Concerned Listener Statement
The last election saw the Concerned Listener (CL) slate emerge with five out of the nine listener-sponsored seats. It was a particularly mean-spirited race with attacks drowning out what was really at stake in these past two elections. We members of Concerned Listeners (CL) would like to cut through the rhetoric and bombast to talk about our vision for the station, indeed, for the left and progressive media in general.
While it is not our intention to go into detail on the past seven or eight years of KPFA history, we think it is important to talk a little about what brought Concerned Listeners together. We recommend Matthew Lasar’s excellent book, “Uneasy Listening: Pacifica Radio’s Civil War” for the details on the battle to save the network.
Back in 2006 a number of local activists grew increasingly concerned about the LSB. It seemed to be a board that defined the staff and the management of KPFA as an enemy. Rather than trying to help the station raise money, expand its listenership, and reach out to new audiences, the majority on the LSB spent its time denouncing “entrenched staff” and station management.
To many of us, it seemed that at the very time that the left and progressives should be presenting a united front to resist the policies of the Bush Administration, KPFA was using its energy to war with itself. Many of us who have listened to the station for the past five decades found it hard to consider people like Larry Bensky as a monster bent on subverting the will of the listeners and turning the station into a version of National Public Radio.
What particularly struck us was that the then LSB majority—at the time subsumed under the umbrella of “People’s Radio,” but who now call themselves “independents”—seemed to have no program to make the station stronger or reach broader audiences. Instead, they seemed focused on attacking the current staff and management and demanding the right to directly control programming. Their only apparent program was to reduce the hours and change the time that “Democracy Now” was broadcast, and to cut back on music programming in order to add more public affairs, with very few specific ideas about what public affairs shows to add.
So what does CL stand for, and what do we think is at stake in this unfortunate civil war?
First, we want to break the cycle created by a confrontational mind-set that divides the world into “us” and “them,” and look at what we have to do to improve the functioning of KPFA. We are not suggesting that this is all about getting together to sing Kumbaya. There are real, substantive differences to thrash out.
CL believes we must address KPFA’s long-term future. We live in a rapidly and constantly changing society. KPFA’s base is not growing, and it may be shrinking. At a time when independent media outlets are disappearing, this is a source for deep concern. How we repair that is the rub, and the source of real differences on the LSB. We think we need a broad approach as to whom we can reach and who is considered a progressive. We think the future of KPFA lies in inclusiveness, of creating a program mix that will bring in new listeners beginning to come around to a progressive and left agenda.
We feel that the “independents”—we put the word in quotes because they almost always vote in lockstep—represent a narrow, inflexible sectarianism whose target audience is small and marginal.
One of the major charges they lob at us is that CL is a front for the Democratic Party and that CL is “taking over KPFA” to make it a tool of the Democrats. On one level this is silly, since most of us are highly critical of the Democratic Party, but the attack also says there is no room at the inn for Democrats. We reject that. Many—indeed most—on the left vote for at least some Democratic candidates. Some of us do not. But we are all members of a progressive community that wants the troops out of Iraq, trade union rights, equality for all, and a host of other decent and humane programs. We don’t think that just because you vote for Barbara Lee for Congress you are not a part of the KPFA community.
The CL believes we need to better define the process of governance at KPFA. We need to understand the roles of the station management, the staff, and the community so that we can establish a true collaborative framework.
We believe that KPFA needs to allow staff and management the flexibility to use their expertise and training to produce quality programming. In short, you hire good people and let them do their jobs. In turn, the LSB influences this process through its participation in the Station Manager hiring process. One of its principal duties is to ensure that KPFA programming follows the Pacifica Mission Statement to “provide an outlet for the creative skills of communities, serve the cultural welfare of the community, and to …contribute to a lasting understanding between nations and between individuals of all nations, races and creeds and colors,” and to present “…accurate, objective, comprehensive news on all matters vitally affecting the community.”
For the record, besides “ensuring that the radio station’s programming fulfills the mission of the Pacifica Foundation,” the LSB’s duties include; appointing representatives to the Pacifica National Board (PNB); acting as a community liaison to the station and the PNB; reaching out to underserved communities; assisting in fund raising; conducting Town Hall meetings; reviewing and approving the station’s budget; establishing a hiring pool for the station General Manager (GM) and the station Program Director (PD); and evaluating the GM, the PD, and the Pacifica Executive Director.
One charge directed at CL is that we are a stalking horse for management, with a stealth agenda. It is true that we do not automatically see management as a force aimed at undermining listener input to the station. But CL has never coordinated its actions with station management, nor do we have some sort of “secret agenda” to dismantle the LSB. We have always been upfront about what we want.
First, we believe in a collaborative relationship among management, staff and listeners.
We do not assume that management is evil and manipulative, but a necessary part of keeping a broadcast outlet on the airwaves. The job of a board is to help hire, and then evaluate the performance of, the GM. It is not the Board’s role to directly intervene in the daily life of the station or micromanage programming or management. The LSB needs to be guided by the Pacifica bylaws and to make sure that the GM fulfills the KPFA mission. If he or she does not, the LSB can initiate the removal of that person.
The GM, in turn, oversees the staff of the station and is required to evaluate their performances. The LSB is not supposed to intervene in that process unless it discerns that the Pacifica bylaws and the KPFA mission are being violated. Its role then is to call the GM to account.
The LSB has no expertise in areas like Federal Communication Commission (FCC) rules, which is why one needs professional managers who do. If a station violates those rules, it could cost the network hundreds of thousands of dollars. For instance, some people may object to FCC regulations on the use of swear words, but each word that slips onto KPFA’s air can cost the station up to $325,000 in fines.
Second, we believe that the LSB has no place trying to interfere with the station’s staff. The staff is the responsibility of the station’s department heads, the Program Director (PD) and the GM. The LSB does not have the expertise to intervene in the daily functioning of the station. We are a listener board which has staff members on it. The bulk of the LSB should be composed of people who are active in their communities, who bring their experience and networks to the station. It is not primarily a body of radio people, although the presence of staff is invaluable for the functioning of the Board.
We recognize that there are only so many hours in the broadcast day, and that people will quite normally campaign for access or to keep their current access. The latter can create roadblocks for new programming, but clearing those roadblocks is not the job of the LSB, but the job of the GM and PD. The job of the LSB is to make the GM answerable to the Board for the overall direction of the station—not to take up one party or another’s campaign to win airtime. Boards that try to meddle in the everyday running of their organizations are disasters.
We think bodies like the Program Council are vital to the development of new programming at KPFA, but we think such bodies are advisory. Our opponents think that the Program Council should be in charge of programming and that the role of staff is to carry out its dictates. But the Program Council is very much like the LSB: a mix of staff, management, listeners and community members. It has no special expertise. Giving it direct programming authority would be little more than a guarantee that programming decisions would be made by the people who can shout the loudest and last the longest at meetings, displacing frank discussion of the station’s programming and direction with high-stakes campaigns for air time.
If a camel is a horse designed by a committee, we shudder to think what radio station programming would be like if it was designed by the Program Council.
Third, we support professionalism. Professionalism is a complex term, with lots of definitions, but what we mean by it is that we support quality radio with content that is alternative but in a form recognizable by the public at large. KPFA, indeed the alternative media in general, do not create the forms that define radio. Our news is alternative in content, but someone who has never listened to KPFA before must recognize that it is news the first time they tune in. Our stories cannot be simply editorials; they are based on research and interviews. It is the content that distinguishes KPFA from the mainstream media. We do not believe that respect for professional competence is somehow elitist, authoritarian or anti-democratic
“Professionalism” has become a dirty word for some because they are not particularly interested in reaching anyone besides convinced activists. We also want to continue serving as a forum for activists, but we feel that to be effective the station must reach a much wider audience, and we hope, turn some of them into activists. There is an old slogan in political organizing: “Tell me, I forget; Show me, I remember; involve me, I understand.” As a coalition of political activists, that slogan resonates with CL.
There was a recent uproar over a staff member telling people to go to a demonstration on the air. There was fear that such direct advocacy might violate FCC regulations. We are concerned about the free speech aspects of the issue, but we also feel that the matter is one for KPFA’s legal counsel and station management. We are not experts in FCC rules. If FCC regulations are violated, the consequences will fall on the station management and staff, not the LSB. We are firmly opposed to putting the station’s staff and management in unnecessary danger.
But CL also thinks that the uproar over “calls to action” missed the point: telling people to go to a demonstration will not get them to go. Showing them the criminal nature of the Iraq War, and the devastation it has wrought not only on the Iraqi people but also on our own civil liberties and economy is more likely to get them to a demonstration that someone shouting at them “be there.”
Fourth, the job of the LSB is to oversee the station’s budget and to make sure that management is fiscally responsible. Yet our opponents seem largely uninterested in this important area. One former People’s Radio Board member commented, “The LSB is about governance, not about fund raising.” That is false. It is not only contradicted by Pacifica’s bylaws on the responsibility of the LSB, it reflects a view of how a board functions that has less to do with keeping the station on the air than wielding power over staff and management.
For instance, one of the things that CL did was to pass a series of resolutions calling for greater financial transparency, accountability and discipline from the Pacifica Network, KPFA’s parent entity. . That effort was met with the charge by our opponents that CL was trying to jam up the agenda of the LSB with “unimportant issues.” In spite of a combination of hostility and indifference, we finally managed to get the changes through.
Concerned Listeners has the best track record on financial accountability of any group on KPFA’s Local Station Board. We have repeatedly called for stricter financial controls in Pacifica, responsible budgeting, greater restraints on national spending, and we have repeatedly stood against financial deals crafted to benefit members of the Pacifica National Board and their friends. We recently passed a resolution calling for Pacifica to bar the practice of hiring board members to fill positions that have not been publicly posted. Our “independent” opponents withheld their support for the proposal.
We do not think of our opponents on the LSB as enemies, but we do think their narrow approach to the station would keep it on the margins, and may eventually strangle it financially by freezing or shrinking the station’s listener base.
We are appalled at their demonization of CL. In the last election People’s Radio said that CL “bought” the election because we raised money to send out slate cards, as if a simple post card would make KPFA’s famously contentious listener base automatically cast their vote for CL candidates. We think that charge demonstrates a profound contempt for KPFA’s listeners. As for raising money: all of us are political organizers, many of us with 40 or more years of experience. We know how to organize and fund raise. That is a handy skill, which CL has turned to aiding the station. We are committed to raising $50,000 to boost KPFA’s signal so that it can reach new audiences.
A recent incident illustrates the dysfunctional level that problem solving has reached at KPFA. Police were called to the station to remove an individual who had previously been told she could not be on the station grounds because she had threatened a staff member. When asked to leave, she refused, and the then director of Pacifica’s Human Resources told the staff member to call the police. It is perfectly legitimate to discuss under what circumstances police should be used, and whether they were necessary in this particular case. But even before the facts of the case were known, a few programmers went on the air to attack management and spread a series of falsehoods. Instead of trying to calm the situation and working for a resolution our opponents on the LSB whipped the incident up into a frenzy, and used it to try and force management into recognizing a staff organizations whose criteria for membership violates Pacifica bylaws.
This cynical attempt to use this unfortunate incident to pack the unpaid staff organization with people who have only a tangential relationship to KPFA, thus allowing this sectarian group to control which staff members get elected to the LSB is disgraceful. In the middle of an important national election campaign, with the U.S. preparing to expand the war in Afghanistan and re-ignite another Cold War in Europe, the station is bogged down in this issue. At best, this is politically irresponsible, at worst, cynical and manipulative.
The media in this country is in the middle of an enormous upheaval. Print media readership continues to shrink, and the average age of a newspaper reader is 52 years old. The broadcast waves are more and more dominated by giant corporations like Clear Channel, while much of public radio, intimidated by relentless right-wing assaults on it, have moved sharply to the center.
There has never been a time when Pacifica is more needed than now, but the network will only fulfill its potential if we can get by our own internal civil wars, and reach out to audiences who are desperate for quality radio. While this issue of whom we reach and how we do it is mainly a political issue, it has a technological side to it. CL has a program for moving KPFA into the new media. Radio is changing at light speed and KPFA must find ways to keep ahead of its competition.
We must expand our Internet presence, not only to reach new—and younger—audiences but also to test new programming. Our “The War Comes Home” website that KPFA put together around last winter’s veterans hearings allowed internet users to access other sites and connect with related materials. KPFA’s technical staff now has a template that can be used to set up similar user-friendly interactive web sites.
KPFA is already working on a “1968” website that will plug our listeners into activities around the world examining the great upheavals of that year, and what we can learn from them for our own era. It will have music videos, photos, and ask people to contribute their own memories. It allows everyday people to make radio, and forges an electronic bridge between generations. We can establish similar websites for youth culture, immigration, women, working people, etc.
It is essential that we widen our audience, not just do a better job reaching a series of specific niches. We like the “broad” in broadcasting, but to do this we have to be good. Pacifica used to be the only game in town, but now people can access the alternative media through the Internet, plugging into Counterpunch, AlterNet, Znet, upsidedownworld.com, the Huffington Post, the Black Commentator, and hundreds of other websites. Most these websites have excellent visuals and quality music. Put a low-quality, unprofessional program on the Internet or the air waves these days and you are road kill. Without quality production, no one is going to listen, particularly if they are young.
We think KPFA must be a springboard for the left and progressive forces to reach a far wider audience and to bring them into a united front against current U.S. foreign and domestic policy. We don’t have a litmus test for our listeners. We welcome Greens, Peace and Freedom, Democrats, Independents, and who knows, maybe a few intelligent Republicans. We assume that many of them will be initially skeptical of us. Indeed, anyone who is not skeptical of American media hasn’t been paying attention. We think we can break down that skepticism, but not by shouting at them or preaching to the choir.
We want quality, professional, sharp-edged programming. We cannot do that if we are at war with one another, and we cannot do that if we don’t have faith that we can reach out and bring in an audience that is representative of the American people. CL believes it is time to get past the polarization and recognize that what unites us is more important than what divides us. We must learn to respect our differences and realize that there is a place for everyone at KPFA. If you feel the same way, then help us make KPFA and Pacifica a powerful voice for peace and justice.
Help us make KPFA and Pacifica a powerful voice for peace and justice!
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