The KUAC Task Force held what it hopes will be it's final meeting last Monday. Members Murray Richmond and John Davies will take the compiled work of the task force and draft a final document, to present to Jake Poole and KUAC management. The document should be finished by Friday of this week, Davies said.

After the meeting, Davies said that he wished that the Task Force had been able to arrive at some sort of consensus, but thinks the process was useful nevertheless. "I don't see any evidence that anyone's changed their mind, but we did have some frank discussion," he said. "Where we do have disagreement we're including the different points of view in the final document."

Davies said that the next step is the creation by the university of a community advisory panel that will make recommendations to the station.

Task Force member Dermot Cole said that the Task Force should encourage the university to "act promptly" in responding to the recommendations.

KUAC General Manager Greg Petrowich said that he thinks the Task Force has led to a better understanding of the issues by everyone involved. Petrowich said he hopes that the activity surrounding KUAC's programming choices will send a message to the legislature. "It's great to see this many people tuned into public broadcasting," he said. "It shows how important having an independent news organization is to people; they really do care."

The Task Force found consensus on most of the issues it took up on Monday, but there were also some healthy debates. Dan O'Neill brought up what he felt was a possible conflict of interest in the organizational structure of the station, which, along with the University's public relations wing, is under Jake Poole. "When you put a newsgathering agency in an organizational structure with a public relations entity, you do damage to the newsgatherer," he said. "The reporters are unfairly placed in a conflict of interest situation; not that they will act on that, but they're in that position." Other Task Force members agreed with O'Neill that, while they did not think the station was being improperly influenced, the there could be a perceived conflict.

Robert Hannon, KUAC's director of news and public affairs, and Scott Diseth, the Director of Radio Programming, both said that they have never seen any pressure to alter reporting in their time at the station. "The station management has been an absolute firewall," said Hannon.

Petrowich said that the possibility of a conflict would be there no matter the department of the university that KUAC was located in, and that it ultimately falls on the staff to maintain the integrity of the news. "Stations at other universities are organized in all kinds of different departments," he said. "You just have to have good people."

Another issue that sparked debate was the possible return of local commentary to KUAC. Petrowich said that the resources had been redirected to do more local news, and that to resume the programs would mean a reduction in local news.

The station has also suggested shifting much of the editing burden onto the guest speakers, requiring them to prepare a single monologue each week, rather than the old process, which was a short informal interview that was edited.

John Davies says that he thinks the station is going in the right direction by airing more local news, but he thinks that there are other ways to keep local "color" programming besides cutting local news or making the process unnecessarily difficult for the guests.

Davies suggests using journalism students to interview speakers and edit their comments. "I'd like to see the station much more connected to the journalism department," Davies said.