From the San Francisco Bay Guardian
April 23, 1997

MEDIA  

Voice of Pacifica?
KPFA listeners, workers air grievances
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MORE THAN 100 people had a bone to pick last Wednesday night at the local advisory board meeting of listener-sponsored radio station KPFA.

The tumultuous meeting was marked by heated challenges to station management. Findings and recommendations from KPFA listener forums held earlier this year were presented by facilitator Tomas Moran; local board chair Hank Levy presented a set of far-reaching governance changes that had been handed down by the national board; and station staff distributed a flyer from KPFA's unionized workers protesting management's recent moves to stall upcoming labor negotiations.

 Moran presented five concrete recommendations to station management that he said would increase accountability and communication with listeners. He encouraged the establishment of several task forces to include community voices in programming decisions and urged the station to suspend a gag rule preventing station personnel from speaking freely on the air about station conflicts. The local board will take up Moran's recommendations at its May meeting, although it has no power to require station management to make policy changes.

Levy publicly acknowledged that the governance changes -- which will halve the local boards' representation on the powerful national governing board (see "More Trouble at KPFA," 4/9/97) -- will undercut the local board's voice at the national level. But he argued that the changes would also provide an opening for local boards to respond to national leadership.

Most speakers, however, were skeptical both of KPFA management's desire to follow through on Moran's far-reaching recommendations and of the motives of the national board in curtailing the power of local boards and station employee unions.

"My partner and I have given thousands of dollars to the station, and we just feel like our hearts have been torn out," listener Tess Walpern said. "KPFA must return to being the voice of the progressive community. It is our voice -- it is not management's and it is not Pacifica's."

Levy said despite a number of concessions to local objections, the national board has barred local boards from operating finance committees, which review station budgets each year.

But as Pacifica's troubles mount, its critics are increasingly suspicious. KPFA workers, for example, are trying to change their union affiliation but have been stymied by management's attempts to force the local to accept concessions in return for recognition of the new representation. As in the bitter dispute with WBAI in New York, station management also wants to reduce the size of the bargaining unit by excluding unpaid staff and some supervisors. KPFA workers and union leaders are outraged and say they will resist the move.

Station and Pacifica management could not be reached for comment, and KPFA/Pacifica attorney Larry Drapkin declined to comment on the dispute.

However, station dissidents are eagerly awaiting a Corporation for Public Broadcasting audit investigating Pacifica's secrecy practices, to be released this week by the CPB's Office of the Inspector General.

Belinda Griswold