Think the Emergency Alert System drives you nuts? Welcome to the club. News Talk 780 KOH is the Western Nevada/Eastern California Local-Primary One broadcast station. Depending on the type of alert being issued, that means we are often the first station that sends it out. Other stations in the EAS area we serve monitor KKOH and send the alerts out over their stations. This is designed to ensure the highest number of people have access to the alert. I saw today where the Multicultural Media, Telecom and Internet Council and a number of civil rights and consumer organizations are once again asking the Federal Communications Commission to require multilingual emergency alerts in places where “sizable populations are non-English speaking.” So if they have their way, the recent afternoon where we broadcast fifteen emergency alerts for severe weather would double to thirty, because I presume we would be required to send them out a second time in Spanish. President Emeritus of the MMTC David Honig first proposed this nonsense in 2005. “We are talking about the lives of thousands of people who are not served by broadcasters in their native language. It must be part of the evaluation of their fitness to be license holders with the FCC and the American public.”
Not served by broadcasters? Who made the decision to not learn the language? Who ultimately has the responsibility to protect their own life? This is a primary reason we have a serious immigration problem in America. Aside from the insanity of not enforcing the law and allowing far too many people to come to America, legal or illegal, once they arrive we do not require them to assimilate into our society. For over 200 years that is what immigrants have done. That’s the true meaning of “a nation of immigrants.” Presumable people wish to come to America for the liberty and freedom we enjoy. If you don’t wish to learn the language and become a part of OUR culture, then please stay home. It is required to read and write English to become a citizen, yet you can vote in languages other than our native tongue. You can take a driver’s license test in Nevada in Spanish, yet I’m still waiting to see my first Spanish road sign. Now we’re talking about multi-lingual emergency alerts, for no other reason than people refuse to learn the language, and we aren’t smart enough to put a stop to it. We should all share in the responsibility to protect human life. Those who choose not to learn the language of their adopted country are irresponsible, as is a society that allows it.
