Re: Audit report 97-01 Pacifica Radio
A Letter to the CPB Board of Directors from Clare Spark, former KPFK Program Director
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On May 14, 1997 Clare Spark, a former program director of KPFK(1980-81), sent a letter to the Corporation of Public Broadcasting as part of the Scott regime's defense against the findings of the Inspector General's audit report, which agreed with Take Back KPFA that Pacifica National Board meetings had been closed to the public in violation of CPB Guidelines. She said, Mark Schubb, KPFK General Manager, specificaly asked her to write the letter to the CPB.

Her original May 14, 1997 letter read as follows:

Dear CPB Directors,

This is to state that I attended the Pacifica National Board Meeting of March 10, 1996, held at the La Montrose Hotel in West Hollywood, California. The meeting was held in the morning and early afternoon. When I arrived, the meeting was already in progress, with committee reports, etc. being given and commented upon. The interested public was already inside the meeting room, observing the proceedings. Later, there was a long and lively period of public comment concerning the current policies of the Foundation to which I contributed.

It is absolutely untrue that the meeting of March 10 prior to the time allotted to public comments was in any way closed to interested observers. If I can be of any further help to your deliberations, please let me know.

copy: pacifica radio

As Clare later discovered, she had been set up. She told us,"Mark Schubb specifically asked me to attend that (the March 10, 1996 Pacifica National Board) meeting and to arrive on time. Also to support his policies, which as far as I knew, were designed to conform to the spirit and letter of the mission statement. You can see from the last sentence that he had told me that the dissidents were denying that there had been an open official meeting. "

At the time, she was not aware that there had been additional meetings, closed to the public, on March 8 and 9. Recently, she learned that there had been additional closed meetings and that her letter had been used to support a false position. She said, "Schubb told me that the dissidents had claimed that there were no open meetings at the 1996 meeting,. Several weeks later, when I asked him for more details (having had some queasy feelings when I wrote the first letter, hence specifying the open session that I did attend) Schubb admitted that the prior two days were closed to the public when I asked him about the entire session."

She sent the Directors of the CPB the following retraction of her May 14, 1997 letter.

June 30, 1997

Board of Directors
Corporation For Public Broadcasting
901 E Street NW
Washington D.C., 20004

Re: Audit report 97-01 Pacifica Radio

Dear Board of Directors,

On May 14, 1997 I wrote to you stating that the March 10, 1996 meeting of the Pacifica Foundation National Board was open to the public before the period of public commentary; this was done at the behest of KPFK General Manager Mark Shubb, who told me that a disreputable dissident faction of Pacifica listeners, former staff, etc. had cynically maintained that CPB sunshine laws had been violated; that I had personal experience in observing the public conduct of Pacifica business, and that a letter from me would discredit the irresponsible claims of those who maliciously would harm Pacifica to further their own selfish interests. I was further told that Pat Scott, Executive Director of the Pacifica Foundation, would include my letter in her packet directed to CPB, defending Pacifica from charges of secrecy.

Since I wrote that letter, I have examined materials generated by Pacifica (and circulated on the Internet [by their opponents, added 7/2/97, C.S.]) that support the claims of the dissidents. I fully agree with the opposition that a coup is in progress; and that the public has been kept in the dark regarding what amounts to a transfer of ownership and a transformation of an educational broadcasting entity into an ideological mouthpiece for a narrow section of the broad community that Pacifica, as a tax-exempt educational organization, is pledged to serve.

Having been a major supporter of KPFK, intellectually and financially, and having devoted almost my entire adult life to the study of public broadcasting and adult education, creating hundreds of hours of programming and managing KPFK as Program Director in the early 1980s, I am in a state of amazement and dismay. Everything that I and thousands of other supporters have accomplished is at risk. I am wondering if CPB, the FCC, and the IRS are aware of the implications of what seems to be an entirely illegal set of actions?

For instance, the original mission statement had no directly political aim, as was proper, given Pacifica's tax-exempt status. As formulated (and frequently advertised on KPFK to this day) it was the intention of Pacifica 1. to explore the multiple causes of social antagonisms that lead to international wars as well as more local turmoil; 2. to gather news from sources ignored by commercial media so as to provide objective news programs; that is, hitherto buried or neglected sources of information would be found and integrated into a new, more accurate big picture; parties to controversies would have to confront their critics and offer fact-based reasons for their actions; and 3. to encourage experiments in the arts; young poets, artists and performers, for example, would have an opportunity to present their work to an audience of serious and knowledgeable listeners. In other words, non-commercial listener-sponsored radio would facilitate the speaking of (an evolving) truth to power. Persons who had never benefited from an excellent education as well as the most acculturated, would share in a common experience; democratic participation and social solidarity could only be enhanced in such a setting.

I have described the most ambitious project of public education ever attempted in our country; not surprisingly, there has been internal conflict within Pacifica since its inception as different political factions attempted to control the air. Pacifica has never devised procedures to incorporate feedback from qualified listeners competent to evaluate the accuracy of its reportage, or the fairness of its coverage of raging controversies. In recent years, as is well known, various nationalist groups have violated every canon of responsible conduct, exacerbating conflict, spreading fear, cynicism, and rumors presented as truth, buttressed by Pacifica's squeaky-clean reputation as defender of the oppressed. Such demoralizing programming has benefited only economic and political entrepreneurs attempting to mobilize the poor, desperate, and uninformed to support the pure and reliable "uncommodified" productions of these "alternative" practitioners and politicos.

The present administration under Pat Scott's direction, was supposed to have corrected this situation; for this reason, I supported management at the March 10, 1996 meeting. But now I see a dangerous and destructive set of policies are being implemented; the dissemination of hate and ignorance that jeopardized Pacifica's CPB funding in the late 1980s-early 1990s, will be prolonged by more subtle and underhanded means. Under the guise of professionalism and sane development, the mission statement has been discarded (although this is denied); the Foundation will now serve "economic and social justice" and "positive social change" (as if everyone else in American politics doesn't claim to do the same). Membership on the governing boards will be determined by race-based criteria and, barely concealed, personal wealth or connections to other donors, not intellectual acumen developed through experience in the arts, sciences, public policy formulation, and education, and a proven practice of public service. Because the outcry of the old, soon to be discarded, Pacifica listeners was anticipated, the function of image-management will now be institutionalized. Rather than institutional accountability, rather than attentiveness to listener criticism of all kinds, we the taxpayers will be supporting spin control. Indeed, the theory of audience development currently embraced by Pacifica is one that seeks to attach listeners not through appeals to reason presented in well-edited, flexible, inherently attractive and appropriate forms, but rather through the techniques of emotional manipulation developed by commercial media: need I name this loathsome latter cultural practice as Führerprinzip?

Speaking of bogus "people's communities," I was extremely surprised to learn through Mark Shubb that Pacifica is "a minority station" for purposes of CPB funding. To my knowledge, the listeners to Pacifica are not aware of this. I should like to know 1. what exactly this entails in terms of radio content and station management; and 2. whether or not such a drastic change in orientation is required to be widely publicized in on-air fund drives.

I for one would have fought such a reclassification. It was my job as Program Director to "integrate" a white-male dominated station; my historical method and anti-racist, anti-sexist practices tended to unify the audience around a common set of concerns. Speaking for myself as a professional historian of race relations, a student of antidemocratic propaganda, and a wounded veteran of "racial" conflict, I, along with disenchanted curriculum reformers in academe, have found the category of "minority" (as part of the v"lkisch policy of "multiculturalism") to be subversive of any positive educational outcome whatsoever. But that is the subject of a different letter. For the present, I want to know, so that I may inform my colleagues in the profession of history (and all other interested parties), whether or not Pacifica was required to reveal this status as a "minority" broadcasting outlet, and whether or not consultation with the program volunteers, staff, and listener-supporters was required by the CPB, before or after the fact.

I trust that the Corporation For Public Broadcasting will be taking very seriously the secrecy and duplicity with which the Pacifica Foundation has been preparing its new and improved model. I also think that it is high time that those who oversee public broadcasting rethink all their policies: the vagueness of criteria and the absence of standards allow the most self-interested and sectarian viewpoints to dominate airwaves that theoretically belong to the people; whereas you should be facilitating, through open-ended processes, critical thought, the enrichment of the imagination, self-knowledge and social knowledge in the service of equity and amelioration. I fervently believe, and my own experience has testified, that such enlightened practices have the potential to unify and inspirit most segments of society. [This paragraph slightly revised for punctuation, July 1, 1997, C.S.]

I would appreciate a personal and prompt response to this letter.

Yours truly,

Clare Spark, Ph.D.

Since writing her letter of retraction, a copy of which she forwarded to KPFK General Manager Mark Schubb, Clare received several phone calls from him. " It should also be added that Schubb called me up two times, very angrily; to ask if it were true that I would go on the radio with David Adelson to talk about Pacifica policy (on the Loyola College radio station; and then to ask if I had sent my letter to the CPB yet (a week later after he received a copy). In both a personal letter to me and at numerous other times, Schubb characterized the opposition to recent Pacifica policies as "paranoid neo-fascists."

She added, "I closed the conversation by asking him to resign at which point he furiously suggested that I head the campaign to fire him. Then he hung up. A personal letter followed in which he apologized for the anger and then went on to accuse me of a personal betrayal and to state that I was allied with......[you guys].