June 12, 1997

Jack O'Dell
Chair, Board of Directors
Pacifica Foundation

 Dear O'Dell:

At its May meeting, the KPFA Local Advisory Board (LAB) requested a letter be sent to you regarding points of difference it has with the governing body's concept of its role. At its June meeting, this letter was unanimously approved by the LAB.

This action is compelled by views expressed most recently in the executive director's letter (Pacifica Letter) to Allen Sagner, Chair of the Board of Directors of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), regarding the recent audit performed by the Inspector General (IG) of the CPB.

 While the Pacifica Letter to the CPB provided the stimulus for communication with you and the entire Pacifica Governing Board, our recent history of sustained, oftentimes intense interaction with the listening public, makes it opportune to lay out the appropriate scope of the LAB from our vantage point. The outcome of this letter, it is hoped, will begin a dialogue with the Governing Board and the leadership of Pacifica which will result in new structures to insure constructive board and audience feedback to KPFA.

 Toward a Full Advising Role for the LAB

At least since the 1995 program changes, the KPFA LAB has heard considerable reaction from a diverse range of listeners. While new program and schedule shifts provided the initial momentum for vigorous public expression, in its wake concerns about policies and practices, both national and local, continue to be vocalized. Until February of this year, when the station initiated widely-advertised focus groups, LAB meetings provided the only forum for committed audience opinion. As a result of many heated public meetings as well as smaller, focused discussions with subscribers, the LAB concluded that there was a vital need to translate program and other audience concerns to management.

Through the work of the Community Needs Assessment Committee, our LAB positioned itself to do this. Although administrative habit, until last month, categorized program input as off-limits, the legitimacy of many listener concerns and the stipulation of a role in program advising by the CPB guidelines, compelled this Board initiative. To act as passive recipients of subscriber concerns, providing nothing more than window dressing and a venting station appeared fruitless and personally unacceptable for many board members.

The LAB has certainiy found some of the public commentary to be unfair, concerned with personalities, not issues, and destructive rumor-mongering. As in any large, public forum, a number of agendas become apparent and some demagogic and other rude behavior surfaces. Nevertheless, sincere, dedicated listeners have continued to raise important themes. A thriving station has to find a channel for picking up these issue strands and responding to them.

The LAB's responsibility for advising the governing board regarding programming

An active role in program advising is consistent with CPB guidelines. The law has been quoted often, but is worth repeating:

 The [advisory] board shall be permitted to review the programming goals established by the station, the service provided by the station, and the significant policy decisions rendered by the station... The board shall advise the governing body of the station with respect to whether the programming and other policies of such station are meeting the specialized educational and cultural needs of the communities served by the station, and may make such recommendations as it considers appropriate to meet such needs. [CPB, Communications and Certification Requirements for CPB Station Grant Recipients, p.11]

 The interpretations of the law by CPB staff state:

 The purpose of the advisory board is to assist public broadcasting in being more responsive to community needs by providing for effective public participation in planning and decision making... .The advisory board is to be an effective way for the public to participate in the planning and decision making of the station. [CPB, p.12]

A portion of the Pacifica Foundation Station Board By-Laws have long been consistent with the law and the CPB staff guidelines:

 The Station Board shall be a mechanism for effective public input into planning and decision making that can assist the station in developing programs that address the diverse needs and interests of the communities it endeavors to serve. [Pacifica Foundation By-Laws]

The KPFA Local Advisory Board takes the position that the law, the CPB interpretations, and the Pacifica By Laws are consistent with the CPB auditor's observations and conclusions regarding the role of the LAB and these are consistent with our own. Furthermore, it is our opinion that the Pacifica Letter distorts the auditor's views and results in conclusions which are contrary to our position and contrary to the recently articulated promise of greater LAB responsibility.

The Pacifica Letter states:

 As the Communications Act makes clear, the sole function of advisory boards is to provide the governing board with information (italics ours) about the cultural and educational needs of the community served by the station... [Pacifica Letter, page 3]

The letter cites Section 396(k)(8) of the Communications Act for the above. We are unable to find any reference in the law to this function of the advisory board.

 While giving slight acknowledgment to the LAB's advisory functions, the Pacifica letter again criticizes the straw argument that has been constructed:

We believe that the IG has correctly stated the law, and that the Pacifica Letter has distorted the law. We submit that the Pacifica Letter's interpretation of the Communications Act undermines Pacifica's efforts to clarify its governance structure, and not the other way around.

As Pacifica moves forward to implement new governance structures, we urge that the governing board correct this mis-interpretation of the Communications Act. Failure to do so will undermine the organization's stated goals.

The Pacifica Letter takes issue with what we see as an appropriate and reasonable description of the LAB role as cited in the compliance audit report. In relating the history of the 1995 KPFA program changes and the fact that the LAB was inappropriately bypassed, the auditor, unwittingly, identified a festering issue among a sizable listener segment. The fallout from this continues to plague not only our LAB deliberations, but, more importantly, station and Pacifica image.

We are aware of the CPB's response to the IG's report, and while other aspects of the his report may be inaccurate, the segment pertaining to the dormant advising role of the LAB might have been an opportunity to take stock of costly oversights and to think in terms of meaningful processes to help KPFA get beyond the recycling of community indignation.

It is clear to us that the auditor's thrust is to encourage the Lab's to provide a participatory framework for communities, in order that management will have a broader basis for programmatic and other decision making. In addition, because the LAB advisory role has been historically circumscribed, management needs to give special attention to jump starting its apparatus for input. In other words, LAB willingness to offer constructive criticism to station management needs to be aligned with management structures to receive and act upon it. Without a concerted effort, it will be difficult for LABs and/or management to overcome inertia in this area.

The issue of autonomy

What receives a great deal of attention in the Pacifica Letter is the auditor's recommendations of autonomy, which he states the drafters of the Act had in mind.

The CPB staff interpretations of the law state:

 ... the board shall advise the governing body of the station and therefore must be distinct (our bold italics) from the governing body. [CPB, page 12]

The law segregates the management and operation functions of the governing board from the advisory board's functions to assure a clear demarcation (our bold italics) between the governing board and the advisory board. [CPB, page 12]

The IG states:

 According to CPB guidelines, the law segregates the management and operations of the governing board from the advisory board's functions to assure a clear demarcation between the governing board and the advisory board. (Bold in original) [Compliance Audit Report, Page 12]

The Pacifica Letter responds to this:

 The IG's view of advisory boards as autonomous entities designed to be interjected into, and to exercise virtual veto power over, all the planning and decision making processes of the governing board must not be sustained. [Pacifica Letter, page 3]

 In our opinion, this is an extreme reaction to something that was never stated or even implied.

The Pacifica Letter conveys a kind of "LAB must be kept in its place" tone. This is echoed in the Pacifica Foundation Station Board By-Laws which state that "The Station Board serves at the will of the National Board." Furthermore, a July 12, 1995 memo to Local Advisory Board Members from the Pacifica National Board Executive Committee stated:

 We feel it necessary to remind you that the local Station Board is responsible to the National Board and, in fact, serves at the will and direction of the National Board. The local station Board of Directors' main responsibility is to carry out the directives of the National Board and abide by its decisions. [Pacifica Memo dated 7/12/95]

We contend that this is contrary to the Communications Act. We further contend that this attitude weakens the role of listeners and subscribers and is contrary to the mission of Pacifica. And, as we stated above, we have no desire to fit into this definition of a LAB. We recommend that the Governing Board reject the language and the assumptions which support the above assertions.

The role which LAB members have heretofore been asked to play, however well-meaning the request may have been, can be characterized alternately as boosterism and defensive. The July 12, 1995 Board Executive Committee memo to LAB, cited above, states that program managers have the authority to make major program alterations "without the approval or disapproval of the Local Advisory Boards." How many board members, had they contemplated this language, would have been willing to serve? In the last two years, the LAB has repeatedly faced an angry crowd about permutations it had no role in arranging. And while board members tried their best to mute the attacks on hardworking staff who we may like as people, we often had an inadequate basis for defending practices. We were often ineffective at doing anything but catching flack.

 On the other hand, in our local context, there have been instances where we have taken a principled position in support of management. Arriving at a principled position, however, requires participants to be objective and fully informed of diverse points of view and the range of options. "Rallying the troops" to endorse and defend policies, without benefit of a critical faculty and subscriber opinions, is contrary to the philosophy of listener sponsored public radio.

As mentioned above, the issue of autonomy has become an important one. The mandate from the Communications Act can only be carried out if LABs have the independence to determine what needs or policies require its consideration and when. The idea that LABs should have little or no independence or no initiative to select areas of work or issues to which to respond, undermines its capacity to render effective advice to the station, to the subscribers and others it encounters at regularly scheduled meetings.

If the KPFA LAB, for example, is to have credibility in the signal area it is to advise about, it must be able to go further than simply taking assignments from management. It must also be in a position to respond to subscribers and other community units, with willingness to consider issues, study them, develop opinions about them, and present conclusions to management and the community. Thus, as we read it, "autonomy," the capacity for independent decision-making (within the CPB guidelines) about when and what concerns it will consider, is essential if the LAB is to have the confidence of the community, and a sense of its own integrity.

We recognize that this is a challenging and critical time for Pacifica as it seeks to make program inroads to a wider audience, struggles against the threats to its survival from the Right while maintaining the support of its highly participatory (at least in Northern California) subscriber base. KPFA LAB members are ardent in support of the station. in order to translate its energy into effective capacity, it is convinced it's role needs to be articulated differently than it is now in some of the public documents.

In summary, we recommend the following:

The KPFA LAB would appreciate your response to this letter you by July 31, 1997.

Respectfully submitted,

Margot Dashiell Vice-Chair
for the KPFA Local Advisory Board

cc: Pat Scott, Executive Director, Pacifica Foundation