WE NEED TO BE UNITED IN THE FIGHT AGAINST FASCISM AND REPRESSION
In These Times is committed to remaining fiercely independent, but we need your help. Donate now to make sure we can continue providing the original reporting, deep investigation, and strategic analysis needed in this moment. We're proud to be in this together.
Page Not FoundWE NEED TO BE UNITED IN THE FIGHT AGAINST FASCISM AND REPRESSION In These Times is committed to remaining fiercely independent, but we need your help. Donate now to make sure we can continue providing the original reporting, deep investigation, and strategic analysis needed in this moment. We're proud to be in this together. |
||
Page Not FoundWE NEED TO BE UNITED IN THE FIGHT AGAINST FASCISM AND REPRESSION In These Times is committed to remaining fiercely independent, but we need your help. Donate now to make sure we can continue providing the original reporting, deep investigation, and strategic analysis needed in this moment. We're proud to be in this together. |
||
Page Not FoundWE NEED TO BE UNITED IN THE FIGHT AGAINST FASCISM AND REPRESSION In These Times is committed to remaining fiercely independent, but we need your help. Donate now to make sure we can continue providing the original reporting, deep investigation, and strategic analysis needed in this moment. We're proud to be in this together. |
||
Page Not FoundWE NEED TO BE UNITED IN THE FIGHT AGAINST FASCISM AND REPRESSION In These Times is committed to remaining fiercely independent, but we need your help. Donate now to make sure we can continue providing the original reporting, deep investigation, and strategic analysis needed in this moment. We're proud to be in this together.
You cannot have a viable political movement if it doesn't have its own press.
Twenty-five Years of In These Times
1976-2001: From Jimmy Carter to Osama Bin Laden, highlights from the most important stories and most intriguing voices to have appeared in our pages.
Anniversary Greetings
Thanks to our friends and supporters.
Appealing to Reason
Back Talk
The real toy story.
Back on the air at Pacifica.
India and Pakistan inch closer to war over Kashmir.
No Relief
Behind Argentina's economic meltdown.
The World Economic Forum is coming to New York.
Under the Radar
Bush quietly thwarts environmental regulations.
Private Schooling
Edison Inc. bids to take over Philadelphia education.
Kathleen Zellner: Freedom Fighter.
Follow the Money
BOOKS: It makes the world go 'round.
Not So Innocent
BOOKS: Arthur Schnitzler, sexual neurosis and the bourgoisie.
FILM: Ali and Black Hawk Down
|
January 18, 2002
Back On The Air At Pacifica
At a three-day meeting on January 11 to 13, which drew hundreds of political
activists and radio producers from throughout the nation, a newly installed
interim board of directors of the five-station Pacifica Radio network ordered
the reinstatement of nearly 40 producers who had been fired during a political
struggle that consumed the network. The new board also immediately replaced
several key executives who had sought to transform the 50-year-old progressive
radio network into a mini-version of National Public Radio. A year ago, as readers of this column know, I resigned as co-host of Democracy
Now!, Pacifica’s daily morning news show, to protest repeated acts of censorship
at the network and a rash of unjustified firings at WBAI, the network’s
New York flagship. I broadcast my resignation on-air, announcing that I was
joining those fired workers and thousands of Pacifica listeners around the country
in a national campaign to boycott the network until the board of directors and
the Pacifica executives who were responsible for those policies had been removed. Journalists are normally expected just to report the news. But when your own
employer engages in flagrant censorship, illegal acts and political purges,
each of us must choose between keeping quiet and collaborating or exposing those
acts and resisting. As the country’s oldest and largest listener-sponsored community radio
network, Pacifica depends on the generous contributions of its listeners for
more than 80 percent of its $12 million annual budget. If the listeners could
be convinced to halt their donations, we figured it was possible to force the
network into crisis. Since its founding by American pacifists after World War II, Pacifica has had
a reputation as a broadcast outlet where unpopular and radical views could always
be heard. While some of its programming was occasionally strident and one-sided,
its best reporters often broke critical stories ignored by the corporate media.
As the power and influence of the mass media expanded in recent decades, the
tiny Pacifica network, with stations in five of the biggest radio markets in
the country (New York, Los Angeles, Houston, Washington and the San Francisco
Bay Area), also grew in value. With the stations estimated to be worth as much
as $500 million on the open market, Pacifica is arguably the single most valuable
asset of the American left. Several years ago, a new group of directors took control of the Pacifica Foundation,
the nonprofit entity that runs the stations. The new board promptly did away
with the autonomy of the five stations and eliminated any role for listeners
who had participated in long-standing community advisory boards. The executives
installed by the national board began redirecting the programming toward a more
mainstream audience and firing or censoring anyone who opposed those changes. These actions led to several lawsuits by listeners, dissident board members,
and the network’s local advisory boards. But not until listeners openly
rebelled through a national boycott that began in February 2001 did the tide
begin to turn. The network lost hundreds of thousands of dollars because of
the boycott. Picketing outside each of the stations became commonplace, and
board members and top network executives found themselves flooded with phone
calls and e-mails, even protests outside their jobs and homes demanding their
resignations. As the mass movement around Pacifica spread, many of us were surprised at how
some prominent individuals on the left, even some of the country’s most
respected left publications, sought to steer a neutral course above the fray,
or even backed the policies of the national board. It is always easier to expose
injustices that are far away, much harder to stand against them when they are
practiced by fellow “progressives.” By September, more than half of that board had been forced to resign, including
its chairman and most of its top officers; so had the network’s executive
director and national program director. Months of court-supervised negotiations
between the two sides followed, until a legal settlement was reached in December.
The new board that emerged ended up with a clear majority of its members from
the reform movement. At the first face-to-face public meeting of the new board
in January, it became apparent how complete the reform movement’s victory
had been. As an overflow crowd of hundreds looked on, the new directors completely reversed
the old Pacifica policies. They ordered an end to all censorship on the network.
They reinstated many employees who had been fired to their previous posts. They
fired the station manager at WBAI who had been involved in some of the purges
and accepted the resignation of the station manager at Houston’s KPFT.
In addition, they appointed Dan Coughlin, one of the key activists who led the
national listener boycott, as interim executive director of the entire network.
As part of the court settlement, during the next 18 months, the interim board
must rewrite Pacifica’s by-laws and oversee the first-ever listener elections
of local advisory boards at all stations. Perhaps never before in American history has a popular movement so completely
turned around a media institution. On January 14, I returned to my old job as
co-host of Democracy Now! alongside Amy Goodman. We came back to a network that
is exhausted from a bitter internal war, and that is perhaps $4 million in debt—the
old board having virtually bankrupted Pacifica on their way out the door. But
we returned to one of the few places in the American media where free speech
and democratic accountability are not just slogans, but hard-fought realities.
|
|
WE NEED TO BE UNITED IN THE FIGHT AGAINST FASCISM AND REPRESSION
In These Times is committed to remaining fiercely independent, but we need your help. Donate now to make sure we can continue providing the original reporting, deep investigation, and strategic analysis needed in this moment. We're proud to be in this together.
growing movement to make the American mass media more accountable to the
public they are supposed to serve has won an enormous victory.