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LISTENERS ORGANIZE FOR A NEW DAY AT PACIFICA
By Vince Ivory, March 2002
By the time you read this, KPFK's first fund drive since the beginning of a new day at
Pacifica Radio will be over. If it finishes as it has begun, it will be clear vote of
confidence in the changes underway at KPFK and Pacifica (which owns KPFK). If you,ve been
listening to 90.7 FM, Los Angeles, you've heard a dramatic change. Programmers speak
openly of the turmoil of the last seven years.The changes we can now hear on KPFK mark the latest phase of the years-long struggle to
save community radio at KPFK and the other four Pacifica stations.
The now-deposed Pacifica Board and management had engineered what amounted to a hijacking
of the network and a betrayal of the Pacifica mission.Four lawsuits were filed against the hijackers, and set to go to trial together. In the
eleventh hour, there was a settlement which instituted an interim Board of Directors for
the network. The settlement also mandated an audit of Pacifica's finances.That audit, part of which can be seen at www.pacifica.org, revealed a deficit of at least
$4.8 million. The posting of the audit results is evidence of the openness and
transparency which are part of the new day at Pacifica. Prior to this, there was a gag
rule which prohibited programmers from informing the listeners about what was really
happening at KPFK and Pacifica. The gag rule had been zealously enforced at KPFK by the
recently-fired general manager, Mark Schubb.The real challenge ahead will be to sustain the reforms being made, so that community
radio can truly flourish at Pacifica Radio. The lawsuit settlement mandates the democratic
election of the Local Advisory Boards for KPFK and the other stations, which would, in
turn, send representatives to the Pacifica Board of Directors.There are several things which we all can do to maintain vigilance. We can attend the next
meeting of the Pacifica Board, here in Los Angeles (see March 8 calendar listing). We can
attend meetings of the KPFK Local Advisory Board. They are also holding a series of
"consultas to facilitate discussion of the upcoming elections. (More information,
including different proposals for election guidelines, can be found at
www.stationadvisoryboards.org) The Free Pacifica Neighborhood Network is an association of
local KPFK listener groups. To find one near you, visit www.fpnn.org Most importantly, we
can once again support the station with our money and volunteer labor. (An expanded
version of this article can be found at www.pacfolio.org)
HISTORY REPEATS ITSELF AS DISCREDITED FORMER L.A. COUNCILMAN ROBERT FARRELL BECOMES CHAIRMAN OF THE PACIFICA NATIONAL BOARD AMID FAMILIAR CHARGES OF "CONFLICT OF INTEREST"
In Memory of George Seldes
October 17, 2001
Robert Farrell: City Councilman, Los Angeles 8th District: 1974-1991
The only Councilman in LA history to be the target of 2 recall campaigns: 1978 and 1988
For years, headlines in both major Los Angeles daily newspapers screamed "conflict of interest" as then City Councilman Bob Farrell navigated a perilous obstacle course of investigations for fraud, mismanagement, and ethics violations that resulted in multiple recall campaigns. Twice targeted for recall by his neighbors in the 8th district (one of LA's poorest and 85% Black), Farrell never once in 17 years found himself free of controversy as he repeatedly attempted to line his pockets at the expense of the city's taxpayers and his resentful constituents. To this day, Farrell holds the dubious distinction of being the only Councilman in LA history to be the subject of two recall campaigns by the constituency he professed to serve.
Now, within weeks of maneuvering himself into the chairmanship of the Board of Directors of the Pacifica Foundation, come revelations that Farrell's Board plans to dismantle the 52-year-old network by selling the licenses of it's two most influential stations; KPFA and WBAI, respectively it's oldest and it's most listened to station. Farrell's current allies include his friend and newly appointed board member, former DC Mayor and convicted felon Marion Barry. Another colleague, Vice-Chairman Ken Ford, recently applied the label "zealots" to the tens of thousands of listeners fighting the proposed sale and told the press, "I see parallels between this group and Al-Qaeda, the terrorists who bombed New York."
Farrell's studied charm and soft-spoken "management style" belie the same self-aggrandizing opportunism and duplicity that characterized his political career. The parallels between Farrell's destructive time on the Pacifica National Board and his track record as a Los Angeles City Councilman help explain the hemorrhaging of financial and human resources now plaguing the non-profit network
As a city councilman, Farrell's troubles began only four years after being elected, when he found himself the target of a recall campaign. Even though this initial campaign to recall Councilman Farrell in 1978 was being spearheaded by a retired, disabled African-American police officer residing in his district, Farrell maintained, "it's like similar attacks in the past on other black members of the City Council." But 10 years later his predominantly Black constituency again targeted him for recall after an LA Herald Examiner investigation found that Farrell, who was then chairing the City Council's grants committee, helped arrange for a tiny social services agency (the Improvement Association of the 8th District) run by his ex-wife to acquire - for free - a building and a parking lot valued at $225,000 from Security Pacific Bank. This was in spite of the fact that the Bank had initially offered to donate the same properties to the City at no charge. Farrell next moved his field office staff out of their rent free city office space and began billing the City $28,800 a year ($2400/month) to rent the donated properties from his (now) ex-wife's agency. Many in City Hall also questioned why Farrell required 4 times more square footage than the average City Council field office. In fact – for 21 months after selling the properties to a private developer, his ex-wife's Improvement Association continued to bill the City $400/month for the parking lot.
Then, on Dec. 21, 1987, the Los Angeles Herald Examiner reported that the "social services agency [the Improvement Association of the 8th District] run by Farrell's ex-wife failed this year to provide the feeding and tutorial services it promised when receiving two federally funded contracts." Two weeks later, on January 7, 1988, the Los Angeles Times reported that, the District Attorney's office was reviewing Farrell's activities, "to determine if the councilman violated disclosure laws by steering more than $350,000 in real estate gifts, city rental payments, campaign contributions and a government grant to his former wife's agency."
In another disclosure, the Herald reported that, "the financial support began when Farrell was still married and has continued into a period in which his personal financial support of their child has remained unresolved." The same investigation found that, "The couple's divorce ended with no court ordered financial obligations to his ex-wife or their child even though she sought both alimony and child support."
The leader of the second Farrell recall campaign, Kerman Maddox, an African-American and former aide to both Maxine Waters and Mayor Tom Bradley, called the conflict-of-interest disclosures, "one more justification for the recall." Johnnie Cochran Jr., Farrell's lawyer and spokesman for both his divorce and his recall fight, countered that his client, "has done nothing wrong."
Now compare Farrell's history as a city councilman to his history as a Pacifica board member.
· He gave his word to the KPFK Local Advisory Board (unaware of his checkered history) that if they elected him he would oppose any bylaws changes.
· After being sworn in, in February of 1999 his first act was to vote in favor of bylaws changes, which disenfranchised the Local Advisory Boards and made the PNB an unaccountable, self-selecting body.
· He supported sending armed guards into KPFA (Pacifica's Bay Area flagship station) in the summer of 1999 to support the lockout of the station's employees protesting the proposed sale of the station.
· He publicly supported moving Pacifica's operations (and financial records from all 5 stations) to Washington D.C., where, as he put it, "the movers and shakers are."
· The KPFK LAB then voted in May of 2000 to remove Farrell from the board, but he and his cronies ignored this vote.
· If approved, the bylaws changes would also provide Farrell with something bankable – article 3.16, which states: "Compensation...A Director shall be entitled to receive reasonable compensation for services rendered to the Foundation in a professional capacity." (Pacifica directors have always served unpaid out of a sense of community service. But with these bylaws changes, for the first time in 52 years, Farrell and the rest of his board would be free to co-mingle their own financial interests with their with their duties as Directors of the Pacifica Foundation.)
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Sources: Los Angeles Times, Los Angeles Herald Examiner, Proposed by-laws revisions by John Murdock to Pacifica Board of Directors
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June 18, 1978, Los Angeles Times
"The City Councilman has been approached on many occasions about the deteriorating conditions in the 8th district, which is 85% black," said Dennis Hale Jr., a retired black police officer on disability, who has spearheaded the recall drive."
Farrell said of the recall campaign, "It's like similar attacks in the past on other black members of the City Council"
Dec. 21, 1987, Los Angeles Herald Examiner
"A social services agency run by Farrell's ex-wife [the Improvement Association of the 8th District] failed this year to provide the feeding and tutorial services it promised when receiving two federally funded contracts."
"Farrell currently chairs the LA City Council's grants committee, a panel that is supposed to ensure the city's grant money is well spent and whose members have been particularly sensitive to the scarcity of funds."
"Farrell also helped arrange for his ex-wife's agency to acquire for free a building and a parking lot valued at $225,000 from Security Pacific Bank. The Bank initially offered to donate the same properties to the City [for free]. Later, Farrell had the city lease the properties [from his wife] for the use of his council staff at $28,800 a year!"
"Farrell has refused to discuss his dealings referring questions to attorney Johnnie Cochran."
Dec 5, 1987, Los Angeles Herald Examiner
"The Examiner disclosed yesterday the Improvement Association of the 8th District continued to charge the City $400 a month rent for a parking lot even though the group sold the property to a private developer 21 months ago."
Dec 17, 1987, Los Angeles Herald Examiner
"The Examiner has reported that the financial support began when Farrell was still married and has continued into a period in which his personal financial support of their child has remained unresolved."
Kerman Maddox, former aide to Mayor Bradley and leader of the [2nd] recall campaign, called the disclosures, "one more justification for the recall."
"Johnnie Cochran Jr., Farrell's lawyer and spokesman said his client 'has done nothing wrong'"
Jan 7, 1988, Los Angeles Times,
"The district Attorneys office is reviewing Farrell's activities to determine if the councilman violated disclosure laws by steering more than $400,000 in real estate gifts, city rental payments, campaign contributions and a government grant to a small social services agency run by Essiebea Farrell, his former wife."
"Last week Farrell used city funds to send constituents 3961 letters that defended his ex wife's agency, and City statistics show that Farrell sends far more mail at city expense that any of his 14 colleagues."
Jan 16, 1988, Los Angeles Herald Examiner
"Officially separated since April 23, 1984 the couple's divorce ended with no court ordered financial obligations to his [Farrell's] ex-wife or their child even though she sought both alimony and child support."
Aug 13, 1978, Los Angeles Times
In response to complaints by residents that a proposed two-acre park would, "displace 16 families, some of whom had been in the neighborhood for 30 years Farrell contended that the elderly residents who would be displaced 'have lived their lives and we have to look to the future.'"
Research on Marion Barry:
Sojourners Magazine
"Marion Barry's Politics of Redemption"
Bob Hulteen., December 1994-January 1995 (Vol. 23, No. 10, pp. 11-13).<http://www.sojo.net/magazine/index.cfm/action/sojourners/issue/soj9412/article/941241b.htm>
" As his coalition coalesced, Barry increasingly believed that his fortunes were synonymous with those of the city. Years later this belief justified his use of the District's treasury as his own checking account
But Barry, a three-term mayor already, should have been running against his record as much as his individual shortcomings. He had no intention of seeking redemption for his policies that sabotaged the lives of many District residents. Barry attempted to unravel D.C.'s rent control laws, offered tax abatements to developers who built in an already office-glutted city, and made land deals with real estate magnates who became millionaires, bankrupting the city in the process. For this legacy Marion Barry offers no repentance.
Most of us have room in our hearts to forgive the penitent sinner who acknowledges shortcomings and makes amends. But by confessing only personal flaws, Barry's redemption stands shallow."
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Biography Resource Center
©2001, Gale Group, Inc.http://www.africanpubs.com/Apps/bios/0711BarryMarion.asp?pic=none
" By 1967 Barry had begun to appreciate the resources of government. He split with the increasingly radical SNCC and, trading his dashiki for a business suit, persuaded U.S. secretary of Labor Willard Wirtz to appropriate $300,000 for "Youth Pride," a one-month project that would hire 1,100 African American youths to kill Washington's rats and clean its streets. Barry quickly won other grants for the program and within months had expanded it to include Pride Economic Enterprises, a for-profit venture that ran several small businesses and a 55-unit apartment complex."
"Barry also faced a number of problems during his first term In 1979, the Washington Post charged that Mary Treadwell, the mayor's former wife and a co-founder of Youth Pride Inc., had skimmed $600,000 in federal money from a Pride-run low-income housing project."
"By the end of Barry's second term Treadwell and Barry's chief aid, Ivanhoe Donaldson, were convicted of financial crimes. A female city worker with whom Barry had a "personal" relationship was convicted of selling cocaine. And Barry's third wife, Effie Slaughter, whom he had married in 1978, was forced to decline a sharply discounted mortgage when the transaction was made public."
"By February 15, 1990, a grand jury returned nine counts against Barry That May, the jury returned six new counts, five accusing him of cocaine possession, one of conspiracy. If convicted on all 14 counts the mayor could have faced 26 years in jail and fines of $1,850,000. Barry contended that the government's case was the work of overzealous prosecutors out to get a big-city mayor. Jay B. Stephens, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, told the New York Times that his office was "fairly enforcing the criminal laws without regard to the position or status of the offender."
Sources:
Jet, January 10, 1994, pp. 35-36; February 20, 1995, p. 6.
The New York Times, May 14, 1996, p. A14; December 27, 1997, p. A18; January 15, 1997, p. A16; February 4, 1997, p. A14.
The New York Times Magazine, October 29, 1995, pp. 38-41, 44-45, 54-58, 76.
Newsweek, May 13, 1996, pp. 32-33
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. The New Republic
"Barry Bows Out"
By THE EDITORS
Issue date: 06.15.98
" When Barry first took office, he turned over the contract for school supplies to one of his cronies. Overnight, the price of a carton of cereal supplied to the school cafeteria rose from $8 to $13.50, and his crony entered the ranks of the middle class. The schools' chief at the time pleaded with Barry to renege on the contract. I care about the children, Barry would say, and then ignored the complaints.
After hundreds of such contracts and his famously loose accounting, Barry ruined the schools, the hospitals, the police department, even the city morgue, leaving a trail of felons in his wake. Friends, aides, and an ex-wife have all done time after serving in Barry's era of temptation. Eventually, as city services crumbled under the incompetence and as the murder rate soared, the middle class he'd created abandoned him and fled to the suburbs in terror. "
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IDEALISM: A VIABLE ALTERNATIVE IN TODAY'S MEDIA WORLD?
By Norman Solomon / Creators Syndicate / September 6, 2001
In this era of conglomerate mergers and bottom-line obsessions, it's easy to believe that the media industry requires yielding to expediency. Like most people, media employees want job security. Few are inclined to risk their livelihoods and careers for matters of principle.
For more than two years now, a real-life media drama involving the noncommercial Pacifica radio network has put a national spotlight on tensions between divergent options -- taking the path of least resistance and taking an idealistic stand.
Under escalating pressure in early 1999, news reporters and public affairs producers at Northern California's 50-year-old KPFA Radio -- the first listener-supported station in the country -- refused to be censored or intimidated by firings, threats and armed guards posted in the studios by Pacifica management.
Pacifica executives figured that if they tightened the screws, KPFA's staff would opt for personal self-interest rather than solidarity based on idealism. And in the early summer of 1999 -- minutes after KPFA aired excerpts from a press conference that indicated Pacifica was considering sale of the nonprofit station -- management cut off a live news broadcast, then locked out the staff and volunteers. Longtime KPFA journalists were arrested in the station's newsroom.
It didn't work. Massive community support for KPFA, with several weeks of protests including a march of more than 10,000 people past the station's studios in Berkeley, forced Pacifica to allow the station to resume its treasured broadcasting role.
Today, out of the five Pacifica-owned stations, KPFA is the only one where a climate of fear doesn't reign. And not coincidentally, when this month began, KPFA was the only one of those stations airing "Democracy Now!" -- the award-winning and pathbreaking daily public-affairs program that Pacifica stopped broadcasting in mid-August, after many months of mounting harassment aimed at host Amy Goodman.
As part of the continuing legacy of gutsy actions by KPFA supporters, the station's listeners were able to hear "Democracy Now!" coverage from South Africa of the recent World Conference Against Racism. Those broadcasts were blocked at the other Pacifica stations -- in Los Angeles, Houston, New York City and Washington, D.C. -- where reliance on threats now flourishes as a standard instrument of management.
Founded as an alternative to mainstream media conformity a half-century ago, Pacifica has descended into a censorious maelstrom during the past few years. Ever since late December 2000, New York's WBAI Radio (where "Democracy Now!" was long based) has been in the hands of an autocratic regime, fixated on banishing reporters, producers and others with progressive politics and the gumption to stand up for their beliefs.
After eight months of repressive actions at WBAI, an important national magazine on the political left, The Nation, published a Sept. 3 editorial that didn't come close to the denunciation of Pacifica management that would seem to be in line with the magazine's pronouncements on journalistic integrity elsewhere.
Along the way, in the editorial, The Nation made no mention of the fact that its weekly national program "RadioNation" is co-produced by Pacifica's Los Angeles outlet KPFK, where the station's management has been rigorous about preventing criticism of Pacifica from getting onto its airwaves. A forthright disclaimer, accompanying the editorial, would have let readers know that The Nation might have something appreciable to gain by remaining on the good side of often-retaliatory Pacifica management.
By not acknowledging that reality, the magazine withheld relevant information in an unsigned editorial -- rendered as the voice of The Nation. I asked editors about the magazine's working relationship with Pacifica and why the editorial made no mention of that relationship. The top editor responded by describing the magazine's ties with Pacifica's KPFK but offered no explanation about the absence of a disclaimer in the editorial.
For years now, from coast to coast, some of the best journalists in Pacifica's history have been subjected to a de facto blacklist. Pacifica management and the administrators now running four of its stations have been vengeful to an extreme in retaliating against those who voice strong criticisms.
Ironically, The Nation has published many eloquent pieces over the years decrying the pernicious blacklisting of the McCarthy Era. The magazine's current editorial director may be the country's leading authority on the subject. But The Nation's editorial did not challenge the ongoing pattern of harassment, intimidation and firings by Pacifica managers.
In a corporate media tradition, while calculating how to deal with personnel, the executives in charge of media outlets do not consider hunger for social justice. Hopes and dreams do not show up on a spreadsheet. But they can have tangible and profound effects on history in the making.
The past few years have seen a growing national movement to "save Pacifica" (www.savepacifica.net). This movement represents grassroots media activism -- researching, organizing and agitating to reclaim the largest progressive radio network in the United States while prying it loose from the hands of a mostly self-selected corporate-oriented national board.
Meanwhile, for now anyway, KPFA is notable as the only Pacifica station free of the network's censorship mentality. Why do KPFA's broadcasters and listeners get to enjoy such freedom every day? They struggled for it.
And the struggle continues.
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Norman Solomon's weekly syndicated column -- archived at www.fair.org/media-beat/ -- focuses on media and politics. His latest book is The Habits of Highly Deceptive Media.
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I want my Democracy Now!
08.14.01 - Israel invaded Palestine once more last night. Where did I turn this morning for an alternative to the mass media? Amy Goodman's award-winning program, Democracy Now! of course. That's where curious folks have turned for years when they are seeking some relief from the homogenized drivel the establishment media pass off as news. I read the New York Times version: Israeli tanks "rumble" into a Palestinian-controlled town but "pull out quickly" in what "seemed" to be the strongest assault to date. Then I turned to "Democracy Now!" to hear someone or several people -- who might talk sense, whom I don't see nightly on MSNBC or CNN or FOX. This fresh persepective might point out, for example, that if the tanks that had violated an internationally-recognized border were Iraqi, rather than Israeli soldiers (who commandeered the headquarters of a foreign city's governor and bulldozed the police station of a foreign state), the United States, would probably be at war, or at least heading up a NATO mission to exact vengeance on behalf of those who'd been invaded and occupied. Democracy Now! aired voices like those on Monday ... when they were audible. You see, there were a lot of technical problems with the broadcast, because early last week Goodman and her team were ordered out of the main studio at their station -- listener- supported Pacifica station WBAI. Interim General Manager Utrice Leid exiled them to an inferior substudio. I know the place. It's a wonder Goodman's crew can call across town from there, let alone across the world. Monday's guest -- who was reporting live from Jerusalem -- was barely audible and the program was plagued with ear-piercing feedback. It's no place from which to produce a national show that broadcasts live across the nation. Hell, that studio doesn't even have a working clock. Who knows whom Goodman interviewed this morning. I couldn't hear the show, and neither could my fellow listeners at more than thirty stations around the USA. Why? Because the people who've hijacked Pacifica -- the people's network, the network I've helped sustain for years with my work, love and, yes, my cash -- refused to air the show. Since Leid took over WBAI this past December, Goodman's been the target of harassment and abuse from Leid's team in what Leid (on air) has called a "war." Those who've listened in have heard it. Some have seen it for themselves. You can find out more on a slew of websites. But try to call WBAI as I did, and -- forget it -- Leid's voicemessage box is routinely full. On Friday, Goodman wrote to her Pacifica bosses, informing them that the crisis had escalated to physical violence. Leid apparently shoved Goodman physically and seized her camera when Goodman interrupted people rifling through the personal possessions of fired WBAI Program Director Bernard White. Having received no response over the weekend from Steve Yasko, her supervisor, on Monday, Amy wrote again. "The Democracy Now! team can no longer produce a program under these hate-filled and unprofessional conditions. We have no safe space at WBAI," she said, and she announced her intention to move elsewhere. Tuesday, Goodman broadcast from a reliable community media facility that sent her signal, as usual, to WPFW, the Pacifica station that transmits Pacifica national programming to Pacifica's satellite. And someone there in Washington decided not to send out the program. (Instead they ran an "encore" broadcast.) Goodman's bosses talk about professionalism. It's been the rallying cry for the Pacifica "reformers" for years and in some cases the excuse to purge programming and programmers that certain station managers didn't like. But there's nothing professional about what's going on at Pacifica. The denial this morning of Democracy Now! to a network of community stations that rely on Pacifica to bring them the broadcast -- that's not professional. As Christine Ahern, station manager of affiliate station WJFF in Jeffersonville, N.Y., put it Tuesday morning, "Professional? It's anything but." Ahern waited as usual for Democracy Now! this morning. Like more than 30 other stations, a few years back, she signed on at some expense with Pacifica's own KU satellite service, so Pacifica controls the flow of their programs to her audience. She heard the out-of-date tape and called WBAI. "Amy didn't call and she didn't come in," Ahern was told. Leid's voicemail box was full and the machine wasn't taking messages. Pacifica Executive Director Bessie Wash's machine in Washington was on. Calls to WBAI's direct, on-air line were not answered. By noon, no one had called Ahern back. It's par for the course, she says. "It's abominable how Pacifica treats us affiliates. They're don't return calls, they don't answer letters. They're not responsible." At this point, she says, "The only reason WJFF is an affiliate is to get Democracy Now!" Pacifica's treatment of Goodman, is indeed abominable. This is no way to treat the host of your most well-known and most acclaimed show. It is no way to treat clients -- those stations who give the Pacifica Foundation precious, pledge-drive donated dollars in exchange for reliable, high quality, programming. They have a right to the programming they pay for, and to communication and respect. It's also no way to treat us, the listeners, who pay -- or have until now paid -- the vast majority of the network's bills, and have fought, and still fight, to keep alive the nation's only commercial-free, listener-supported network of radio stations. (For a reminder of why this fight's important, read today's Wall St. Journal, on how Religious Right broadcasters are using FCC rules to expand their empire at NPR's expense.) Juan Gonzalez, who was Goodman's co-host on Democracy Now! until he resigned in protest earlier this year, is asking people who care to pick up the phone. Call the people who have taken control of Pacifica and tell them to stop the threats, slander and physical intimidation of Amy Goodman and to resign. Tell them to step aside and allow for new leadership to begin to rebuild. Contact information for the Pacifica board is available on many sites including Gonzalez's Pacifica Campaign (Pacificacampaign.org). You can also get updates through WBAI In Exile, KPFA and the Concerned Friends Hotline at 800-825-0055. Together, as Juan says, we can stop this madness. Pick up the phone. Do it now. © 2001 WorkingForChange.com
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The following article is a response to a document authored by "KPFK management" titled "Pacifica Myths and Realities" which has been posted on the websites of KPFK<www.kpfk.org> and The Nation magazine. <www.thenation.com> We encourage you to disseminate this response to anyone who might take an interest in the struggle to save Pacifica. Thanks to all our comrades who gave suggestions and criticism. Lyn =============== By Lyn Gerry and Edward S. Herman, May 23, 2001 Mark Schubb and his associates in, or close to, the management of KPFK-LA recently put up a statement entitled "Pacifica Myths and Realities," which was quickly placed on The Nation magazine's website. The statement is remarkable for the crudity of its apologetics for the Pacifica management. In Schubb's account, whereas the thousands of protesters and hundreds of fired employees never have a reasonable complaint or make a valid point, as with Alexander Solzhenitsyn's Soviet apparatchiks in "We Never Make Mistakes," so also Schubb's Pacifica management never makes mistakes. In his opening paragraphs Schubb chastises the "save Pacifica" forces who "use tactics completely counter to the Pacifica mission." This comes from a man who has aggressively used censorship, among other tactics and policies that are incompatible with the Pacifica tradition, as we describe below. His document is also an apologia for the Pacifica national board majority, that has not only consistently used censorship as an instrument of control, but has also hired union-busting firms to deal with its "labor problems," and has clearly set Pacifica on a path of centralization and mainstreamed content that abandons the Lewis Hill goals of local control and provision of a strong alternative voice. Schubb's statement is also notable in that, on each point it addresses, it misrepresents reality. Taking his points in order: 1. Schubb: "Myth: There has been a corporate takeover of the Pacifica National board." To which Schubb responds: "Reality. Untrue. Pacifica's board is little different than any other progressive nonprofit. There is no corporate influence or formal corporate presence on the board." REAL REALITY: There was a Pacifica board coup in 1999, as the board changed the bylaws to make itself completely self-selecting (see also #8 below). The claim that there is no "formal corporate presence" hides behind the word "formal." Businessmen in real estate and accounting, a home-construction industry lobbyist, a financial entrepreneur and a member of a corporate law firm with a specialty in union busting have been brought onto the board by the dominant control group and have been present and active. A New York banker was proposed by the management in 2000 but decided to withdraw because of the controversy. On the alleged absence of corporate influence, control groups on boards make overall policy, and enforce them not by board orders but through hirelings. Thus a WBAI is overhauled and dissidents are fired by people like Utrice Leid and Bessie Wash who are selected by the dominant members of the board to do the designated work. On the alleged absence of Pacifica's difference from other non- profits, the Sierra Club's board is elected by members. State ACLU chapters select their boards and national representatives via member elections. Popular/professional organizations like the American Historical Association elect their president and council by member elections. Pacifica's board of directors now selects itself, and it recognizes nobody else as having a formal binding role in governance. Pacifica's board, unlike other progressive nonprofits, is also being sued by listener-sponsors, by local advisory-board members, and even by five of its own directors, for misconduct. Pacifica has also been the subject of legislative hearings at the municipal, state and federal level initiated at the behest of constituents. Finally, unlike other nonprofits, the Pacifica management has ordered the arrest of its members and donors, many thousands of whom have protested, written letters, and are now boycotting the Pacifica fund drive in order to force its leadership to resign. 2. Schubb: "Myth: Pacifica wants to sell off one of its radio stations. Reality: Absolutely untrue.... the Pacifica National Board has passed multiple unanimous motions declaring that no station is for sale." REAL REALITY: Such motions and votes are meaningless. The dominant board members have a public relations incentive to give such a unanimous vote until they finally make a decision to sell; and they have discussed sale, secretly, and more than once. In 1997, Schubb himself told his Local Advisory Board that although selling stations was once taboo, it could now be openly discussed. And who would be discussing it but the Pacifica management? One such discussion was disclosed only as a result of a misdirected e-mail by board member Micheal Palmer, who proposed the sale of KPFA or WBAI. He was subsequently promoted to chair of the Pacifica Finance Committee and Treasurer of the Foundation. More to the point, Tomas Moran, one of the five directors suing the Pacifica Board, has tried since 1999 to get the Board to place a no- sale clause into the Pacifica bylaws. The Board majority refused to put forward his amendment. 3. Schubb: "Myth: Pacifica wants to water down or mainstream its programming by tilting toward the Democratic Party. Reality: The National Board has no direct authority over programming and has not made any directives or suggestions to any staff about the content of such [sic]." REAL REALITY: Schubb's statement glides over the well-known fact that board control is not normally exercised by direct intervention, but rather by bringing in managers like Mark Schubb, Garland Ganter, and Utrice Leid who will carry out the desired policies by firing dissidents and putting suitable people in their place. But the statement is also false in asserting that there is "absolutely no interference from program management." Schubb himself was present at a meeting called by the Pacifica management on September 14, 2000, where Schubb and others gave Amy Goodman detailed criticisms of her programming and style in a clear illustration of "interference from program management." Dissidents believe Pacifica is being mainstreamed for many reasons, and the Democratic Party establishment has played a well-documented role. Schubb's assertion ignores the strong connection of former Pacifica chair and Clinton appointee Mary Frances Berry to the Democrats; it also ignores explicit pressures from above. For example, in May 1997, the late WBAI Program Director Samori Marksman complained to the WBAI local board of pressure on Democracy Now! from Pacifica Executive Director Pat Scott. Scott told Amy Goodman to "go easy" on Clinton and to tone down her coverage of East Timor. Management was disturbed when Goodman interviewed Nader on the floor of the Republican Convention in 2000. Pacifica then claimed falsely that she had brought Nader in under the cover of her press credentials, and used that to deny her press credentials to the Democratic Convention. 4. Schubb: "Myth: KPFA in Berkeley was shut down by Pacifica after programmers were yanked from the air because they criticized Pacifica management. Reality: Not true." [Schubb gives a long version of the patience Pacifica management exercised before calling in the police, all necessary "in defense of its federal license"- - a seriously biased account that recycles an earlier one by Marc Cooper]. REAL REALITY: Schubb's statement that the difficulties began "after KPFA's manager was not renewed by Pacifica" ignores that a popular manager was fired as part of a long series of hostile interventions. Schubb's version is also contradicted by hard evidence: Pacifica ordered equipment to reroute KPFA's transmitter one month before the disruptive events that allegedly caused the takeover and shutdown. Plans for the shutdown had been discussed at the highest levels, as is shown by the misdirected e- mail message from a board member, sent the day before the lockout, which says, "But seriously, I was under the impression there was support in the proper quarters, and a definite majority, for shutting down that unit and re-programming immediately. Has that changed?" The notion that the takeover was needed to protect the license is also false. In 1954, KPFA broadcast a conversation between four marijuana smokers who could be heard smoking pot in the studio. The California State Attorney General seized the program, yet KPFA did not lose its license. In 1964, the Pacifica Foundation refused to sign a FCC-demanded anti-communist questionnaire without losing any licenses. KPFA went off the air in 1974 for a month due to a staff strike without losing its license. In 1975, the FCC cited WBAI for obscenity. Pacifica management took the case all the way to the Supreme Court and lost without WBAI losing its license. In 1977, disgruntled WBAI staff occupied the station's transmitter and locked themselves in the station for six weeks without WBAI losing its license. 5. Schubb: "Myth: Pacifica carried out a 'Xmas Coup' this past December in its New York City station WBAI. Reality: [Schubb states there was a December 23 call by "'dissidents' and some staff" to occupy the studios; "In response," the top management dismissed the manager, installed Utrice Leid, and Leid "requested that the locks be changed at WBAI to thwart the planned takeover..."] REAL REALITY: The changing of the locks at WBAI was carried out at night on December 22nd by Pacifica Executive Director Bessie Wash and now-interim general manager Utrice Leid--one day before Schubb's alleged occupation threat. This takeover was planned well in advance during secret negotiations with Leid. (Weeks before Leid was tapped to seize the station, another staffer, who publicly declined due to staff resistance, had been asked by Pacifica management to replace WBAI's general manager, Valerie van Isler.) Despite criticism of van Isler, many in the WBAI community--staff, LAB and listeners--were opposed to her unilateral and sudden removal by Pacifica national the night of the 22nd. Although Leid announced there would be no program changes, within hours and days of the midnight coup, veteran staffers, paid and unpaid, were fired and banned from the station. Security guards were installed, and access to the station was, and continues to be, restricted. Leid has also banned the Local Advisory Board from meeting on site. Arrests occurred when they tried. A vicious on-air campaign of racist character assassination by Leid and her loyalists continues to this day. False charges of violence against the resistance movement have also been alleged by Leid and Pacifica management. After a month of open, on-air debate following the take-over, Leid imposed a gag rule which she now uses to censor only her detractors--including U.S. Congressman Major Owens, cut off in mid-sentence. Leid has also fired and banned many of WBAI's most prominent radical, as well as female, voices. To date, over 20 staff members have been purged, while the progressive content of the station has been dramatically reduced. Leid also pre-emptively censored the WBAI Local News recently, preventing coverage of New York City Council investigations into WBAI. This news censorship is the first at WBAI in recent memory, and continues the ugly practice of news censorship around the network in recent years by Pacifica management as it has tried to colonize and reprogram each sister station (see Chronology of Censorship, www.savepacifica.net/strike). As Leid has proclaimed: "WBAI is not to be the station of the left." [April 30, 2001, WBAI staff meeting] 6. Schubb: "Myth: Pacifica and KPFK muzzle open on-air discussion with a 'gag rule'. Reality: Not true...no gag rule." REAL REALITY: Schubb's claim that there is no "gag rule" is based on the contention that the ban on discussion of supposedly "internal issues" on air is standard practice and is therefore not gagging. But there is a double deception here. First, although Schubb justifies his policies on the grounds that programmers are "speaking 'at' the listeners with no rebuttal," his gag rule also applies to discussion initiated by listeners. In a February 28, 1996 memo, he informed station personnel that they would be expelled permanently if they failed to hang up on callers who raised Pacifica issues or even announced community meetings to discuss such issues. Volunteers who answer pledge calls during fundraising have also been told that discussion of Pacifica matters is forbidden in the phone room. Schubb's gag order extends even to the outside activities of interviewees that displease him. Last October, after participating in a demonstration in support of Democracy Now!, Cliff Tasner, a campaign finance reform analyst, was told that his interview on KPFK was cancelled because of his participation in the protest. In an e-mail exchange with Marc Cooper, Cooper explained to Tasner that "the first rule of politics is that you reward your friends and punish your enemies." The gag order of course does not extend to defenses of Pacifica's management and denunciations of opponents of that management. Thus on May 22nd, as part of an on-air fund-raiser, Marc Cooper spent some 50 minutes in a diatribe against those boycotting Pacifica and KPFK--"saboteurs," "self-appointed commissars," knuckle-heads," ding-a-lings," all suffering "delusions" as they interfered with "our mission-driven programming." (Cooper should check out Schubb's 1998 advisory to staff to aim their political message at the "center," in order to increase their market share, noted under 9 below.) Second, the alteration of Pacifica's policies, programming and purposes are not merely internal issues. They are matters that the communities that support Pacifica have a right to be informed of, and discuss. Those at the top of Pacifica have known from the beginning that traditional constituencies would object to Pacifica's new direction, as evidenced by a July 1995 memo from the Pacifica executive committee: "At the October, 1994 National Board meeting, the Board mandated that the station managers re-configure programming to better serve core listeners in each signal area, to develop more relevant and professional programming and to, thereby, increase the audience. We were mindful that this would unfortunately inconvenience, if not distress, some staff, board and audience members. It will mean that there will be many alterations to current and long-standing practices at the stations...If there are indications that actions are being taken collectively or individually to countermand the policies, directives, and mandates of the Pacifica Board, the Board will take appropriate steps." 7. Schubb. "Myth: Amy Goodman who hosts Democracy Now! is being persecuted for her political ideas. Reality: [Goodman] ...has never been given any directives regarding the content of the program...When a program manager was finally named last year and some efforts were made to address longstanding non-editorial problems at Democracy Now!, some falsely politicized the situation by portraying Ms. Goodman as a victim of ideological discrimination." She has been removed from the Wake-Up Call program on WBAI, after first being subjected to a hostile co-host who referred to her as a "racist" and a "bitch". Following her removal, other WBAI hosts were told they were barred from having her on their programs as a guest or co-host. Her Democracy Now! offerings have been repeatedly dropped for reasons that would appear to be content related. The program itself, often described as national Pacifica's "flagship", was recently moved, without notice, from WBAI's main studio to a smaller one not properly equipped for the broadcast. KPFK and WBAI phone room personnel have been instructed to tell listeners who are calling to complain about the removal of current Democracy Now! broadcasts during fundraising, that Goodman refused to fund-raise, a lie, and that their requests for the program's return will insure its permanent removal. Goodman said that Pacifica management informed her, "KPFK General Manager Mark Schubb did not want me to fund raise live on the air." Goodman has filed grievances for harassment and censorship, but no doubt she is confusing politics with the "longstanding non- editorial problems" that Schubb says is all there is to the matter. 8. Schubb. "Myth: Local Advisory Boards are fighting to democratize the Pacifica National Board. Reality: The National Board of Pacifica is no more or less democratic that the average nonprofit board. However, the Local Advisory Board (LAB) is completely self-selecting and not in any way accountable to the individual stations. In the case of KPFK, the current LAB has been hijacked by a small group of anti-Pacifica zealots...the overwhelming majority of KPFK staff have formally demanded that the leadership of the LAB resign..." REAL REALITY: We pointed out earlier that the Pacifica board is less democratic than that of many other nonprofits, and is completely self-selecting. What is more, it has consolidated its control by illegally removing the rights of the LAB's to elect a majority of the national board (an issue in all three lawsuits in process against the Pacifica management). While ignoring this national board move to self-selection, Schubb has the audacity to castigate the LAB's as "completely self-selecting" and unaccountable, as if this were really bad business! He also ignores the fact that the KPFA LAB already holds subscriber elections, that the KPFK LAB has passed a motion in support of developing an election process, and that the listener law suit specifically calls for the institution of elected LABs. When people who oppose Schubb take power they "hijack" the institution, whereas the Pacifica management can self-select and be unaccountable without criticism. Needless to say, he fails to show in any way that the LABs, who are "unpaid volunteers" (a phrase he uses to put his Pacifica board allies in a good light), are not trying to democratize Pacifica. His statement that the majority of the KPFK staff oppose the local LAB proves only that Schubb's extensive firings of staff and volunteers who have disagreed with him (more than 150 people have been removed during his tenure) has left KPFK with a staff that will find that Schubb "never makes mistakes." 9. Schubb. "Myth: Pacifica and KPFK have committed various acts of censorship. Reality: This is a lie." [He claims involves only "a handful of incidents in which individual programmers have irresponsibly diverted air time from programming air [sic] their personal grievances..."] REAL REALITY: Schubb normalizes a gag rule as a reasonable, non-censorship policy. We have noted under #6 (above) that the gag rule has been applied to disciplining outsiders, and does not restrict pro-management commentaries on Pacifica issues. We should also point out that as any believer in free speech and/or opponent of the ongoing mainstreaming of Pacifica will tend to violate the gag rule, it has been a useful vehicle for weeding out both leftists and other merely principled people from KPFK and Pacifica. But even on his definition of censorship that excludes the gag rule, Schubb misstates the facts. An attempt was made to censor Amy Goodman with Schubb's help in Washington on September 14, 2000, as we have noted, and all the attacks on her, and threats of discipline, have been a form of censorship. Pacifica News Director Dan Coughlin, whose removal in 1999 for covering a Pacifica story prompted Pacifica News stringers to strike against censorship, reported constant pressures regarding content: "I was also told by the [Pacifica] executive director to tone down the news coverage. CPB [the Corporation for Public Broadcasting] wanted me to tone down the news coverage, to be more "balanced" as they put it. Especially this was at the time of the war against Yugoslavia, and they didn't want to hear ... about 'our boys' dropping bombs and killing babies in Iraq. We don't want to hear about that on our airwaves. We don't want to hear about the police brutality." Programmers at KPFK have also been given directives about political content: in February 1998, a memo was issued that forbade hosts to encourage listeners to demonstrate against the resumption of bombing in Iraq; a few months later, 30 programmers were briefed by Schubb and instructed to aim their political message to the "center" in the name of increasing audience size. Those attending Schubb's presentation were told that Pacifica was aiming for "balance" and "objectivity." "If you're gonna do a program on Jews, "Schubb reportedly said, "you better include a Nazi." At a deeper level, the struggle at Pacifica is fundamentally about censorship: about who will be allowed to speak on Pacifica's airwaves, what they will be allowed to say, who will decide this and by what process. The Pacifica that Schubb speaks for is not only censoring directly and on a daily basis, it is imposing a new system that will cause Pacifica, as Utrice Leid says, to no longer be "a station of the left." 10. Schubb. "Myth: The current 'dissident campaign' is aimed at making the programming and management of Pacifica and KPFK more progressive." Reality: [In a nutshell: It was to help the lawsuits and ongoing boycott, which can only hurt Pacifica.] REAL REALITY: Why those thousands should be spending money and time on lawyers and boycotts is incomprehensible to a man who cannot admit decent intentions on the part of people with whom he disagrees and who are challenging the vested interests he represents. He mentions that the Pacific board serves as "unpaid volunteers," implying decent motives, but the thousands spending time and money to get rid of the controlling Pacifica management bewilders Schubb and must be "irresponsible" like those programmers who insist on talking about Pacifica issues. In fact, the goal of the protesters is to remove a management at Pacifica that has abandoned the traditional Pacifica aims and attempted to impose a new mission by attacking local control, community participation, worker democracy and freedom of speech and association. An authoritarian hierarchy has been established with no mechanisms of accountability to the communities that have built and sustained Pacifica for over 50 years. Instead, in the words of a Pacifica spokesperson, Pacifica is now to be accountable only to "the IRS, the CPB, [and] the FCC." [San Francisco Bay Guardian, March 3, 1999] Former Pacifica CEO Pat Scott, a prime mover of the Pacifica takeover, declared at a 1996 "Media and Democracy Congress" that the goal of the reconfiguration was to make Pacifica a "leader of the progressive movement", while she simultaneously advocated corporate-style management. Neither Scott nor Schubb understands that if Pacifica wants to lead a pro-democracy movement, it must embody its aspirations. 11. Schubb: "Myth: Pacifica is engaged in 'union busting,' workers are being mistreated, and there is a 'strike' against Pacifica National News (PNN). Reality: ... Some non-union stringers...claim to be 'on strike' against Pacifica and have attacked unionized staff members... But these stringers do not seek union representation, only editorial control over the work of others. This gross misuse of the rhetoric of union struggle..." REAL REALITY: The list of past and present grievances, unfair labor practice charges and litigation related to wrongful terminations against Pacifica management is too long to list here, but is catalogued at http://www.glib.com/union.html and http://www.radio4all.org/fp/workers.htm Prior to 1995, Pacifica stations had a union contract that made management financially accountable to workers by allowing them access to the books. The contract also mandated worker approval of any organizational restructuring. Unpaid workers at WBAI and KPFA were included in the bargaining unit. In 1995, when Pacifica management began to centralize control over programming content as well as finances, it hired a notorious union-busting firm, the American Consulting Group (ACG), to write a new contract that stripped power from workers in order to allow management to clean house of their political opponents. Management also brought a case before the National Labor Relations Board to force the exclusion of unpaid workers from the union. The management lied about its relationship with ACG when it became public, hiring the first of many PR spokespersons to deal with outraged donors. Since then it has employed a variety of attorneys to abridge the rights of workers, including, most recently, Epstein, Becker and Green, the firm of Pacifica Board member John Murdock, whose website boasts of its successes in preventing unions in the workplace. More than 40 Pacifica News stringers have organized to withdraw their labor to demand an end to censorship throughout the network and the freedom to do critical, accurate reporting about controversies within Pacifica. The strike, the withholding of labor in order to affect social policy, is one of the cornerstones of labor activism and is no way limited to the demand for a contract. Schubb's disparaging reference to the "ideologically-driven" nature of the stringers' demands implies that wages and benefits are the only allowable arenas for worker activism. Schubb's assertion reveals the goals behind the union busting at Pacifica: the destruction of any countervailing power base that could impact Pacifica policy. As the repeated incidents of political censorship we have documented demonstrate, this struggle is not about ideology versus non-ideology; rather it is about giving a particular group of people the ability to control which ideology is disseminated by this significant media outlet. Pacifica was founded to stand for certain principles: free discourse on controversial issues, challenging the prejudices and propaganda of the rulers, resisting war, exploitation and empire, and fostering the dignity and creativity of the individual by giving her a voice. The Pacifica control group does not recognize these principles and its course has clearly aimed at their abandonment. KPFK reporter Robin Urevich, in a 1999 article that led to her banning (and later reinstatement due to community pressure) wrote, "People who came to KPFK because they felt they'd be able to report on issues they were passionate about are mostly gone. Newsroom conversation is less about issues and more about where to find a job at the very radio and television outlets that come under so much criticism on the station's own airwaves. It's proven next to impossible to encourage news and public affairs staff to question authority outside the station while suppressing disagreement inside. The 'world of ideas' that KPFK promises in station promos is an increasingly narrow one. There is little diversity of opinion at 90.7 FM" REAL REALITY: To get involved in the struggle to return Pacifica to its progressive roots, contact the Pacifica Campaign at www.pacificacampaign.org
For further information: * <http://www.boycottkpfk.org> |
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Message From Jeff Cohen of
FAIR I wish I could be with you at this historic forum. Pacifica's national leadership is increasingly isolated. It is a mark of their isolation that these leaders would not join this public discussion, while their supporters have worked feverishly behind-the-scenes to subvert the event. Meanwhile, the growing movement to transform Pacifica's leadership and establish a more democratic and accountable structure for Pacifica speaks with increasing maturity. FAIR is proud to be a co-sponsor of this forum, and proud to be on record since 1999 calling for Pacifica's national board leadership to step down. The last few years have seen some of the most gifted broadcasters in the history of Pacifica fired or forced out of their jobs. As the mass firings and bannings have escalated at WBAI, Pacifica's national management still refuses to explain its actions, saying it can't account for all the disappeared staffers out of respect for private "personnel matters." This is no more credible than the leaders of El Salvador saying they can't account for their role in mass killings out of respect for their victims' medical privacy. To be silent in the face of increasing censorship, harassment and dismissals of so many talented broadcasters at Pacifica -- like Amy Goodman, Bernard White, Sharan Harper, Dan Coughlin, Verna Avery-Brown, Larry Bensky, Nicole Sawaya and Dennis Bernstein -- is akin to being silent during the Hollywood blacklisting. Apologists for Pacifica's unaccountable, self-appointed leadership have urged us to stop "Pacifica-bashing." But we are about "Pacifica-saving," working to preserve Pacifica as free-speech radio, the most important independent broadcasting network in our country's history.
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Mr. Daly Temchine c/o Epstein Becker & Green February 22, 2001 Dear Mr. Temchine: Thank you for responding to my letter of January 25, 2001 regarding what I believe to be your company's role in the attempted theft of the Pacifica network, as well as for sending John Murdock's revised bylaws for the Pacifica Foundation. Contrary to what you infer, my statements in the initial letter were based upon my reading of the document and not upon "secondary sources consisting of the opinions of others with a stake in a particular conclusion." I have closely observed the disaster within the Pacifica network as it unfolded over the past two years -- a calamity for which Dr. Mary Frances Berry is very largely responsible. Dr. Berry is long overdue for an ethics probe by both the University of Pennsylvania and the professional organizations to which she belongs because of actions which have so signally disgraced the academic profession. To explain why I have charged your firm with the theft of public property in my previous letter, and why I am NOT misinformed by malevolent third parties about widespread censorship and violations of civil rights which began in earnest under the board presidency of Dr. Berry, let me address at the length it deserves your third paragraph: "I will confess that it has been sometime since I took a geography course, and therefore lack the background to connect the relevance of media concentration to that subject. Nonetheless, I trust that when you discuss the subject with your students, you will provide them with copies of the enclosed materials in order to maintain integrity and objectivity in your teaching. Certainly, one of the greatest impacts a teacher can have on students is to empower them to think independently." That is precisely the point. How are my students (or anyone else) to "think independently" when they have virtually no opportunity for exposure to independent and non-corporate news other than their brief tenure at the university? Geography, as taught at the university level, is not a matter of having the students memorize the names of state capitals and rivers. We study regional differences and interrelations, ethnic variations and accomodations, and above all, the human use and abuse of the earth. Places are, as we academically say, socially constructed, and therefore, if a reporter such as Amy Goodman is told by management that she should not report on unpleasant events in East Timor or Peru, and if she complies, those places effectively cease to exist, as do the cause of those unpleasantries for listeners in the United States. As you no doubt know, that editing of place well serves those who may be responsible for the carnage and who have, through media synergies, some considerable say in what they wish the public to know or to remain ignorant of. That is what I learned when I worked in both public and private television broadcasting in the 1980s. I watched from within as the management of PBS affiliate KQED increasingly permitted advertising on "listener supported" TV. As it did so, the range of permissable discussion steadily contracted. In the place of provocative prime time discussion of and documentaries about complex and chronic issues so necessary for an informed electorate, KQED now broadcasts "Antique Roadshow," Hollywood "classics," and celebrity features -- along with the full-blown commercials which determine what will NOT be shown. Entertainment replaced education as public televsion was privatized, and public debate was accordingly impoverished. Needless to say, no democracy can long survive under such conditions, and events of the past election strongly suggest that it may have already ceased to exist in this country. Many teachers today comment on the stupefaction of students who have been long exposed to the narrow bandwidth of discussion available on the monopolized and commercial-saturated media. I returned to the university in 1992 to take my doctorate because, by that time, I was desperate for a place that permitted a degree of free inquiry which had nearly vanished in the debased environment of all-pervasive, all-commercialized mass media. It is for these reasons that I have dedicated myself to seeing that Pacifica is freed of the corporate cat-burglars whom Dr. Berry installed on the board and who have amply demonstrated their hostility to Pacifica's historical mission by nearly destroying an institution which has been critical to the cultural and intellectual life of this country for more than half a century. Dr. Berry teaches at the very university which was the academic home of my mentor, Lewis Mumford -- a man who combined brilliant synthetic scholarship with outspoken moral suasion. Berry, on the other hand, has boasted of her "take-no-prisoner" management style which has shattered lives, silenced free speech, provoked racial animosity, grossly mismanaged donor funds, and flagrantly and repeatedly violated due process. Before officially leaving the board, she hired your firm to represent herself and other board members -- including John Murdock -- against lawsuits brought by listeners and others, apparently using listener donations to pay for their defense. After so much damage inflicted on others, it is time that Berry undergo the scrutiny of her peers. Sincerely, Dr. Gray Brechin |
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WBAI: THE COUP ON WALL ST. "Information is the raw material for new ideas; if you get misinformation, you get some pretty fu---d-up ideas." -- Eldridge Cleaver, former Minister of Information, Black Panther Party. With late-night lock changes, and a phalanx of security guards prowling the halls, the coup of WBAI-FM, the flagship station of the Pacifica Network, has begun. Popular veterans of the listener-supported station, like program manager Bernard White and WBAI union shop steward Sharan Harper, (both producers of the morning "Wake Up Call" show) received letters of termination at their homes several hours before their shifts were to begin. WBAI general manager, Valerie Van Isler, who, like White, was a 20-year vet of the station, was similarly fired by Pacifica, ostensibly for failing to accept a position at network headquarters in Washington, D.C. While these firings were attempts to remove, and thereby install, management personnel, it was also an opening salvo in a pitched battle designed to silence radical dissent, and open the airwaves to the corporatization of WBAI. If you want WBAI to become a nice, sweet, safe alternative, like NPR, then do nothing. It will happen. If, however, you want to continue to hear about the struggles of the peoples of the world for liberty, for life, for dignity, as in East Timor; or of the noble life and death struggle of the zapatistas in the mountains of Mexico; or of cases like the slaughter of African immigrant Amadou Diallo; or of the continuing human rights violations occurring every day in the nation's burgeoning prison-industrial complex, then you must fight for it, as you would fight for your very life, or anything dear to you. The great Frederick Douglass perhaps put it best when he said, "Without struggle there is no progress." If the various communities of New York and northern New Jersey don't struggle for their vision of WBAI-FM, it will be gone. It's as simple as that. What's happening at 'BAI was attempted a year ago at KPFA-FM in San Francisco. The people of the Bay Area rallied in unprecedented strength--over 10,000 folks at one protest -- and backed the Pacifica board down. Listeners to 'BAI must do no less! In theory at least, the airwaves belong to the people. For the last 40 years, the staff and local management of WBAI have tried to make that theory in America a reality. If you are thrilled by the no-holds-barred radio reporting of "Democracy Now's" Amy Goodman, who is constantly threatened and harassed by the Pacifica board for her radical reporting, then fight for her. For in fighting for her, you fight for the finest traditions of WBAI, and against the corporationists who want to turn a national resource into just another commodity. To keep it raw; to keep it real, you've got to fight for it. (c)MAJ 2001 ************************************************************************************ Text (c) copyright 2001 by Mumia Abu-Jamal. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission of the author. Get Mumia's columns by email: http://www.MumiaBook.com |
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PROGRAMMING MAYHEM AT KPFK By Vince Ivory
"Due to unresolved issues with the management of KPFK, Folkscene was canceled on Friday October 13th. If you want to see Folkscene back on the air, please express your concerns to KPFK general manager Mark Schubb at (818) 985-2711. If you have any more questions, you can email Folkscene from this web site. For any further updates, please watch this web site." That web site is: www.folkscene.com, and the "issues" involve the refusal of program producers Roz & Howard Larman to cave in to the harassment, yelling, intimidation and blatant lying of KPFK management. They were informed that "Folkscene" was off the air after 30 years in a fax. People who called into the fund drive during "Folkscene's" usual time (as tape of another program was broadcast), were read a prepared statement that it was hoped that "Folkscene" would return the following week. It didn't. The Larmans have refused to sign the "Y2K Compliant KPFK Programming Agreement." (For the full text of the agreement, go to: www.pacfolio.org and click documents.) The "Y2K Compliant KPFK Programming Agreement" first appeared at KPFK early this year, demanding that all programmers (paid and unpaid) sign over ownership of their programs to KPFK and Pacifica. The legally bogus pretext of the agreement is that plans to webcast KPFK raised copyright issues which could only be resolved by the station owning everything. In a memo dated 3/30/00 and attached to a revised agreement, KPFK General Manager Mark Schubb wrote that as soon as all the programmers signed, the station could begin webcasting. "Please return your signed form right away; we could start streaming as early as next week," Schubb wrote. Nearly seven months later, KPFK is still not webcasting, but "Mike Hodel's Hour 25" is. This science fiction program, begun by the late Mike Hodel in 1972, left KPFK last September and is now an internet radio program (www.hour25.org). As with "Folkscene," the producer and host of "Hour 25" had refused to sign the "Y2K Compliant KPFK Programming Agreement." Schubb demanded not only ownership of that program, but credit for producing it. This would have given him the option to fire the volunteer producer and host at any time, and carry on the program with other people. Schubb also argued that the agreement was needed to protect the station from potential lawsuits. The fact that this program had been broadcast for 28 years without a lawsuit might be enough to dismiss this concern, but the host of "Hour 25" offered to buy insurance which would indemnify KPFK. Schubb refused this offer, and demanded that they sign the agreement. Producer Suzanne Gibson and host Warren James left what used to be called "free speech radio" and took their program to the web. James issued a statement which reads in part: "We offered to continue to provide KPFK with the show - at no charge - for broadcast over the air along with the rights for non-exclusive webcasting and archiving over the net. However, the station's general manager has told us that he would only broadcast the show if he owned it, but he would not broadcast it if he didn't own it. "As you can imagine we were not happy with this and think of it as a violation of the relationship between Hour 25 and the station as well as a breaking of faith with the listeners who have supported the show and the station for so many years. "We did not encourage people to write to the station about this since the station manager had told us that he didn't pay attention to letters, calls or emails from listeners, even listener sponsors." As some programmers confronted by the "Y2K Compliant KPFK Programming Agreement" consulted their attorneys, Schubb kept up the pressure. He told programmer A that programmer B had already signed the agreement, when they had not. He told them that the agreement is needed for webcasting, while KPFA has been webcasting for many months with no such agreement. Perhaps it would have been better for Schubb if he'd actually consulted an attorney before going down this road. When Schubb is not busy trying to seize ownership of home-grown volunteer efforts, he's part of an effort to tone down Democracy Now!, and get rid of host Amy Goodman. In a memo to Pacifica's Board of Directors and Executive Director dated 10/18/00, Goodman describes a 9/14/00 meeting with General Managers from the five Pacifica stations: "KPFK Manager Mark Schubb, expressed his repeated criticism that audiences don't want to hear graphic details of police brutality before breakfast, or as he said last year "before I have my coffee." He criticized our coverage of Mumia Abu-Jamal, East Timor and questioned why I asked Spike Lee about his affiliation with Nike." (For the full text of the memo, go to www.radio4all.org/freepacifica) KPFK's Fall Fund Drive has just concluded, with $465,334 in pledges. KPFK and Pacifica management may point to this as validation of all they do and how they do it, but there is more to the story. An increasing use of non-donated premiums raises questions about the net income of the fund drives, but these data are not available to us. Leftover premiums, many of which are donations secured by volunteer programmers, are sold at KPFK parking lot sales. Accounting for money raised at the parking lot sales is also not available to us. KPFK's website (www.kpfk.org) claims that there are 11,000 subscribers. If that is accurate, it's almost 3,000 less than it was ten years ago. The inescapable conclusion is that more money is coming from fewer people. Those people probably fit a different demographic profile than subscribers of several years ago, and that's probably not an accident. One way in which we in Southern California can express our feelings about what's really going on at KPFK and Pacifica is the KPFK Pledge on Hold (www.pacfolio.org). This is not a boycott. Whether or not you currently subscribe to KPFK, you can use this form to state how much you would contribute to the station and list your own conditions under which you will honor that pledge. We can also attend and participate in KPFK Local Advisory Board meetings. Announcements of upcoming meetings and other information on the Local Advisory Boards of all five Pacifica stations can be found at www.stationadvisoryboards.org.
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THE PACIFICA COUNTERREVOLUTION
HITS WBAI: Edward S. Herman One of the most crushing series of blows to the U.S. left, and to democracy in this country, has been the gradual transformation of the five station Pacifica Radio network from locally-based and left-oriented stations into centrally controlled, mainstream institutions. Before 1990, all five stations in the network were locally oriented, locally managed with strong inputs from local audiences and employees, and both highly political and progressive. During the 1990s, however, three of the stations--Houston, Washington and Los Angeles--were pushed into the mainstream by the Pacifica management, with only KPFA in Berkeley and WBAI in New York City remaining as holdovers of the earlier tradition. On December 26, however, the Washington management seized control of WBAI, removing the long-time manager Valerie Van Isler, firing Program Director Bernard White and producer Sharan Harper without notice, changing the locks on the doors in the middle of the night, and installing a new manager from within the WBAI staff secretly primed for her new job. Only people on an approved list, which did not include Pacifica Foundation board member Leslie Cagan, were admitted to the station on December 27. There has been nothing democratic about any actions of the Pacifica management for many years, and with one of its board members a member of a law firm with a specialty in union-busting, the management has long mastered the art of using every trick in that trade. It will be recalled that the Pacifica management had tried to remake KPFA in Berkeley several years ago, locking out the employees, firing many, bringing in security forces and strikebreakers, but meeting such resistance, with 10,000 protesters in the streets, and getting such negative publicity that the management had to retreat. The stalemate resulted in a tacit settlement that gave KPFA and WBAI temporary autonomy and led to the appointment of several new representatives of the audiences and stations to the Pacifica board. But this settlement was only temporary, and the new board members quickly discovered that they were not listened to and were kept outside any decision-making process, sometimes by illegal actions (and two of the dissident board members have an ongoing suit against the board based on these illegalities). That the central management was on the march again, and that a takeover of WBAI might be in the works, was suggested by the sustained attack on Amy Goodman and her Democracy Now! program that escalated this past September and October. Goodman has long been harassed by the Pacifica top management for her lack of sympathy with Clinton and general failure to stick with the approved media agenda. She was brought to Washington in September and told quite clearly that her focus on East Timor, capital punishment, Mumia Abu-Jamal, Lori Berenson (etc.) was excessive. Former board chair Mary Frances Berry called her "troublesome," and said that she had "embarrassed" the network, possibly meaning Berry herself and her friends and colleagues in the Democratic Party. In October Goodman was once again brought to Washington and directly threatened with termination unless she refrained from using volunteers and cleared her programs in advance in Washington (among other demands). She immediately filed a grievance with the union for harassment and censorship. A problem for the Pacifica elite is that Goodman's show heavily outdraws their regular news programs, and most other Pacifica programs as well. This makes it awkward for them as they claim to be reforming Pacifica in the interest of enlarging audience size, which they have been trying to do by substituting popular music for politics (and softening any politics that remains). But Goodman's show and its successes in drawing audiences suggests that critical politics can be quite popular if done well. That she is regarded negatively by the Pacifica brass reflects political bias and a determination to defang and depoliticize the network in accord with the biases of the top management and their constituency. The constituency of the "old Pacifica" was the local audiences and employees and volunteers; the constituency of the "new Pacifica" of Bessie Wash and Mary Frances Berry is Washington power brokers, officials of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and the Democratic Party. Even the New York Times notes that the Pacifica Foundation was initially based on "a lack of corporate control and its dedication to peace," and represented "grass roots, alternative broadcasting" (Jayson Blair, "Pacifica Foundation Locks WBAI Station Manager Out of Office," Dec, 28, 2000). The "new Pacifica" has changed course, and has abandoned both its grass roots base and alternative broadcasting. Its attack on Amy Goodman and the current takeover of WBAI are a part of this de-democratization and political neutering. This process has resulted from the capture of the Pacifica Foundation by a small group of liberal technocrats and Democratic Party-linked officials, who have added to their controlling board membership businesspeople in the real estate, construction, and corporate law fields to support them in their remaking of Pacifica. They have moved Pacifica's headquarters from Berkeley to Washington DC, in keeping with the shift in their constituency from audiences and employees to Washington power brokers. We are dealing here with a kind of coup d'etat, and a systematic destruction of a major left institution in the wake of that coup. Given the importance of the media in hegemonic processes, and in contesting those processes, what is happening to Pacifica, and now WBAI, should be first order business for the left. This was our only radio network, and it is being destroyed! It is a horrifying fact that a chunk of the left actually signed Saul Landau's letter in 1999 which defended the Pacifica management and urged the left to stop its "Pacifica bashing," with "Pacifica" identified with the management group that was destroying the old Pacifica and picking off left journalists and stations one by one. Some of the signers are people trying, for example, to contest corporate globalization, a subject on which Amy Goodman and the old WBAI would give their contesting position extensive and friendly coverage, but which the emerging "new Pacifica" will ignore or treat perfunctorily. (The "new Pacifica" Washington station WPFW, formerly run by current Pacifica Executive Director Bessie Wash, has been notoriously uninterested in protests against not only the dominant political party conventions, but those against the World Bank and IMF.) The lack of left solidarity involved in signing the Landau letter is equalled only by the sheer short-sightedness and stupidity of helping destroy a media institution that was a natural ally, if not part of the left itself. The battle over Pacifica and WBAI is not over. There are mounting protests against the WBAI takeover, and there are at least three legal suits in process against the Pacifica Foundation control group. I would urge people to get into action now. This is important! It was encouraging to see the New York Times finally come up with an article on December 28 putting the WBAI takeover in a negative light for both tactics and implied violation of organizational purpose. This is the time to move into action with letters, phone calls, picketing, and contributions to the funding of legal responses to illegitimate authority. Information on the issues and names and actions under way can be obtained from these key sites: Hotline: 800-825-0055 to volunteer Local WBAI sites: Sites: general info and background: |
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CENSORSHIP AS A PACIFICA MANAGEMENT
TOOL Studying the recent history of Pacifica over the past several weeks, I have been once again impressed with how important a role censorship has played in the tactics and apparent strategy of the Pacifica management. Censorship by the use of gag rules has been used for years now to quiet dissent from management policies--but while it has reduced discussion of Pacifica policies on the air, it has certainly not quelled dissent; on the contrary, it has intensified protest by angering both people who oppose management policies and want them discussed openly as well as those who oppose censorship on principle. But this failure to quell dissent has been serviceable to the deeper management strategy of weeding out leftists and those unduly wedded to principles like freedom of expression. Such individuals will tend to violate the gag rules or sign petitions and speak out against them, and this can then be used as the basis of firing people--this has been done to dozens of Pacifica workers. Most recently, George Reiter, a professor of physics at the University of Houston, producer of the new program, Thresholds, on Houston's station KPFT, was ousted for participating in a protest supporting Democracy Now! KPFT station chief Garland Ganter, who did the firing, is a favorite of the Pacifica management, who rushed him up to KPFA to handle matters during the KPFA lockout. It is amazing that this structured violation of principles of freedom of expression has not unduly upset the ACLU or editors of The Nation magazine, and was not viewed as justifying any "management bashing" by the signers of Saul Landau's letter of last year. This despite the fact that, in addition to violating free speech rights, the censorship system was being used systematically to get rid of quality people. Of course it was being done nominally because these folks were violating management orders and rules established for everyone equally. So they were merely "personnel" decisions. But how this could fool anyone who didn't want to be fooled escapes me. The ability to rationalize censorship is also striking--the spirit of the commissar is widespread among those with a bit of power. When PNN News Director Dan Coughlin ran a 20-second report on a boycott of Pacifica by 16 affiliated stations protesting censorhip, he was denounced by Marc Cooper: "What the hell was this doing on a news broadcast?" And Cooper also expressed discomfort at some of the "global conflict reporting by Jeremy Scahill" (who worked for Amy Goodman). Three days after this outburst and Cooper's complaint to the Pacifica management, Dan Coughlin was deposed (and without a hearing). (See Ed Pearl, "Cloak and Dagger! Out of the Mouth of Marc Cooper," Los Angeles Free Press, February 19, 2000 [http://www.radio4all.org/2000/0219cloakdagger.htm]). And just a few days ago, Cliff Tasner, a member of the board of the Southern California Americans for Democratic Action, was called on the phone by Cooper after he had participated in a rally and protest for Goodman and Democracy Now!, and was told, after considerable vituperation, "Don't expect us to broadcast anything you do." Several days later Tasner found that he had indeed been barred from access to the station. As chair of the ADA's campaign finance reform committee and a spokesperson for ADA on a phony campaign finance reform measure on the California ballot, he had been planning a presentation on that proposition on KPFK's morning show. While discussing the arrangements with the show's producer, however, he was told that he could not expect them to put him on after his involvement in the protest. In the event, another speaker was found to discuss the measure. In an e-mail exchange with Marc Cooper, Cooper had explained to Tasner that the first rule of politics is that you reward your friends and punish your enemies, adding further that actions have consequences and that Tasner should be aware of that when he makes his choices. In short, the gag rule and censorship extends beyond Pacifica personnel to anybody who crosses the local Pacifica commissars. In the "new Pacifica" tradition, Amy Goodman is being set up for ouster as a "personnel" decision based on her failure to follow orders. But the censorship element is overwhelmingly strong. Cooper didn't like that "global conflict reporting" by Scahill--but read Amy Goodman for Scahill--Mary Frances Berry referred to her in public as "troublesome," and the Censorship Management clearly wants to drive her out or fire her for reasons of hostility to her content. But they can't admit that--the censorship has to be transformed into her being troublesome and failing to obey supposedly reasonable orders by her boss Steve Yasko. One of the most amusing rationalizations for her harassment and censorship can be read in KPFK station manager Mark Schubb's recent letter to Saul Landau answering Amy Goodman's grievance list (and my article on "Endgame at Pacifica?"). Schubb was one of the management enforcers at the September 14 meeting with Goodman in Washington, where she was told to shape up on content as well as style. In his letter to Landau, Schubb pretends that when he and Yasko were telling Amy to cool it on some of her favorite issues like Lori Berenson and East Timor, this was just friendly advice among colleagues trying to be helpful and collegial! This is staggering misrepresentation. Yasko had shown intense hostility to Goodman, encroaching on her autonomy as a programmer, threatening her and shouting at her that she must recognize who is boss. Schubb also has long been highly critical of Goodman, and it is likely that he continues to run Democracy Now! on KPFK, not because of any appreciation of its quality, but rather because of its high ratings. So the meeting of September 14 was coercive, threatening, tense, and in no sense whatever collegial. It therefore constituted a clear further case of attempted censorship, although it was probably recognized that Amy could only be effectively censored by termination or driving her out by harassment and the imposition of onerous work conditions. Schubb was one of the prime censors at that meeting, as he has been for years as manager of KPFK. (For example, he ousted award-winning reporter Robin Urevich from the station in response to her August 1999 article on internal issues at KPFK, published in a local activist newspaper [http://www.radio4all.org/fp/0824robin_urevich.htm]). The coercive and censoring meeting of September 14 was followed one month later by another call to a meeting that, instead of being the expected one of discussion looking toward compromise, was arranged by the management only to serve Amy Goodman with a harsh letter of instructions and threat of termination. The commissars in Washington and at the Washington-allied stations are on the attack. Defending Pacifica, and recovering it from the censors, will depend on the effective organization and mobilization of the resources of the progressive community that created and supported Pacifica for the past fifty years. |
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Law Office of Michael Ratner 124 Washington
Place Response to the Pacifica Foundation's October 22 Statement on Democracy Now! by Michael Ratner
I am an attorney assisting Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman in her dispute with certain of her supervisors at the Pacifica Foundation. I was present during her October 16 AFTRA-sponsored conciliation meeting with senior Pacifica representatives. I was dismayed to see posted on the Pacifica Radio website a statement impugning the integrity and professional reputation of Amy Goodman. I was surprised that a news organization would publicly claim that the host of its most important program had "distorted and mischaracterized" the nature of the current dispute. As her attorney, I feel compelled to set the record straight.
Amy Goodman Attempted To Settle These Matters by Discussion and Negotiation; Management Responded By Threatening Termination. Contrary to the claim in the web site posting, Amy has tried to resolve matters through constructive dialogue. She has repeatedly advised senior management -- through proper channels -- about the issues at Democracy Now and has requested meetings in a bid to resolve the problems. So have National Magazine Editor Dan Coughlin and Democracy Now! co-host Juan Gonzalez. But senior managers have been non-responsive. AFTRA, Amy's union, set up a conciliation meeting with senior Pacifica managers. Although Amy had prepared a union grievance detailing the harassment she had endured for almost two months, she was persuaded to hold off its filing pending this meeting. The meeting was for the purpose of opening a dialog with management; a meeting t |