You can stand up in a diner during the morning breakfast rush and shout, “the government sucks!” or “taxes are too high!” and you would immediately generate a cadre of vocal supporters. It’s the kind of human psychology where the plebeians imagine any cause to oppose the ruling class and an immediate bond is formed among the plebs.

This best describes the 21st century animus that has been fomented toward ARRL by some hams feeling aggrieved by imaginary offenses. Combine that with the magic megaphone of social media, and even your most basic bonehead can gather an instant audience. And for many years, ARRL has been unable or unwilling to defend itself against such attacks. It’s neither practical nor cost effective for the ARRL to challenge every Tom, Dick, and Harry with a Facebook account, blog, or YouTube channel and a bad attitude.

At least until David Minster became CEO. He seems to understand the underlying problem to be ignorance and has set about to remedy that. There is a serious lack of understanding about the ARRL organization. What it is and what it isn’t, especially among the rabble-rousers in our midst.

In his April 2026 QST Second Century column he lays out a compelling case that nearly all ARRL detractors lack the general knowledge required to even make their case when he asks, “who owns ARRL?”

The badly uninformed won’t like his response:

“The answer is: No one. ARRL is not a ham radio club. ARRL does not have shareholders. The members of the association do not own ARRL… Some people do not seem to like this, but that’s the way it is.”

About the Board he writes:

“What the Board is not. It is not a representative democracy… Again, this is one of those topics where proponents wrap themselves in the argument that ARRL is some kind of governmental body run by the members, and get wound up if they are not supported in this misbelief.”

It seems to me this misunderstanding is at the heart of most detractors whose circular arguments always reach the same dead-end: what about the stakeholders? As Minster notes, these are nonexistent.

About Section Managers:

“What about Section Managers, who are also member-elected? They do not, as some people believe, report to their Division Directors. There are even Section Managers who have been told this, and know this, but refuse to accept it.”

So just like with national politics, ARRL members often elect ignorant politicians.

He wraps it up with his comment about the tired phrase, “transparency”:

“This term has been weaponized to hurt ARRL’s reputation, and yet it is a double-edged sword. For those who would speak out against ARRL, there are both members and staff who would like to see ARRL respond or retaliate. That’s not who we are. And yet, there are members who would love to see us speak publicly about bad behavior by this or that Director, or false statements made to a blog or social media group by this or that person – who many times isn’t even an ARRL member! We’re not doing it. It takes us right back to that fundamental question we always ask, not only at ARRL but in our ARRL Foundation meetings as well: How does this benefit amateur radio? And ask yourself this question: how does their behavior benefit amateur radio or ARRL?”

Minster’s question is worth posting above every keyboard in the shack: How does this benefit amateur radio? Most of the noise out there can’t survive it.