Rebuttal to KPFK on-air statement

The following statement is being aired relentlessly on KPFK. It has angered many listener-sponsors, who feel justifiably outraged at their money vanishing down a black hole in Washington. However, this statement is also spin of the worst kind, aimed largely at weakening the new bosses of General Manager Mark Schubb and on-air host Marc Cooper. It is an internal Pacifica governance issue that is being dealt with by new national management less sympathetic to Schubb. While most of the facts are straight, the conclusions are pure fantasy.

In other words, you've been had. Read on for full analysis.

 

KPFK is sponsored by listeners like you, but this station is owned by something called the Pacifica Foundation. For over fifty years Pacifica has been a contentious organization sometimes for better sometimes for worse with more than its share of internal strife.

This is true. The Pacifica Foundation owns five stations. This foundation is governed (traditionally badly) by a national board and an executive committee. These, not the local stations, hold the FCC broadcast licenses, and so they, not the station managers, are legally responsible for what goes out on their air. And yes, Pacifica is very contentious, to a fault. It shares the ego trips, tactical disputes, and turf wars that traditionally weaken the entire left.

[...]

First,we must apologize to many of you who pledged during our November fund drive, and who have not yet received your thank you gifts. We do not know when those gifts will be mailed out because the Pacifica Foundation has not paid our bills for those items.

This, too, is true. The Pacifica Foundation is out of money. It owes approximately $2.9 million, and has about $300,000 in ready cash that anyone is able to find. (Bookkeeping was not the previous national board's strong suit.) KPFK, as you may have noticed, derives most of its current talk show content from appearances of people marketing various books. Many of these books were purchased (not donated) as fund drive premiums, but now the bill has to be paid.

We must also apologize to the many many listeners across Southern California who are still having trouble hearing us because KPFK is operating at only one quarter of our licensed power. We have brand new transmitters but they have been sitting at KPFK for many months because the Pacifica foundation has not paid the bills necessary for installing them.

This is an oversimplification of a complex technical issue, with other variables such as weather and illegal high-power operation of a station in Tijuana, but it is essentially true. New transmitters bought with money from the NTIA have not been installed for financial reasons, and they sit rusting in storage while KPFK broadcasts from a shipping container at the base of its Mt. Wilson tower.

[...]

In short, Pacifica has taken control of our finances and the money that we have raised from you, kpfk listeners, is not being used for the purposes intended or budgeted.

Again, true, but this is where the Schubb/Cooper narrative begins to go off the track. This control was taken over in 1995, by national executive director Pat Scott. The money was indeed stolen, but by an illegally constituted national board which later on literally absconded to Washington, DC and lived high on the hog with expensive junkets, nice hotels, high-priced consulting and security firms, and lavish parties. This board became self-selecting, self-perpetuating, and basically a financial black hole for some corporate wannabes from Texas and DC to serve their personal agenda of turning Pacifica into a slick network like NPR.

Desperate to maintain its illegally usurped power, and under attack from many different communities, this board systematically deconstructed Pacifica, with surprise takeovers of stations (including KPFK), with union busting, and, yes, with a huge influence on local program content crossing over on several occasions into outright censorship.

The current management of KPFK, including general manager Mark Schubb, took power after the 1995 takeover, and as an integral part of this national effort to change programming. Schubb has presided over perhaps the greatest blood bath in community radio history, by firing and/or banning over 150 programmers and producers from the station! There's hardly anyone left, and of course the few remaining are for the most part the survivors, who will say anything the management wants them to say if it means not joining the banned and fired.

KPFK would most likely now be for sale, or lease, had the illegal national board not been sued by listener groups, local advisory boards, and even a minority faction in the board itself. This national board was forced to settle these suits out of court, and as a consequence it no longer exists. The people that we are now being asked by management to contact and pressure are not the people who stole the money! They are the people who have been chosen, and approved by the court, to SAVE the foundation from the legal, moral, and fiscal disaster which the former governing body brought on. Please give them this chance!

Also for the first time in the history of Pacifica, the Pacifica national board has decided to encroach on the editorial independence of our station and now intends to have the board itself make decisions about who or what you may hear on kpfk.

This is a bald faced lie. It shows a classic propaganda technique of starting out with the truth, then spinning off into pure fantasy when it's time to drop the psychological payload. Don't believe this nonsense!

Whether such interference is good or bad, history shows that it has always taken place. In 1967, KPFK's general manager was removed by the National Board in a dispute having to do with the Renaissance Pleasure Faire (yes, the one in the Byrds song). In 1988, the national executive director censored Allen Ginsberg's Howl poem from KPFK and other stations.

And we've already talked about the massive schedule changes after 1995. Mark Schubb was hired to implement this national agenda, he has NEVER acted independently, and to say now that he is being told what to air is ludicrous. It is obviously related entirely to the new board's recent order that he air Democracy Now!, a national show that KPFK is contract-bound to carry, but also one of which Schubb has never publically hidden his personal hatred.

The situation is difficult and it's outcome is unclear. What is certain is that Pacifica needs to hear loud and clear your voice of support for fiercely independent broadcasting. To find out how to help kpfk in this precarious moment, I ask you to go to the web and click on www.friendsofkpfk.org

The web site mentioned is largely a piece of propaganda. The people who support fiercely independent broadcasting are not the ones who decimated a good radio station to make it sound more commercial. They are the ones who are now in Washington fighting for its salvation. If you want to yell at someone, Mark Schubb's number is in the book.