NP Fwd: ZNet Commentary / Edward Herman / WBAI / Dec 30

[Doug Millison]

>THE PACIFICA COUNTERREVOLUTION HITS WBAI:  
>Another Call for Action
>By Edward S. Herman
>
>One of the most crushing series of blows to the U.S. left, and to democracy
>in this country, has been the gradual transformation of the five station
>Pacifica Radio network from locally-based and left-oriented stations into
>centrally controlled, mainstream institutions. Before 1990, all five
>stations in the network were locally oriented, locally managed with strong
>inputs from local audiences and employees, and both highly political and
>progressive. During the 1990s, however, three of the stations--Houston,
>Washington and Los Angeles--were pushed into the mainstream by the Pacifica
>management, with only KPFA in Berkeley and WBAI in New York City remaining
>as holdovers of the earlier tradition.
>
>On December 26, however, the Washington management seized control of WBAI,
>removing the long-time manager Valerie Van Isler, firing Program Director
>Bernard White and producer Sharan Harper without notice, changing the locks
>on the doors in the middle of the night, and installing a new manager from
>within the WBAI staff secretly primed for her new job. Only people on an
>approved list, which did not include Pacifica Foundation board member Leslie
>Cagan, were admitted to the station on December 27. There has been nothing
>democratic about any actions of the Pacifica management for many years, and
>with one of its board members a member of a law firm with a specialty in
>union-busting, the management has long mastered the art of using every trick
>in that trade.
>
>It will be recalled that the Pacifica management had tried to remake KPFA in
>Berkeley several years ago, locking out the employees, firing many, bringing
>in security forces and strikebreakers, but meeting such resistance, with
>10,000 protesters in the streets, and getting such negative publicity that
>the management had to retreat. The stalemate resulted in a tacit settlement
>that gave KPFA and WBAI temporary autonomy and led to the appointment of
>several new representatives of the audiences and stations to the Pacifica
>board.
>
>But this settlement was only temporary, and the new board members quickly
>discovered that they were not listened to and were kept outside any
>decision-making process, sometimes by illegal actions (and two of the
>dissident board members have an ongoing suit against the board based on
>these illegalities). That the central management was on the march again, and
>that a takeover of WBAI might be in the works, was suggested by the
>sustained attack on Amy Goodman and her Democracy Now! program that
>escalated this past September and October. Goodman has long been harassed by
>the Pacifica top management for her lack of sympathy with Clinton and
>general failure to stick with the approved media agenda. She was brought to
>Washington in September and told quite clearly that her focus on East Timor,
>capital punishment, Mumia Abu-Jamal, Lori Berenson (etc.) was excessive.
>Former board chair Mary Frances Berry called her "troublesome," and said
>that she had "embarrassed" the network, possibly meaning Berry herself and
>her friends and colleagues in the Democratic Party. In October Goodman was
>once again brought to Washington and directly threatened with termination
>unless she refrained from using volunteers and cleared her programs in
>advance in Washington (among other demands). She immediately filed a
>grievance with the union for harassment and censorship.
>
>A problem for the Pacifica elite is that Goodman's show heavily outdraws
>their regular news programs, and most other Pacifica programs as well. This
>makes it awkward for them as they claim to be reforming Pacifica in the
>interest of enlarging audience size, which they have been trying to do by
>substituting popular music for politics (and softening any politics that
>remains). But Goodman's show and its successes in drawing audiences suggests
>that critical politics can be quite popular if done well. That she is
>regarded negatively by the Pacifica brass reflects political bias and a
>determination to defang and depoliticize the network in accord with the
>biases of the top management and their constituency. The constituency of the
>"old Pacifica" was the local audiences and employees and volunteers; the
>constituency of the "new Pacifica" of Bessie Wash and Mary Frances Berry is
>Washington power brokers, officials of the Corporation for Public
>Broadcasting, and the Democratic Party.
>
>Even the New York Times notes that the Pacifica Foundation was initially
>based on "a lack of corporate control and its dedication to peace," and
>represented "grass roots, alternative broadcasting" (Jayson Blair, "Pacifica
>Foundation Locks WBAI Station Manager Out of Office," Dec, 28, 2000). The
>"new Pacifica" has changed course, and has abandoned both its grass roots
>base and alternative broadcasting. Its attack on Amy Goodman and the current
>takeover of WBAI are a part of this de-democratization and political
>neutering. This process has resulted from the capture of the Pacifica
>Foundation by a small group of liberal technocrats and Democratic
>Party-linked officials, who have added to their controlling board membership
>businesspeople in the real estate, construction, and corporate law fields to
>support them in their remaking of Pacifica. They have moved Pacifica's
>headquarters from Berkeley to Washington DC, in keeping with the shift in
>their constituency from audiences and employees to Washington power brokers.
>
>We are dealing here with a kind of coup d'etat, and a systematic destruction
>of a major left institution in the wake of that coup. Given the importance
>of the media in hegemonic processes, and in contesting those processes, what
>is happening to Pacifica, and now WBAI, should be first order business for
>the left. This was our only radio network, and it is being destroyed! It is
>a horrifying fact that a chunk of the left actually signed Saul Landau's
>letter in 1999 which defended the Pacifica management and urged the left to
>stop its "Pacifica bashing," with "Pacifica" identified with the management
>group that was destroying the old Pacifica and picking off left journalists
>and stations one by one. Some of the signers are people trying, for example,
>to contest corporate globalization, a subject on which Amy Goodman and the
>old WBAI would give their contesting position extensive and friendly
>coverage, but which the emerging "new Pacifica" will ignore or treat
>perfunctorily. (The "new Pacifica" Washington station WPFW, formerly run by
>current Pacifica Executive Director Bessie Wash, has been notoriously
>uninterested in protests against not only the dominant political party
>conventions, but those against the World Bank and IMF.) The lack of left
>solidarity involved in signing the Landau letter is equalled only by the
>sheer short-sightedness and stupidity of helping destroy a media institution
>that was a natural ally, if not part of the left itself.
>The battle over Pacifica and WBAI is not over. There are mounting protests
>against the WBAI takeover, and there are at least three legal suits in
>process against the Pacifica Foundation control group. I would urge people
>to get into action now. This is important! It was encouraging to see the New
>York Times finally come up with an article on December 28 putting the WBAI
>takeover in a negative light for both tactics and implied violation of
>organizational purpose. This is the time to move into action with letters,
>phone calls, picketing, and contributions to the funding of legal responses
>to illegitimate authority. Information on the issues and names and actions
>under way can be obtained from these key sites:
>
>Sites: general info and background
>www.radio4all.org/freepacifica
>www.savepacifica.net
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