The Two-Percent Putsch: Crisis at Pacifica

[Hannah Bell]

Capital’s most severe crisis in seventy years ought to be a moment of significant opportunity for the left. But as the right mobilizes disgruntled Americans via its vast radio, television, web, and print empires, the one mass medium available to the left—Pacifica Radio—is driving out its best and brightest. A network that has the potential to reach a quarter of the US public is opting for irrelevant and unlistenable programming at a time when competent and genuinely radical journalism is urgently needed, and justifying its warped choice with the Thatcherite mantra: there is no alternative...

Under cover of budget cuts, the Mad Hats who control the Pacifica National Board are seeking to dispense with those who oppose their conspiracy-driven agenda—or simply strive for well-produced, quality radio. The axe has fallen first on WBAI's acclaimed 'Behind the News', an island of lucid analysis in the mass media swamp, hosted by the economic journalist Doug Henwood, author of Wall Street and publisher of Left Business Observer. In the midst of a gathering emergency, the brains trust at WBAI decided that Henwood's program, which provides some of the best economic analysis anywhere, should be cut to twice a month. Henwood tendered his resignation, blasting the swerve towards “chem-trails and footpads and 9/11 nuttery”. A day later the vitamin supplements mogul Gary Null, notorious for his claim that HIV does not cause AIDS, announced that he would be returning to the airwaves of WBAI on November 15th...

The Mad Hats are now focusing on the flagship station of the Pacifica network, KPFA in the San Francisco Bay Area, which thus far has been mainly free of such conspiracism and snake oil. Three members of the Pacifica National Board have drawn up a list of their staff enemies to be fired, which includes the majority of the workers at some of the most successful programs, in terms of listenership and fundraising, on KPFA's air: the Morning Show, the noon program of radical ideas Against the Grain, and the Evening News. Against the Grain host Sasha Lilley's fate was apparently sealed when she interviewed me about my CounterPunch article on why the Pacifica board system had cost more than $2.4 million dollars since 2002 and why it needed to be replaced. Those at the top of Pacifica were incensed and demanded her firing.

Laying off these workers would not only violate KPFA's contract with the Communications Workers of America. It would seriously compromise the solvency of what has been the most financially successful station in the network. KPFA has historically subsidized the other four Pacifica stations, and has financed and executed some of the most groundbreaking reportage, from the McCarthy era to the Free Speech Movement to the Iran-Contra investigations to, recently, the latter-day Winter Soldier hearings.

At KPFA, the union and local management have come up with an alternative menu of cuts, so that the station can balance its budget while preserving the ability to produce high quality programming. The cuts focus on KPFA's parent organization Pacifica itself, whose bureaucracy has become an enormous financial drain on the five stations. In spite of the tough economic times, KPFA raises enough money to pay for itself—it just doesn't raise enough money to pay for Pacifica as well. Pacifica is demanding the station hand over $800,000 of KPFA listeners' money in the coming fiscal year and has flatly refused to make any of the recommended cuts. The Pacifica National Board refuses to reduce the number of its famously expensive—and dysfunctional, as a search of YouTube can attest—quarterly board meetings. KPFA's union has asked Pacifica's executive director, Arlene Engelhardt, to disclose her own salary (which should be a matter of public record) but she has refused. Austerity is just for the workers, after all.

http://www.counterpunch.org/boal11042010.html