Robert McChesney (moderator): Now we're going to hear from the executive director of Pacifica, and the, for 6 years the manager of KPFA, Pat Scott.

Pat Scott: Thank you, Bob. Thank you, Don.

Uh, when Don, first asked me to talk about the politics of public radio, particularly Pacifica, I said, "Don, this conference only lasts for three days." And then he told me I couldn't swear, so then I accepted the ten minutes. And in that ten minutes I'd like to talk a little bit about the promise of Pacifica Radio, uh, some of the politics of public radio, because pacifica is obviously political, its public, and most importantly it plays a tremendous role in bridging the gap between media and democracy.

But specifically, I want to touch on two areas…I'd like to do a little "101" on Pacifica so we're all starting off at the same place in terms of looking at the history of it and where it's going and what it's doing…and also talk about the challenge and opportunity facing Pacifica.

There's some misinformation about Pacifica and how it got started and what's going with Lew Hill and the whole crew. Uh, really, 50 years ago, Pacifica started as the first listener-supported station in Berkeley and grew to five stations. It is a nonprofit educational foundation with a mission, which is essentially to promote peace and understanding.

And in those 50 years, externally and internally, there has been very little peace at Pacifica. Pacifica operates five major stations in five major metropolitan areas: Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, Washington DC and Houston.

Pacifica also has an archive which has 50 years of the political history of this country. And it has a National Program Production unit, which produces a half an hour newscast which all Pacifica stations are required to carry, and it also produces Democracy Now! which came out of the first part of strategic planning for Pacifica, which was essentially how do we, with five major stations, how do we share our resources so that we can do programming locally and share our resources to do programming nationally. And for the first time in the history of Pacifica, the five stations really came together to take the news and make sure that it was the best the we could make under the circumstances, with a lack of money, and to create a new program, Democracy Now!, which operates probably on about 200 thousand dollars a year, which is not a lot of money in the grand scheme of program production.

We are very fortunate because we have a staff that is very dedicated to promoting the ideals of democracy, and able to do this program with what would ordinarily cost a whole lot more money than the program does cost.

Pacifica operates on a nine million dollar budget. I was talking to a reporter yesterday and when I told him that Pacifica operates on a nine million dollar budget, he said, "um, and then what's the budget of the stations?"

Well, nine million dollars is what we operate nine major market radio stations, do national production, uh have an archive and try to really create a larger audience so that that larger audience will turn into more money so that we can produce more and better programs.

Listening to Herb Chao Gunther last night talk about the fact that we really need to go and get people where they are, and listening to David this morning talk about the same thing in terms of broadening our audience…we have to do that. We cannot continue to talk to ourselves.

(applause)

And the problem with that is on one hand the people internal - and this is the politics of public radio and the politics of Pacifica-that we cannot continue to just talk to the people that we currently have as an audience.

One of the things that's been said is Pacifica is not democratic because it doesn't elect its board of directors. Well, who would you have elect the board of directors? The 70…the 70 thousand people that are subscribers to Pacifica? (from audience -good idea! - applause) The 700 thousand people that are listeners to Pacifica? Or the potentially 70 million people that are potential listeners to Pacifica?

More than 70 percent of the revenue of Pacifica comes from listeners. That compares with community radio where 25% of the income comes from listeners. If you look at corporate underwriting. which Pacifica does not accept, nearly 20% of the income of public radio comes from corporate underwriting. And with that 20%, looking at this uh, this uh, promo for "POES" (sp?) which is this dedicated um, magazine uh to um issues related to aids, and it has on the front " Show me the money."

And that is essentially the issue we've been dealing with throughout this Congress. How do we fund public broadcasting? How, and if we do fund it with corporations, what does that mean. The other side of it is, there is government support for public broadcasting, and there are many of you that think that's not appropriate either. Approximately 11% of Pacifica's income comes from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. It has been increased a little over the past year because at least three of the Pacifica stations are classified as minority stations; meaning the Board of Directors is minority primarily, that the audience is 35% or more minority and that the staff is more than half minority.

The governance of Pacifica. Like most nonprofit organizations, Pacifica has a volunteer governing board. That volunteer governing board consists of 15 people. Five of those people are "at-large" and that number next year will go to nine. Each of the stations is represented with a local governing board who is charged with looking at how the station serves the community that it broadcasts in-what issues are covered, what's not covered, how is it done?…and we have formally, as part of the strategic plan, put in a way, because the local advisory boards in Pacifica had not been doing this, how do we have some feedback on a regular basis on how the Pacifica stations are serving their community. So there will be a formal report once a year to the board of directors dealing with this information and making sure that that information is in the plans of all station management.

Two of the members of the local advisory board can go to the National Board of Directors so there are ten people from the local stations that come from the local signal area.

Over the years there has been a lot of confusion about Pacifica's mission. Mainly because of how Pacifica has grown and how Pacifica…and how things have worked out. And it has been different at all of the different Pacifica stations. At KPFA, which I am most familiar with, I know that in the late '50s and the '60s, Pacifica really focussed on a lot of avant garde music, it focussed on the Beat generation, Pauline Kael did her first work at KPFA. On the other hand, the first work that Caspar Weinberger did came out of KPFA as well. And at this time you were dealing with political and academic people and that's what Pacifica broadcasts sound like. And before that, because there were no FM radios, Pacifica distributed FM radios so that people that wanted to listen to Pacifica could at least hear the programming at Pacifica.

In the '70's though, Pacifica became a very activist organization. Not necessarily just the broadcast operation, but very activist, because, particularly the Berkeley station was right in the middle of the University of California, so that the Free Speech Movement - all of the broadcasts about that came out of that station. The Symbionese, the Symbionese Liberation Army dropped off all of their communiques at Pacifica stations during the Patty Hearst kidnapping.

And during that period of time also, a lot of people of color started coming into Pacifica stations. Up until that time, Pacifica had been primarily white. A third world bureau was established in the Oakland Community to do news in the African American community. And third worled departments were established at KPFA.

During the '80's however, Pacifica started focussing on not just local programming but national issues, so that during Iran-Contra, Larry Bensky did gavel to gavel coverage on Iran-Contra hearings. We also, later, during that period of time, started doing things like the Clarence Thomas hearings and these were the first, other than the news, national program that Pacifica tried to do. And they were on a hit and miss basis, and as needed basis. And the first national show that Pacifica stations put their money into, aside of the news, was Democracy Now!

Now, that added to that is Living Room with Larry Bensky, which four of the Pacifics stations carry, Jerry Brown, which will probably be offered too much sooner, in the future, because Jerry's planning on running for mayor of Oakland.

So we will also be looking at public affairs programming to replace that show. And this leads us to today's confusion.

The truth is that Pacifica was never meant to be an advocacy organization that happens to use radio as its means. We are a radio network first, guided by progressive values. We are not also in the business of agitprop journalism. Not because we don't agree with the goals, but because it doesn't work. Because, what I said in the beginning, we have to reach out to a larger audience. We have to reach out to a larger audience in order to impact the dialog and debate on this country about directions, and social goals and social issues. and to essentially engage the people that love in this country in their own fate.

The biggest problem with what is happening with broadcasting in this country is that it leaves a population not having enough information to vote and to act in their own interest. And so that Pacifica is about the business…and I will talk a little bit…but I can't…I don't have enough time…cause I got…we have thirteen minutes…gone.

I…I just want to talk about, you know, where we're going um…the Pacifica agenda.

What we have done in terms of our strategic planning is come up with these four issues: that we use effectively the unique and precious resource we have in Pacifica. That includes the hundreds of dedicated volunteers and skilled staff at our stations. We have five major market stations. We have national program production. We now have satellite distribution with the KU network, so that at 20% of the cost of the public radio satellite, we can distribute programming to other community stations as well as to Pacifica stations.

The second item is that we will maintain our financial and political independence in an era of corporate media domination. We do not take corporate underwriting, we have no plans to take corporate underwriting and I have to tell you that every five years in the Pacifica Board of Directors the issue gets raised about why can't we?

That we will carry on the Pacifica mission of peace, social, racial and economic justice and human rights to the widest possible audience…and that we will impact the political conversation in America, engage activists and foster a renewal of political participation which is absolutely necessary if we are to have a working democracy.

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