Originally published in Current, May 12, 1997
By Jacqueline Conciatore
As Pacifica Radio's home office in Berkeley tries to overhaul a station chain whose constituents are stubbornly committed to local control, it has encountered yet another critic of its ways: CPB.
The corporation's new inspector general, Joe Arvizu, says that the Pacifica Board has closed its meeting sessions that by law should have been open. Activists critical of Pacifica Executive Director Patricia Scott requested the CPB audit in July 1996 and pushed hard for it to be completed. News media received copies of the audit report April 28.
The report upholds the activists' claims that, since 1994, Pacifica's national board has closed all of its meetings except for one hour of public comment. "All other governing board deliberations were being held in executive session," Arvizu wrote.
Though Pacifica's minutes didn't reveal much, Scott and other board members told Arvizu meetings were closed, Arvizu told Current. Reading from notes of his visit with Scott, he said: "She indicated that meetings used to be open for longer periods of time, with short closed sessions, until board members started receiving threats from disgruntled listeners. Since then, meetings are more structured--only about one hour of the proceedings are open."
"She made that statement to me, and she now denies she made it," Arvizu says.
Under the Communications Act, pubcasting boards and their committees must meet openly unless they are discussing:
Pacifica says the IG is "flat wrong" about the meetings, and misread old minutes. "We're guessing he looked at our agendas, saw there was one hour for public comment and assumed that was all there was," says the network's new spokesperson, Burt Glass. Scott told Arvizu meetings were open, and Pacifica can produce people who participated in them, he says.
But Maria Gilardin, a leader of the anti-Scott group Take Back KPFA!, says she has seen videotape of folks testifying in public session at a New York meeting, then leaving en masse because the board withdrew. "[We have] 100 people attesting to the fact it was closed," she says.
Arvizu recommends that CPB seek documentation to determine whether Pacifica complies with sunshine rules in upcoming summer and fall meetings. Fiscal 1998 CPB funding should be contingent on this compliance, he says.
Scott plans to rebut the audit finding at the next CPB Board meeting, May 19. Also testifying before the CPB Board will be Jeffrey Blankfort of Take Back KPFA!
The Berkeley activists are claiming victory. "Mr. Arvizu's investigation has vindicated our complaints and our efforts to get Pacifica to obey what are essentially good laws requiring openness and open meetings, particularly when a so-called First Amendment radio network is involved," said Blankfort. "One might expect a private corporation or network to try to maintain secrecy, but when it comes to something as valuable to progressive radio as Pacifica, it's unconscionable."
But Pacifica is also crowing about the report, which upholds some of the network's claims and validates its goals. Most significantly, Arvizu found that four planning retreats held by Pacifica's governing board were in fact retreats and thus did not have to be open to the public. The meetings' minutes prove this, he said. Take Back KPFA! said the board used retreats to conduct business in secret.
Arvizu also briefly praised Pacifica for attempting to exert "strong, central leadership" over the five-station chain, historically very decentralized. "Any network of radio stations, such as Pacifica, needs strong central leadership when it comes to organizational and operational matters" and Pacifica has demonstrated a "strong interest in improving ... organizational structure, listener ratings, and financial status," he wrote.
In other quarters, centralized direction is not appreciated. Scott's efforts to wrest station control from staff has wrought much turmoil. Pacifica management, for example, is embroiled in a bitter labor dispute with staff at WBAI, New York. Pacifica wants unpaid volunteers, who comprise about 90 percent of the 180-member bargaining unit, stricken from the union. A National Labor Relations panel ruled against Pacifica several months ago, and that decision is on appeal.
Many Pacifica workers are longtime volunteers who use the airwaves for activism and want the network to make war against corporate control and commercialism. They see Pacifica's steps toward professionalism, ratings-consciousness and hierarchical management as a betrayal and abandonment of all that was unique and necessary about the network.
Pacifica's once-radical programming has softened, these critics say. Gilardin, for example, says that Berkeley station KPFA's schedule is increasingly yuppie-oriented, focusing on personal investment, cooking, health, and spirituality. She praises the new morning news show Democracy Now, and says members of Take Back KPFA! all support the program. But still there is distrust: "I think," says Gilardin, "they're keeping [Democracy Now] on [the air] to gloss over change, string along the left-wing activist type of supporters and say, 'See, this is something for you.' "
"We feel once a democratic structure is in place, issues of programming can easily be resolved," she says.
But Pacifica isn't moving toward egalitarian governance. "Decisions are not voted on," Scott said a year-and-a-half ago. "The Pacifica Board is charged with running these stations. They are the fiduciary responsible group that runs Pacifica. They hire management and staff, including me. They hired staff to make decisions."
Pacifica headquarters recently proposed new policies that would reduce the influence of local boards on the national board. Under the proposal, each station's local advisory board (LABs) would have one representative on the Pacifica governing board, instead of two. The second local rep would be appointed by a panel made up of the station manager, station rep to the national board, LAB chair, national development committee chair, and the national development director.
"The intent is to create a board that offers a proper balance between a bird's eye point of view and a local point of view," says Glass. "Local interests will still be served."
Many station staff members and Pacifica-watchers are unhappy about the prospect. But WBAI LAB chair Nan Rubin says having a local rep on the national board has not given local people much access to or influence on the national players. "The contradicton between the demands of acting on the national board and serving the station hasn't served stations well," she says.
More disturbing, according to Rubin, are suggested new rules that say staff members can't sit on the local boards. Pacifica may have a "genuine desire" here to make LABs accountable to a community broader than the station community, she says. But "the fact that Pacifica wants to remove [staff] is problematic because WBAI is locked in a very bitter contract negotiation [with Pacifica]. The union sees this as a direct attack on personnel. . . [Pacifica is] sort of asserting their authority."
The council of LAB chairs has asked the Pacifica Board to reject the proposals.
Both Pacifica and the LABs are working to clarify the local boards' functions and to include program assessment among them. This is a plus, says Rubin, because the LABs have functioned in an ad hoc fashion, always avoiding programming issues in a culture protective of producer autonomy.
Arvizu supports this clarification of role and Pacifica's stand on eliminating staff from the local boards. And he praises Pacifica's efforts to improve its communication with the local boards. But he also says that past heavy-handed directives from Pacifica to the LABs likely hindered the advisory process.
As with the LAB policy changes, many Pacifica battles involve shutting out folks: volunteers out of the union, the public out of board meetings, long-time programmers off the air. Gilardin refers to her firing as the time "when I lost my voice from KPFA."
Being shut out feeds an already robust distrust by Pacifica's left-wing critics, who in turn feed the news media--especially the California press, which lately has blasted Pacifica. Press reports then find their way on to web sites, which serve in turn as an information resource for other reporters.
Activists have speculated in recent online discussions that Pacifica is plotting to sell KPFA. The perennial rumor--also applied to New York station WBAI--was given new life by an article in the San Francisco Examiner. Writer Bill Mann quoted Scott saying that KPFA and WBAI, both on commercial frequencies, could be sold, and that media companies have offered her $60 million for KPFA and $90 million for WBAI. Only in the seventh paragraph does Mann quote Scott saying that Pacifica is "just not interested. . . .We've ruled it out."
The free-flying rumors about Pacifica are a real problem, says Glass. "It's so frustrating, especially with the new Internet culture, people can say anything. I spend half my time saying, 'No, no, no.'"
A fight between Pacifica national programmer Gail Christian and WBAI Public Affairs Director Mario Murillo has also earned bad press for Pacifica.
Writing in his column in The Nation, Alexander Cockburn shared with readers a letter Christian sent to Murillo after he wrote her a long but business-like complaint about his weekly show being pulled from the national satellite service without anyone telling him. She replied: "Gee, Mario, I wish we were all as good as you are, then there wouldn't be any problems. I'm really sorry none of the stations wanted your program. Maybe if you put the time into the show that you spent on your ass-hole letter then maybe things would have been differently [sic]. So as they say out West, 'Screw you and the horse you rode up on.'"
"When the memo came to [Scott's] attention, she gave an immediate reprimand to Gail," says Glass. "And it was a mistake. Gail knows that."
Despite these conflicts that crop up like brush fires, Glass says audience listening and giving bear out the correctness of Pacifica's path. Between 1992 and 1996, listener support of the five stations increased from $4.3 million to $5.5 million, he says. Winter average-quarter-hour listening for the chain rose from 20,300 in 1992 to 28,100 in 1996. "Listeners are sticking with us. They like what we're doing," he says.
Gilardin, for her part, is skeptical. "We don't think they're telling the truth about their successes." This is because, she says, Pacifica once asked a member of Take Back KPFA! to leave the room when discussing ratings during a meeting with a community liaison.
Originally published in Current, March 2, 1997
A regional arm of the National Labor Relations Board has ruled that unpaid staff members of Pacifica station WBAI, New York, should remain members of the collective bargaining unit. Pacifica says it is appealing the ruling.
The union and its supporters are celebrating the decision; "The board upheld the union's arguments on every point," said union rep Bruce Klipple. But Pacifica Executive Director Pat Scott, in a release, said: "The decision is misguided. It is in direct opposition to union bargaining principles, and we are confident that it will be set aside."
Pacifica sought a ruling that WBAI's approximately 200 volunteer staff members be excluded from the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers (UE) shop. If it had won, the WBAI unit would have shrunk to about 25 members.
Union supporters and Pacifica foes argue that the left-leaning network is trying to bust the WBAI union. But Pacifica said in the release that it supports workers' rights. "Pacifica's case is based on its belief that 190 people who do not make a living at WBAI should not be bargaining for the wages and working conditions of the approximately 30 people who do."
Pacifica had also sought to have WBAI's business manager classified as management, but the NLRB ruled the position should remain a union post.
NLRB Regional Director Daniel Silverman, who handed down the decision, said that compensation does not appear to be an indicator of employee status at WBAI. He also said that the station's paid and unpaid staff share a strong "community of interest."
The UE unit was bargaining a new contract with WBAI when the station sought "clarification" of the unit. UE says the station has offered a regressive contract and is demanding a "no strike" clause that would prohibit even informational picket lines in front of the station. Pacifica says it has offered increased wages and improved benefits to the paid employees.
WBAI's shop steward, R. Paul Martin, says the decision may have implications outside of radio, for people who are working as a condition of receiving welfare checks. Unions are trying to organize these "unpaid" employees, he said.
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