It looks like somebody has it in for KPFT:
A bullet blasted through a Plexiglas window at KPFT radio early this morning, missing a woman’s head by about 18 inches, said general manager Duane Bradley.
The bullet was fired while another staff member was talking to three people at the station’s front door, about 12 feet from the smashed window, Bradley said. The station is located in the 400 block of Lovett.
No one was injured in the shooting, Bradley said.
Bradley said the sometimes-controversial station airs blues, folk and other types of music as well as “alternative” programming about gay and lesbian issues and a program geared toward Texas prison inmates and their families.
But he said programming logs indicated no hot-button topics in the hours before the bullet struck the station’s window at about 1 a.m. today.
Until today, I didn’t know that KPFT was the target of violence when it went on the air in the early 70’s. They’ve also had a brick thrown through a window and found a man brandishing a gun on the property in the last couple of years. I’m a pretty regular KPFT listener, and I suppose I’m not surprised by all this. Like all the news outlets said and like listeners know, KPFT regularly touches on controversial topics. And there’s that “alternative” programming.
I’m sure that programming about homosexuality could have been a motive for the gunman, and that, above anything else in this story, bothers me. And the Chronicle didn’t handle it very well. Perhaps I’m nit-picking, but I don’t know what purpose that “alternative” serves. Read the sentence without it and it still makes sense. Read the sentence with it, and it could be construed as demeaning. I’m not accusing Kevin Moran of homophobia by any means, but as exciting as it is to see the country’s dialogue on homosexuality move left over time, it’s a little disheartening to see something like that in print, even though this is relatively minor.