to see the allure.
So, for these students at least, poverty is a culture and the trap becomes lifelong once you get a record and can't get a job anywhere that pays better than minimum wage. Rinse and repeat with the next generation.
My friend was fortunate enough to have a father who pressured him to do well in school, and to go on to secondary education. He escaped the trap, but few of the people he grew up with did the same.
I can think of some other less mainstream news sources that would have a problem with that idea.
Also, the "people need the governments help to escape it" was very much not the moral of this particular parable. All it took was a father who gave a damn.
Easy. Ann Hsu, a school board member in SF: https://sfstandard.com/2022/07/19/racially-insensitive-schoo...
Here are her exact words: "Especially in the Black and brown community, I see one of the biggest challenges as being the lack of family support for those students... Unstable family environments caused by housing and food insecurity along with lack of parental encouragement to focus on learning cause children to not be able to focus on or value learning"
> It's one of the core ideas of progressivism that poverty is a trap and that people need help from the government to escape it.
Except that somehow it also adopted a notion that certain groups are forever victims. Black communities are struggling? That's because of white supremacy and systemic racism. So we need to double the struggle against the white supremacy.
Investigating the causes of Black struggles? That's racist.
Always has been. With that said, this is incredibly impressive from a logistics perspective. Hire these folks for demolition and salvage work.
There was a story probably once a month about someone breaking into a power substation or some other high voltage area to try and steal copper and electrocuting themselves.
Seems like a lot of work for low money.
Planet Money did an episode on it.
Is this a real question? You're coming at this with the position that car theft is so easy because it's easy to get away with and has a high rate of return. That only works if you have the connections with chop shops or exporters to be able to get money for that car. You also have to have the skills/tools for being able to steal the car in the first place. To flip that, the people that do steal cars would probably have no clue on how to dismantle a steel structure, have the means to load/haul that steel, or know what recycling places will even buy from them without immediately reporting it to police.
As a reference: A 10-foot section of Rohn 45G weighs about 70 pounds. 200 feet of 45G is thus about 1,400 pounds -- less than a ton.
(I do not know if this particular tower was Rohn 45G or something else that may be heavier -- I only know that it was a guyed tower, and that (when guyed) 45G can be stacked beyond 200 feet.)
Then again I guess meth heads aren’t masters of cost benefit analysis
They never bothered to file a report with the police because they figured whoever did that had been punished enough and sure enough there was a report of a guy with massive burns reporting to a nearby hospital that same night.
https://www.sfexaminer.com/news/thieves-steal-16-feet-of-cop...
Metal theft is almost universally not accompanied by common sense.
A friend of mine lived in the suburbs of Moscow in 1991. The family was watching TV when suddenly the power went out. It turns out someone stole the power lines to sell for scrap. Infrastructure cannibalism is a sign of civilization on the verge of collapse.
jeff geerling made a video on this, has some details on FM/AM translators, and how difficult it is to dismantle a tower.
As long as the power is off, this seems faster.
If the tower disappeared overnight... it would not be able to be done without a trace, and if any listeners were listening, for almost any station I've heard of, at least one listener would call into the station.
When I was a broadcast engineer, we were required to constantly monitor the on-the-air signal. In addition, that tower is live. How did they disconnect it without serious shock?
That's about what a large pickup truck can haul.
Copper is worth 20x more.
I dunno, if you're willing to work that hard you could probably just become a contractor.
It's an AM station, so they may also shut down overnight (as many small stations do to avoid over-propagation).
Off topic: I could have guessed that guy was a radio station manager without any context. There's just a look to them.
Use of a bush hug does not imply the need for a bush hog, though. Even for routine maintenance of the grass you're apt to choose the bush hog out of convenience and practicality. It's not like you're going to waste time puttering around with the push mower you cut your grass at home with for a tower site out in the middle of nowhere.
1. https://www.al.com/news/2018/07/giant_hogweed_plant_on_alaba...
Yup I’ve got a face for radio as well.
The guy in Luton whose house was stolen did get it back, but it took two years.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-beds-bucks-herts-67356...
https://www.edinburghlive.co.uk/news/uk-world-news/squatter-...
>He applied to the courts for permanent possession of the home and won following an appeal, despite the judge accepting that he had committed criminal trespass. According to new reports, Mr Best has now sold the home for a huge profit.
[1]: https://edition.cnn.com/2024/02/08/us/stolen-transmitter-rad...
But if they'd be able to collect a significant value after cutting it down into pieces somewhere else and sell the pieces, maybe it makes sense (from the thief's perspective) to helicopter away the tower after detaching it from the ground.
My guess is that they just dropped it and chopped it up. A helicopter seems ridiculously over-the-top and cartoonish for a couple hundred bucks in scrap metal value you'd gain from the theft. You'd waste more than that in just fuel for the helicopter.
I think we have our answer. Obviously that station was spreading the wrong ideas to the public, and now they are not.
Definitively someone else's problem.
All in all, the physical theft looks almost trivial to me going by the pictures of the actual site.
What mystifies me is how it went unnoticed at the electrical level, that a landscaper had to tell them.
The location is remote and unmanned, but the station must know instantly when anything at all changes even slightly about the transmitter or antenna.
Not because of webcams or anything like that either.
The connections from the signal source to the transmitter and from the transmitter to the antenna are not just one-way and blind. Any change at the load directly and instantly affects the source.
I mean obviously I must be wrong about that somewhere along the way.
I actually had a ham licence but back in the 80s and I was only 11 or so. So my understanding is both educated and not.
you pretty much just described every single tower site.
You could rent all of the equipment for a few hundred dollars: a 3/4 or 1-ton truck, a 30-40’ flatbed trailer, and a few portabands/angle grinders.
Hi-vis vests and hard hats also lend an air of legitimacy.
The AM station was fairly small at 1KW, and only had a 200 foot tower which is also rather small. Some folks looking into it found public records from the FCC showing that the owner has be fined or found to be out of compliance for only using the FM translator with the AM station off air in the past, so this points to possible motivation.
Cheap battery powered tools have made a lot of crime a hell of a lot easier.
https://www.homedepot.com/p/Milwaukee-M18-FUEL-18V-Lithium-I...
https://www.radiodiscussions.com/threads/wjlx-200-tower-repo...
Good movie, much better than expected. Watch some of the making of features too, they filmed it all "real" (up on a 50ft tower or something) and it shows in the acting.
edit: quote from https://www.al.com/news/2024/02/someone-stole-a-jasper-radio...
We live in interesting times and that’s not always a good thing.
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1999-jul-29-mn-60726...
Jasper is a strange place. You hear of meth heads, being in north central AL and all. But the town has a unique history and there are actually a lot of really rich folks and nice neighborhoods there. It's an old mining town with a lot of old money, and rich folk from all over move there because of Smith lake. It used to be "the hitman capital" of the US and I've heard stories from a pilot friend of an umarked and unidentified black leer jet transporting shady individuals/cargo that used to frequent the Walker County Airport.
One of the best short stories ever written is O. Henry's "A Retrieved Reformation".
It takes place in Elmore, is about a thief, and is WTF. Which is a tenuous connection, but nonetheless a story worth reading ;)
Is the FBI looking into what must be an organized metal salvage pipeline? First the salvage place needs to pay the thieves, no questions asked and no paper trail involved, then they need to pile it or chop it up, then sell it on to industrial factories that can use it, who must look the other way in terms of knowing about the source of the metal.
This involves (among other crimes) tax evasion, book keeping fraud, money laundering, secrecy and probably a lot of bribery.
I mean, if I can't buy pseudoephedrine without the state recording my license, surely it'd be pretty straightforward to require the same to sell copper.
Crazy shit happens there for random reasons that probably won’t make sense to an outsider.
This could be as simple as someone having a beef with a person at the station or one of the content sources that the AM station broadcasts.
It could be something as simple as drunken weekend shenanigans. Why? Because they could.