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In The Public Interest

Sponsored Project

  • Michael James Kacey, Director
  • Dave Sanford, Producer
African American woman in her fifties, seated at a desk wearing a top featuring red and pink flower design. Picture frames are visible, but out of focus, in the background.

About the Project

“The airwaves belong to the people… but which people?”

Sara Lomax is on an urgent mission to preserve a 1000-watt radio station and her father’s legacy by providing Philadelphia’s African American community with trustworthy information, conversation, and empowerment. For this family-owned, independent broadcaster in today’s consolidated media world, the stakes couldn’t be higher.

"In The Public Interest" is a short film designed as both a pilot for a four-part limited series and as a powerful stand-alone documentary, investigates the crucial importance of local radio ownership serving the public interest by focusing on the achievements and challenges of minority-owned, woman-led WURD in Philadelphia.

“You can’t give everyone money, but you can give them a voice.” With those words of advice, physician, entrepreneur, and philanthropist Walter P. Lomax, Jr., M.D., purchased a little AM station in Philadelphia in 2003, calling it WURD. Although its broadcast signal reaches a mere 20 miles, its impact, aided by streaming programming online and via its app, grows steadily despite challenges that most owners could never surmount.

All broadcasters using the public airwaves have, since 1927, been legally obligated to serve the public interest of their listeners/viewers as a condition of maintaining their license, but, in the course of the ensuing decades, that obligation has grown virtually meaningless and that has had consequences for local communities and our very democracy.

Through interviews with WURD president and CEO Sara Lomax, general manager Ashanti Martin, on-air personalities Solomon Jones, Tonya Pendleton, Dr. James Peterson, as well as media scholars and advocates, the story of how one locally-owned radio station dedicated to serving the public interest can affect positive change and make a difference in the community. The story of WURD will inspire a new generation to understand and fight for their public interest.