Tired of what they have to go through to take a flight, an Austin TX activist group has bought a flight of radio advertising time on Austin stations to make their case. The group, Keep Austin Free, is said to have thousands of dollars to spend.
Belo’s ABC KVUE-TV says that the members of Keep Austin Free are tired of being treated like terrorists, and that they go so far as to question the true motives of security officers that check out passengers as they attempt to board a flight. As a portion of the ad states, “The TSA has made plans to install full body scanners at Austin airport to gawk at our naked bodies.”
KAF co-founder Wesley Strackbein told the station, “It’s outrageous that we should treat the innocent as if they’re equal to Al Qaeda, and that’s what is taking place. In the pursuit of safety, liberty is non negotiable. To trade liberty for some semblance of safety is a fool’s bargain, and we don’t want to play the fool.”
The advertising flight may be building support for KAF’s position, but like any other highly charged political or social issue, many different viewpoints survive, including those who agree to being scrutinized but maybe not to the point of the full body scan, to those who don’t mind it at all, if it will make it safer to fly.
RBR-TVBR observation: Radio is fast and affordable. We’re amazed more politicians don’t have it high on their list of media options given the lightning-fast pace of a many campaigns these days. And it is a superb tool for a public interest group trying to get by on as slim a budget as possible.
