[Imc] WILL Patterns article

[peterm at shout.net]

Thanks for that, Kim.  I sent my original message because I thought the
IMC should know what top management at WILL was saying about Pacifica.

I appreciate Don's respect for Pacifica's achievements, and I don't even
necessarily disagree with his assertion that perhaps some changes were/are
needed at Pacifica.

I do dislike, however, his assessment that Pacifica stations need
centralized control over their operations and that today we have less of a
need for independent voices because we live in an era of "peace and
prosperity," which he oddly justaposes against a struggle for "peace and
JUSTICE." Prosperity for a few doesn't equal justice, particularly when we
look behind the curtain and see the sweatshops, genetic pollution,
downsizing, and global disenfranchisement that have helped transfer wealth
to those few.  Even fascism can be peaceful and prosperous, but it never
accompanies justice.  We need media that understands this.

He concludes by raising the bogeyman of "fiduciary responsibility," just
like a CEO.  He may as well say "I think the board must crush Pacifica's
internal democracy because the shareholders demand it."  That's a view
from the executive office, not the broadcast booth.  Pacifica wasn't in
danger of financial death.  Rather than working to find a solution *with*
the staff of the stations or the communities where they operate, the
Pacifica board gave up and forcefully imposed conditions on the stations,
replacing the station manager in the middle of the night on Christmas Eve
in New York, and with armed guards in San Francisco.  It's understandable
that Don omitted these facts from his piece.

I don't think this situation will simply work itself out.  Nor do I
think--as Don apparently does--that we should be satisfied with just
Pacifica and other resource-starved operations for grassroots, radical
media.  As it's done with our forests, our air, our rivers, and our
prairie, our government has given OUR broadcast spectrum to corporate
interests, leaving us--again--with the "vast wasteland" of media that led
to the creation of the CPB in about 1970.  The CBP wasn't enough then.
Today, even the CPB is corrupted with full-scale commercials and a
demonstrable conservative bias (who's the progressive counterpart to Bill
Buckley?  What "balances" the series of pro-capitalist investment programs
like Wall $treet Week and Adam Smith's Money World?).  NPR and PBS won't
begin to criticize the state beyond the bounds set by the other corporate
media.  Underwriting from Kuwait?

And this is our "public" media.  NPR and PBS are as good as it gets in the
world of salaried media professionals.  It's nowhere near good enough. 

I think that if we lose Pacifica, we'll lose any progressive influence on
the CPB, leaving us back where we were before Lew Hill founded Pacifica
when radio was young.  Except today, we'll be fighting to scale the walls
of fully corporatized broadcast media.  Will re-entry even be possible?

I wish that rather than siding with his peers who are trying to control
and restructure Pacifica, Don had supported those people who are fighting
to create a different model, run by the people who produce the content and
by the people who it's intended to serve.  In the long run, real
participation by listeners, viewers, and workers would make Don's job a
lot easier.  We should keep trying to learn how to do it, not trash the
model.

-Peter

On Thu, 1 Mar 2001, Kranich, Kimberlie wrote:

> Here's the Patterns article Peter was referring to:
> Electronic Convulsions
> By Don Mullally, Director of Broadcasting
> 
> 
> 
> 
> Pullout Quote:
> "Is this the end of free-speech radio? In my view, this is just another
> convulsion in a long series made almost inevitable by the management
> structure (or lack of it) that pervaded Pacifica.'
> 
> 
> A remarkable American radio network is said to be close to meltdown. Its New
> York station is in crisis; some staff argue that the form of radio to which
> they have dedicated their lives has died. I believe we are witnessing only
> another inevitable conflict in a series that began more than half a century
> ago.
> In the early 1940s, a group of pacifists decided there should be a forum for
> dialogue that allowed people to profit from each others' ideas, especially
> about the evils of war and the way America could embrace a philosophy of
> peace. They were vigorously anti-Communist; indeed, they rejected the label
> of "liberal," for they distrusted the entire spectrum embraced by the
> liberal-conservative realm. They created the Pacifica Foundation, and to
> promote their philosophy and ideology they decided to bring debate and
> dialogue to people via radio.
> In 1949 they created the first "listener-supported" station in the new
> medium of FM: KPFA in Berkeley, Calif. There were few FM receivers at that
> time, and the low-powered station had few listeners to send money. It
> struggled and nearly died before it was given a $150,000 grant from the Ford
> Foundation, whose 1949 goals were "the establishment of peace, strengthening
> democracy, and education in a democratic society," goals which resonated
> well with Pacifica's rhetoric. In keeping with Pacifica's philosophy and
> style, KPFA was run almost as a "co-op," with an army of volunteers and a
> few paid staff, all arguing endlessly about politics, policy, philosophy and
> programming.
> Pacifica's willingness to air controversial ideas resulted in KPFA being
> pilloried in a publication called "Facts to Counteract Communism and Those
> Who Aid Its Cause" and excoriated by people shocked by a discussion of
> homosexuality aired in 1958. Liberals disliked the right-wing commentaries
> of Gerald L.K. Smith and Caspar Weinberger.
> Pacifica added stations in Los Angeles (KPFK-1959), New York City
> (WBAI-1960), Houston (KPFT-1970), and Washington, D.C. (WPFW-1977). Those
> stations, too, had independent local management that veered from
> unstructured democracy to near-anarchy. This was purposeful: "corporate" was
> considered as bad, local autonomy was better. At the same time, corporate
> Pacifica was fending off attacks from a wide-ranging group of government and
> commercial interests who found Pacifica outrageous: the stations reported on
> Vietnam atrocities, read literature which some found offensive, played
> recordings of "Seven Words You Can't Say On The Air," thumbed its electronic
> nose at the establishment, and litigated its free-speech rights all the way
> to the Supreme Court. 
> The years of Pacifica's growth began with the witch-hunts of the McCarthy
> era and encompassed the protests of the anti-Vietnam-war period, the
> rebellions on college campuses, civil rights marches, the anti-nuclear
> movement, murders of the Kennedys and Dr. Martin Luther King, the Watergate
> scandal, the rise of feminism, the beginning of the gay-rights movement, and
> the remarkable changes in American society that resulted from those and
> other conflicts. Pacifica stations were at the center of all of those
> issues, often raising difficult questions with a strident voice.
> Periodically the Pacifica Foundation attempted to assert some level of
> control over one or another of the stations, which were then almost
> completely autonomous, but in many cases the local staffs and "managers"
> viewed such efforts as "takeovers," and "the issuing of orders!"
> By the early 1990s, the Board of the Pacifica Foundation had determined that
> it needed to change course: local staff were still at the microphones
> fulminating for peace and justice, but in an era of peace and prosperity
> there were fewer and fewer followers in front of the radios. The Pacifica
> Board made some management changes and took greater control over the
> stations in Los Angeles, Houston and Washington.
> But when Pacifica tried to assert a greater measure of control at KPFA in
> Berkeley, staff and volunteers locked themselves into the studios and
> broadcast pleas to the audience to save the station. Ten thousand protesters
> surrounded the studios and marched in the streets. In the face of those
> pressures and the negative publicity (largely fueled on-the-air by the
> staff) and by lawsuits to remove members of the Pacifica Board deemed "too
> corporate," the board relented.
> Last December, the board replaced the manager of WBAI in New York, fired a
> number of staffers, locked out some employees--and was treated to a barrage
> of bad press. But this time the board replaced the former manager with one
> of the current staff, so there could be no unified staff rebellion against
> an outsider. 
> Is this the end of free-speech radio? In my view, this is just another
> convulsion in a long series made almost inevitable by the management
> structure (or lack of it) that pervaded Pacifica. There are two facts which
> seem to get lost in the heated rhetoric about Pacifica: Under the law, 1)
> the licensee (The Pacifica Foundation Board) must be responsible for
> everything that goes on the air: local managers and staffs cannot assume
> that responsibility. 2) The Pacifica Board has a fiduciary responsibility to
> all those who fund Pacifica stations to operate them in a prudent and
> fiscally responsible manner; sometimes prudence means that program changes
> must be made.
> I'm confident that there are avenues by which the views espoused by Pacifica
> staff can be heard, and that the public will still be served.  I'd like to
> hear your views, of course; drop me a note when you have time.
> 
> 
> Don's email address is:
> 
> 
> 
> dpm at will.uiuc.edu
> 
> 
> 
> 
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