Articles from the San Francisco Bay Guardian

Cracks in the Armor (SFBG Article)
Knock it off, Pacifica (SFBG Editorial)
Lew Hill's Vision (Letter from KPFA Board Member)

June 18, 1997

Cracks in the armor

Pacifica board takes flak from local chapters.

By Belinda Griswold

MEMBERS OF Pacifica station boards blasted the network -- the only listener-sponsored progressive radio network in the country -- at a June 14 national board meeting in Oakland. Nan Rubin of New York's WBAI and Lauren Ayers of Berkeley's KPFA charged that the national board planned sweeping changes that would radically centralize the organization's governance structure, taking power from local stations and vesting it in the national board.

Pacifica executive director Pat Scott arrived for a closed-door session of the board's weekend-long meeting at the Oakland Marriott in her new, cherry-red BMW roadster Saturday morning. Later that day Scott announced that the nonprofit network would be $100,000 in debt if next year's budget weren't revised.

In February, local boardmembers were surprised to learn that the national board planned sweeping governance changes without any opportunity for public comment. Instead of a national board selected by directors of local station boards, the new policies allow the national board to directly select 10 of its 15 members. That's a dramatic reduction in local control for an organization that has been accused of anti-democratic tendencies by critics both inside and outside the organization.

Those critics were vocal at this national board meeting -- the first to be held in the Bay Area since 1995.

Protesters outside the meeting and speakers at Sunday's public comment period called for democratic elections at the local and national levels. Only then, they said, will the network fulfill its mission as the voice of the voiceless.

"As it stands, the people who run Pacifica have nothing but contempt for democratic ideals," Curt Gray, of Take Back KPFA, said. National board members had scheduled many of the weekend's sessions to be held behind closed doors, although the Federal Communications Act requires that they be open to the public. After pressure from critics, the board opened most, though not all, of the meetings.

Scott and her supporters have always characterized their opponents as a fringe element focused on blocking changes Scott needs to make for the network to survive.

"These people are fucking crazy," Scott remarked loudly on Saturday.

But her dismissive tone seemed increasingly untenable in light of the politicking at last weekend's meeting. To be sure, many of the dissidents are older and distinctly outside the yuppified culture that now dominates alternative media. Many are former employees and unpaid programmers; most are former listener-sponsors whose donations paid for the expansion of Pacifica's national staff and, much to their chagrin, the union-busting techniques that provoked a labor war at WBAI in New York.

In addition to a strong union presence, local advisory board chairs from KPFA, WBAI, and KPFK in Los Angeles had their say, and not all of it was flattering.

Local boards at KPFK, WPFW in Washington, D.C., and KPFA all opposed the governance changes passed in February and ratified last weekend, and board members from the stations have spoken out publicly against the centralization.

David Adelson, a member of the KPFK board who voiced his concerns in the June issue of the left-of-center monthly Z Magazine, told the Bay Guardian he has serious concerns about the loss of local control.

"Where is the accountability in this process?" he asked. "The question is really 'Where is the listener in all this, and how does the listener have a say?' Pacifica, which bills itself as a progressive organization, should at the very least institute some basic form of democracy so we can be sure there is some responsiveness to our needs."

Pacifica's brass, however, says the time for complaints has passed. Roberta Brooks, secretary of the board, told the Bay Guardian that, contrary to the public's and local board's understanding, the changes in boardmember selection had been approved at February's board meeting, before they had ever been announced to the public or to local boards. A March memo from Brooks announced the new policies; at that time she told the Bay Guardian that the full board, made up of representatives from local and national boards, would approve them at its June meeting. But by last weekend she had changed her tune, claiming that the changes didn't require the full board's approval.

"It's a little late," she said.

Does the opposition of three of its five station boards to a major governance change bother the network's leadership?

"People who really want constructive change will agree with [the centralization]," national board chair Jack O'Dell told the Bay Guardian.

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Statement of Principles
Drafted at San Luis Obispo
January 7&8, 1984

"The Pacifica Network is in serious trouble. In a time of world wide crisis, instead of responding with depth and passion, Pacifica is purging itself of its most radical elements...Continued

EDITORIAL

Knock it off, Pacifica
HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

BACK IN 1984 , when Pat Scott was an aide to Pacifica supporter and Berkeley mayor Gus Newport, she and a few other Pacifica workers and community activists met to write a manifesto expressing their concerns about the network. It began as follows:

The Pacifica Network is in serious trouble. In a time of worldwide crisis, instead of responding with depth and passion, Pacifica is purging itself of its most radical elements. Careerism is replacing commitment. Power in Pacifica has become concentrated in the hands of a few. This power block, unaccountable to anyone, is bringing Cold War ideology to the airwaves. This is being accompanied by a politically selective process of firings and hirings. A process which has been obscured by a smoke-screen of personal attack.

The manifesto goes on to call for democratic elections of station boards, collective decision-making among all paid and unpaid staff, and community participation in programming decisions. The complete text is here.

What a difference 13 years makes.

As Belinda Griswold reports, on June 14 and 15 Pacifica's national board met -- with Scott as chief executive -- and summarily dismissed criticism from local advisory boards. Many of the critics raised exactly the same issues Scott had brought up in 1984.

That's why Scott's current arrogance and rejection of criticism are so frustrating. Once again we are forced to ask, What, exactly, will it take for Pacifica's board and national staff to realize that accountability and openness are not the pet ideas of the lunatic fringe but a basic, and legally mandated, principle of all nonprofit community-supported institutions?

Pacifica, don't forget, is just such an institution. It's one of progressive America's most valuable assets, a public radio network capable of reaching millions -- not the personal property of its board and administrators. It's been built from the ground up by progressive money, progressive ideas, and progressive vision.

This kind of behavior from Scott and the Pacifica board embarrasses all of us who have supported and would like to continue to support KPFA, Pacifica radio, and all the causes they have represented. Come on folks: Knock off the secrecy and quit treating your supporters as if they don't matter. Or you'll risk losing the community that keeps the network alive.

HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

Letter from a KPFA Board member

Lew Hill's vision

As a new member of the KPFA Advisory Board, it has taken me a while to figure out that my vision of free-speech radio was to some extent a mirage, and that founder Lew Hill's vision is in jeopardy.

Take Back KPFA activists have been doggedly yelping for several years about this impending subversion of Pacifica. They recently sent all members of the advisory board copies of the article in June's Z Magazine by David Adelson, a member of the advisory board of Los Angeles' Pacifica station, KPFB.

Suppose Pacifica's biggest opponent is not right-wing U.S. senators but its own management? Suppose the hidden plan was to swap the 60,000-watt 94.1 spot on the dial for a lower wattage spot in order to come out double-digit millions of dollars ahead -- money to be used for management salaries and paid programmers to do neo-NPR programming?

Some things can't be undone once they happen. Silence is the voice of complicity. I hope I am wrong, but if my fears are well-founded, then now is the time to act.

LAUREN AYERS KPFA Advisory Board Davis

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