Tomorrow, May 6th, a preliminary junction hearing is scheduled in the case of PDGG vs Pacifica. As you probably know, Dan Siegel, speaking as the Pacifica Foundation's alleged representative, sought a temporary restraining order against Summer Reese's continued occupation of Pacifica's offices. That request was put on hold by Judge Petrou, who obviously was not convinced by the Siegel group's argument. We are told that the judge will address and rule on this question after tomorrow's hearing.
Let's hope the details emerge and that the questions of legality regarding Summer's covert ouster are answered. The ongoing feud between the two factions is helping to destroy Pacifica and its stations. That, in some people's mind, may be the intent—we know only one thing: Pacifica and its listener-supporters has been put on the back burner by a bunch of people who seem to have been blinded by their hatred for each other. They are all dispensable—Pacifica isn't.
Don't root for any of these combatants—root for the restoration of Pacifica Radio.
In the meantime, WBAI's latest parade of infomercials began this morning with two reruns: Blosdale's WATTS happenin' and Amy's pitches for a race-baiting gimmick book and $2000 dinners. This will continue throughout the month of May. Can "cures" and carrots be far behind?
Irrespective of any findings or rulings tomorrow or in future it’s unclear to me that Pacifica has a future. It’s clear that it has a past – quite a distant past – but a present, or a future?
ReplyDelete~ ‘indigopirate’
Chris, what you said couldn't have been said any better. The only thing we can hope for is the continuation of Pacifica and BAI. But that will not be possible under any of the folks who are fighting for control of it.
ReplyDeleteIt's funny there are actually organizations in the corporate world in which people have a much better understanding that principles and organization have to take precedence over personalities and politics. Sure, there are vicious politics (Trust me, I've been entangled in them!) but, at some point, someone realizes that goals will not be reached if people don't concentrate on trying to make something work rather than on merely continuing their own agendae and fiefdoms.
There is serious mismanagement of this organization with an enigmatic expenditure of cash (e.g. Six Thousand Dollars a Month to Gary Null for a water filtration service, Thousands to a "call center" (that by the way appears incompetent) each fund drive, etc.) that appears to be designed to steer funds for the benefit of a few, at the cost of the station itself. The station will not survive any such strip mining. It's disgraceful when even former employees have a hard time getting paid!!!
Delete"Time present and time past
ReplyDeleteAre both perhaps present in time future,
And time future contained in time past.
If all time is eternally present
All time is unredeemable.”
Tommy Eliot
TPM
@Chris Albertson: I've been following your blog with interest, as this has progressed. I've been following the Pacifica struggles for decades, as a listener-subscriber until five years ago when I became a programmer at KPFA and a remote contributor to WBAI AfrobeatRadio, and I'm weary as well. I participated in the original Save KPFA, whose name was stolen by those who craftily registered the domain names for savekpfa.com, .net, and .org in 2010. That deceitful moment was recounted in "Stealing Save KPFA," http://sfbayview.com/2010/stealing-save-kpfa/, at the time, but the rest of us who had marched through the streets of Berkeley with 10,000 other people behind a "Save KPFA" banner in 1999 had no choice but to choose another name and domain that had not been snatched out from under us. Hence, we are United for Community Radio, which uses the domain supportkpfa.org. http://2014.supportkpfa.org/
ReplyDeleteHowever, having been around to observe this long, and having read most of the legal pleadings, I support Pacifica Directors for Good Governance in their lawsuit against the PNB and 12 of its members, because there is right and wrong here. It's tragic that it has to be settled in court, but it's not true, as you say, that "we know only one thing: Pacifica and its listener-supporters has been put on the back burner by a bunch of people who seem to have been blinded by their hatred for each other."
I, for one, don't know that. That statement implies that all those on their way to court tomorrow morning are blinded by hate, that there is no right and wrong, no legality and illegality, no responsibility and irresponsibility and I don't see it that way. From my perspective, Pacifica Directors for Good Governance (PDGG) is putting up a valiant, principled, and rational argument for what is right, legal, and responsible towards Pacifica and its listeners.
I don't mean to insist that you agree with me.. I'm only asking that here, on your popular blog, you make the effort to follow the very real issues behind all the venom, and pay attention to who is spewing venom and who is making substantive argument.
I wish I could give you a link to all the legal pleadings, but the Alameda County Courthouse just started charging for reading them on their site. I believe that someone who has been paying to download all the legal pleadings is attempting to centralize them somewhere online, and I'll send you a link to that web page or site if and when it advances from the ideal to the real.
I'm sorry, Ann, my assertion was blurry. I didn't mean to imply that all were included in the "bunch" of players who put the Foundation and listeners on the back burner. Clearly, there are people who genuinely want to see Pacifica get its act together—not just to continue its existence but to do so in a meaningful way. At WBAI—and presumably the rest of Pacifica's stations—solving the problem is to preserve the status quo. Of course that does not make any sense, but we are talking about people who on the surface overestimate their own skills, yet know that good management spells the end for them.
DeleteI really want Pacifica and its stations to continue functioning, but only if it is possible for them to do so honestly and within the guidelines originally prescribed. The original mission did not dictate the programming, but rather the approach to it. Here in New York, when I first started speaking up and criticizing what I saw as a disastrous lowering of standards, people on the Blueboard came out of the woodwork (snake pit, actually) and accused me of every sin imaginable. I was an old and senile man who wanted his job back, I was a racist, a chauvinist, an anti-semitic secret agent for the U.S. Military, etc. Being called all those things did not bother me, but the fact that WBAI was attracting such mindless, hateful people came as a shock. I was naïve to not have realized that dumbed down programs are bound to generate a dumbed down listenership. Why, I thought, does Pacifica allow this deterioration. That, too, was naïve of me and the closer I looked at the PNB, the more hopeless it all seemed.
Frankly, I see fault on both sides, but I regard the Exiles as Obama to Siegel's Romney. It is often difficult for me to get a focused picture of the entire cast, which is why I concluded that the slate had to be wiped clean. I really don't want to see good people go, but how does one pick who is a keeper. The whole system of "democratic" board elections needs to be eliminated or seriously revised if there id to be any hope for the future. That's a pipe dream, so I don't see much hope at this point.
That said, I hope that the ruling by Judge Petrou comes down on the side of Summer, who, though not without fault, in my estimation remains Pacifica's legitimate ED. Having had time to reflect on it, I hope she she can acknowledge her mistakes and demonstrate her worth. Money has to be raised and infomercials by Null and others are not the way to go about it. Professional, experience people need to be hired to go out there and tap legitimate resources that will keep the stations going while the programming is brought up to an acceptable level. It may not be possible at this point, and it certainly won't as long as disruptive forces are around and infighting dominates everybody's agenda.
Sorry that this is such a repetitive ramble, but I am also tired of so much nonsense.
Both of these statements make perfect sense re KPFA and I couldn't have made them more precisely myself:
Delete"At WBAI—and presumably the rest of Pacifica's stations—solving the problem is to preserve the status quo."
". . . when I first started speaking up and criticizing what I saw as a disastrous lowering of standards, people on the Blueboard came out of the woodwork (snake pit, actually) and accused me of every sin imaginable. I was an old and senile man who wanted his job back, I was a racist, a chauvinist, an anti-semitic secret agent for the U.S. Military, etc. Being called all those things did not bother me, but the fact that WBAI was attracting such mindless, hateful people came as a shock. I was naïve to not have realized that dumbed down programs are bound to generate a dumbed down listenership. "
I've published several essays on Pacifica, in Counterpunch, Fog City Journal, and the San Francisco Bay View, and I'm always appalled by the comments.
Counterpunch doesn't publish them, so the belligerents came at me on Facebook and various e-lists devoted to Pacifica about that. The most ridiculous complaint, repeated over and over, was that I had not been "objective," and had not talked to Margy Wilkinson, as though I were an outsider from some other news source, when I made no such pretense. My essay was quite openly an account of my own engagement and my firsthand experience on a KPFA hiring committee that had triggered an Equal Employment Opportunity Commission complaint. http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/03/24/chaos-at-pacifica/http://www.counterpunch.org/2014/03/24/chaos-at-pacifica/
I was appalled that anyone was attempting to drag me into a brain dead discussion of "objectivity" about an essay written in the first person, but that is typical of the way "objectivity" is invoked by KPFA's NPR idolaters.
After reading your post Chris I sat for a while deciding what I was going to say in response. Then I read the comments. When I read Anns I realized that she has said exactly what I was going to say saving me the trouble. So I will just second what she said. Both sides are not wrong. There are right and wrong sides in this. Having initially signed on with SaveKPFA right after the Morning Show was canceled (who wouldn't want to save KPFA?) I after a while decided that I would look into what the real issues were in the conflict. After much reading and much discussion and debate with SaveKPFA supporters, I have lost all faith in them and now realized that I was duped by their name. I have come to realize that even they have no real idea what they are about. And having watched them in action I am appalled at their dishonesty. PDGG and UCR are absolutely in the right here and I believe that Summer Reese has everything that it takes to make an fantastic Executive Director of Pacifica.
ReplyDeleteI respect Ann's opinion and the more I learn an observe of the Siegel people, the better Summer feels.
DeleteHave to agree with Ann Garrison here, Chris. I tried to read all sides, and sort it out for myself. There seems to be real different agendas and methodologies operating. Ann is one of the persons I have learned from, and she makes the substantive arguments without the venom. She volunteers by providing research on the Congo, Uganda, and Rwanda that is quite contrary to the story in the KPFA "news".
ReplyDeleteHave you read the Project Censored statement on what's going on? Project Censored does a great show at the volunteer pay scale, the satisfaction of exposing censorship and media manipulation. They also felt the need to say that only the naive would think that a Cointelpro style infiltration and destabilization campaign might be part of the problem. As a topical political singer-songwriter in the Broadside magazine/Phil Ochs tradition who arrived in Berkeley in 2008 with hope for some air-play at KPFA, I can only say that I feel blacklisted there except for one subsititute DJ who got me in for a half hour interview and getting a song on Project Censored. Check out Pacifica-affiliate internet-only www.NoLiesRadio.org for topical music of all genres and the best shows from Pacifica in the mix!
Here in Berkeley on 4-27-14, we had a SPEAK OUT ON ISSUES at KPFA & PACIFICA, for which a video was posted by the Labor Video Project as “The Crisis in Pacifica and at KPFA, and What Is Going On At Pacifica? (1:46:37) Now added to the “Pacifica and the Struggle for Participatory Pacifist Community Radio” playlist at “SOCIAL JUSTICE IN THE HEART OF BERKELEY” YouTube Channel.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bcGuunuPKhw&list=PLF6vlpoPDpR6RLhNjdCQJGuyMw800tWuN&feature=share&index=11
See what comes out when a bunch of long time activists get a chance to have only 3 minutes each to "Speak Out!" Ann Garrison is at about 1:17:00. Best regards! Vic
My response to Peter Gill also applies to you, Vic. I was impressed by the town hall meeting in Berkeley that you provide a link for. You will also find it posted here. When I was WBAI's manager, one of our most important programs was the weekly live Report to the Listener—it gave us an essential two-way link to our listener-supporters. That kind of dialogue seems to be deliberately avoided today—it certainly is by WBAI's present management. Reimers doesn't even answer e-mail or pick up the phone.
DeleteBlacklisting was not in our vocabulary, nor was the kind of tenure that leads to stagnation. Much of WBAI's programming today is crap, and that seems okay with management.
Let me say that I really appreciate the many visits and comments this blog has registered, it is overwhelming and it shows how important Pacifica is to many of us.
I didn't realize that you had been WBAI's manager at some point, Chris. Like a lot of people I listened to KPFA for years without realizing that it was part of a network. I don't think I became aware of that until I engaged with the movement whose name was stolen in 1999.
ReplyDeleteA weekly live report to the listeners sounds great; that implies an engaged, dynamic relationship with both listeners and programmers.
It was a very different Pacifica back then, and I never heard a voice raised at our monthly PNB and Managers meetings. We had the bizarre, old-fashioned notion that people who supported us with their ears and paid the bills ought not be kept out of the loop. They listened to us and we listened to them—makes sense, doesn't it?
DeleteI just heard WBAI is paying Gary Null $6,000.00 (yes, six thousand dollars) PER MONTH! for a water filtration service - HOW IS THIS GOOD MANAGEMENT FOR AN ORGANIZATION THAT IS SO CASH STRAPPED!?!?!?
DeleteWhat years were you WBAI GM?
DeleteI became manager in December of 1964, but I had been working at WBAI since 1961—first as a volunteer , later as announcer/engineer, even later as a staff producer. I left in 1966 or '67 to join the BBC in London.
DeleteIf this link works, it will tell you more: http://www.divshare.com/direct/25512357-816.pdf
An excellent discussion, and a pleasure to read :)
ReplyDelete~ 'indigopirate'
Chris,
ReplyDeleteI Have to weigh in on this. Driving home from work, I heard the fund drive at BAI pitching six CDs to train your brain for creativity. The presenter was saying that if you listen to the six CD's for six weeks, then all six of your brain's creative frequencies will be exercised. At which point the show's female host and a show's male co-host, who remained silent up to that point, broke out giggling. They couldn't help but laugh at the quackery they were selling, I had to switch to NPR and listen to Teri Gross and Fresh Air.
Having said that, there is a definite difference to the two sides in this and this difference matters more than you think. KPFA vs WBAI today, KPFA produces more professional and superior programming, maybe it's just my personal preference, but I find that they still do journalism and the people interviewed on their shows a far more interesting. BAI is now piping Jazz music from Louisiana, and as a music/cultural station, BAI is inferior to NPR, listen to their Sound Check, which interviews up and coming artists and who perform live in studio. In addition, NPR's regular shows have better soundtracks and higher production value. So, if one station will be lost, BAI license sold or KPFA gutted, I'd rather see BAI go, all the interesting shows at BAI having already been atrophied off.
Second, looking as Pacifica as a whole, it being a money losing foundation, Siegel faction is better suited to raise money to support professional quality broadcasting than does Reese, who relies on premium pitching and marketing to the fringe segment of the listening audience.
The Alameda Superior Courtroom of Judge Iona Petrou has adjourned, 05.06.2014. Judge Petrou is taking both pleadings under advisement. Some people think she'll issue a ruling tomorrow, but I don't yet know whether she actually promised one.
ReplyDeleteJudge Petrou didn't promise a decision tomorrow or any specific time, but said she'd rule ASAP.
DeleteThis is interesting. Judge is being cautious. Why?
ReplyDeleteWhy would one characterize first having written positions presented, then hearing verbal arguments, then taking the matter under advisement as 'cautious'?
Delete~ 'indigopirate'
Maybe not quite so cautious and inscrutable as Ann's account makes it seem. Both Tracy Rosenberg and Summer Reese earned themselves reprimands, today.
DeleteWould you care to enlighten us?
Delete~ 'indigopirate'
THAT West,
DeleteKeep us posted, do tell...
With a journalist blog author, with access to the same lists I have; and Ann, another journalist-- who I believe was in the courtroom-- I thought I'd defer to them in telling the news. There is no ruling as yet, but I'm told that it was quite the spectacle.
DeleteJust what does this word "professional" mean to you, Brooser Bear? Reading wire service copy? Reading it well, with clear enunciation, in a voice that's easy on the ear? Lotta wire service copy gets read on KPFA, but it's not always so easy on the ear.
ReplyDeleteAnn,
ReplyDeleteNPR has correspondents in Moscow, Peking, India, Ukraine. Natives of those countries reporting in English. Correspondents in war zones. Teri Gross and Alec Baldwin spending hours in uninterrupted interviews with authors, journalists, actors, academics, and participants in major historic events. Amy Goodman spending fifteen minutes with two understudy Russian journalists, whose mentor was kidnapped and murdered by a death squad in Chechniya, and then Brian Lehrer on NPR spending 45 minutes doing an in-depth interview with the same two women that was vastly superior to Amy Goodman's coverage. THAT was an EYE-OPENER. NPR doing positive coverage of Russian culture during the 2014 Sochi Olympics, while FOX did negative sound-bites, and BAI did no coverage at all.
With regards to KPFA, Ian Masters gets to do in-depth interviews interview some amazing guests, you got Letters In Politics.
With regards to Amy Goodman and Democracy Now!, I do not consider it journalism, but political advocacy. How else would you explain absence all the death-row side broadcasts by Wesley Cook, a former NPR journalist, who went on an extended temper tantrum in Philadelphia, took the radio station's car on a week-long joy ride, and ended up murdering Daniel Faulkner, a Philadelphia police officer. How is it, that Democracy Now! never presented the totality of the fact, as a good journalist should?
Finally, the political bias of the progressive Pacifica establishment, is not quite left wing and it is not truly revolutionary. It caters to the grievances of Alienated Americans disaffected with American life, and does not really venture to report outside its borders. It may be, that Pacifica never really had the resources to employ international journalists, but here are a few points to ponder: Pacifica listeners have no idea who Susanna Ronconi is, the Prima Linea faction of the Red Brigades, the bloody terror, that she unleashed, and her run for an Italian Parliament seat that was checked by the Italian supreme court. BAI, for all its programming for its Spanish speaking audience, failed to report adequately, or anything at all on the civil war in Colombia, and, more significantly, on the truth and reconciliation process going on there. BAI did not report on the efforts to rebuild the civil society in Guatemala.
You have to admit, with its talk show hosts and emphasis on editorializing, Pacifica is more like the left wing equivalent of WABC with its Limbaughs and Hannitys, than it is like NPR or BBC. Lost in their own progressive bliss, BAI commentators fail to (a) adequately report on the global Left, and (b) they fail to notice the truly fascinating new developments around the world. Whatever the source of their wealth and political bias (which I can follow, btw), outfits like NPR and BBC, they GET, and they DO the cutting edge radio broadcasting of out time.
Listen to NPR offerings like Fresh Air, On Being, Sound Check, This American Life, Here's The Thing, Radio Lab, and see what I am talking about.
I've listened to about half those shows, and that's enough for me. On foreign policy, NPR is way to the right of Voice of America. I can take it only in small does, and those doses always remind me that we still need Pacifica.
ReplyDeleteAnn,
ReplyDeleteVoice of America was the tamest of the Western radio broadcasts aimed at the USSR, and which the USSR diligently jammed. I should know, I spent my Tweens in Russia playing with ham radio receivers. Voice of America were strictly cultural broadcasting, educating the listeners on American culture. The only reason Voice of America was jammed by the Soviets was their utter incompetence. The real subversive shows were the Radio Freedom and Radio Free Europe, from West Germany. The most subversive broadcast the West German Green Wave, which did not seem subversive at all.
So, I am not sure what your concepts of right and left have to do with quality if journalism or the amount of information presented.
You can have Pacifica, so long as you can pay for it, but unfortunately, it can't. For whatever reason, the Pacifica's management is suffering from an acute lack of imagination; they aren't able to conceive of a revenue model to support Pacifica beyond the most regressive commercial model of snake oil salesmen pitching questionable products to people holding beliefs of questionable validity, taking money from retired people on fixed incomes, who can scarcely afford to pay. Tell me, as a progressive, you don't see any moral or ethical issue with this revenue stream?
I will tell you one better, Tewu, the Intelligence service of the Peoples Republic of China has pioneered the use of premiums in the early 60's when they provided Maoist literature and other educational (or propaganda) products for the Maoists in the Western Europe to sell and thus support themselves financially. Chairman Mao, of course, provided his indoctrinational materials FREE of charge to the communist cells, to be SOLD AS PREMIUMS to raise money. But thee marketing gurus of Pacifica are not offering their wares as premiums free of charge to Pacifica, are they? How progressive is that?
The more interesting question is this - how is it that all of the PROFESSIONASLS, who are qualified to run the Pacifica Foundation as a non-profit, non-governmental organization, are on the Save KPFA side, and why is it that Summer Reese has characterized herself as a CAPTAIN of a BUSINESS? And why is it, that in all these DECADES, the Pacifica Foundation never assembled a professional management team to apolitically develop and maintain a financial trust to support Pacifica, whatever it may choose to broadcast? Stalin had his General Shaposhnikov, a 19th century Colonel, whom he cherished and protected, and who rewarded him with a victory, but it seems that the crowd running Pacifica is far too enlightened and progressive to be able to maintain a sustainable operation of Pacifica.
Ah, Bear, you don't understand. To the hard-core left, there is hardly anything that can be said (out loud) that is good about America. (And, if they do say anything somewhat good, it had better come with qualifiers.) Hence, they often believe that concepts such as 'professionalism' have the faint smell of capitalism, imperialism, racism, anti-LGBTQ, sexism...blah blah. So, if you mention 'professionalism' to them, their ears perk up...perceiving a possible perversion of their 'enlightened' state of mind.
ReplyDeleteOr, perhaps...*gasp*...a 'microaggression.'
rj
RJ,
ReplyDeleteI agree with you. It is looks like the Reese faction is the radical leftist opposition at Pacifica. From what I read on the web about the Pacifica system, of governance, the National Board functions less like a governing body of a non-profit and more like a leftist political organization. There is more.
Just as Summer Reese and her supporters, like Uzzell, have no formal education, to put it nicely, neither did the Soviet leadership, in the true leftist tradition! Lenin was a lawyer. Stalin was a theological seminary dropout. Khruschev, who ended up representing a superpower in a nuclear confrontation, had a SIXTH grade education! The first Soviet and post-Soviet leaders, who with formal education were Gorbachev and Putin, both lawyers. What the CPSU (Soviet Communist Party) had, was the ambitious activists and organizers, later fund-raisers and collectors of party dues in work-places, rising to the top of the organization, and as they rose through the ranks, the party developed a system of NIGHT-SCHOOLS to bring them up to speed. Khruschev, with no education, faced off against Kennedy, who graduated Harvard and was a Rhode Scholar, etc. It was a question of not IF, but WHEN the Soviet Union would collapse. Stalin, on his death bed, in 1954, gave them fifty years.
Professionalism and education matter. Pacifica may fail financially regardless of who takes control, but the quality of programming will deteriorate even more under Reese. The SIX-FIGURE salaries that the top echelon at Pacifica award themselves out of the budget of a failing organization in desperate financial straits, points to lack of moral character, corruptibility, and personal opportunism of these individuals. Whatever their motivations may be, at least individuals like Siegel and Wilkinson (who works pro-bono, apparently), have established their record of success in the outside world, and they don't NEED income from Pacifica salaries to support themselves.
Unlike Paulie D’s heroes in the Third Reich--Goering, Goebbels, Himmler, Reinhard, Heydrich, Hess, and Bormann, and their erudite, highly educated Pope, Eugenio Pacelli, the people who mounted the Russian Revolution were certainly uneducated rabble. Paulie would have preferred that Russia continue to be ruled by the Princes of Tolstoy’s War and Peace.
ReplyDeleteSurely, Ano, you are being sarcastic...
ReplyDeleteThe Nazi gang lasted 12 years to the Reds' 75, and they wouldn't have lasted quite so long, had they not had the natural resources of the Russian Empire. Ribbentrop was no Kolontai. The Royal Nobility of the Tolstoy's War and Peace, may have survived the Bolsheviks, had they been willing to get engaged in a nationwide campaign of terror to maintain their position of leadership, something that Stalinists had no compunction doing. Of course, had they remained in power, Russia would not have ceded separate peace to Kaiser in WW1, and the would have likely not been WW2 or the Holocaust. Of course, had this happened, that version of Russia would have been some form of a weak parliamentary system, likely with a monarch, dominated by a strong military junta. Something very similar to a Pakistan today. My personal favorite for the Russian Pinochet, would have been Gen. Lavr Kornilov. He was no hereditary aristocrat, had no genteel upbringing, and had no compunction in ridding the earth of the red plague.