THE WHOLE STORY: PACIFICA, KPFA, AND 50 YEARS OF HISTORY

by Ken McCarthy

Some facts:

1. The Pacifica Board does not own KPFA. The Pacifica Foundations does. The board members are mere custodians who are supposed to be serving the interests of the foundation which includes the pursuit of its highest ideals.

2. The Pacifica Foundation was founded by Lewis Hill in 1949. Hill, a pacifist who registered as a conscientious objector at the outbreak of World War II, worked as a Washington DC correspondent before moving to California where he founded KPFA. He served as Pacifica's head until his death in 1957. He stated his intentions for the form Pacifica stations should take very clearly. More on this later.

3. Pacifica is the oldest listener supported radio system in the US and was a pioneer of the "talk radio" format which invited live listener call-ins.

4. For the last 50 years, Pacifica radio has been one of the very few broadcast outlets that accurately reports on the war-based economy of the United States and its effects both at home and abroad. In exchange for providing this unique reporting, listeners have funded the operation of Pacifica stations with donations--as well as substantial amounts of volunteer labor--for 50 unbroken years. Pacifica stations have also widely reported on the details of government corruption, including but not limited to, the sponsor of terror in the Third World and the tolerance of drug trafficking by US allies and in some cases government employees. The rampant criminality of the Clinton administration has been covered at length and in depth as well.

5. The current Board of Trustees--headed by Clinton's appointee to the US Civil Rights Commission--has decided that the system that has produced this uninterrupted stream of information for the past 50 years is theirs to be manipulated in any way they see fit without answering to anybody: the staff, the volunteers, or the listener-supporters.

When people talk about Pacifica being "corporatized" or refer to the current conflict as a "labor dispute" they are greatly understating what is taking place. The correct term is "censorship." Programs, reporters, producers, and an entire culture of ethical, listener-sponsored journalism, is, at the hands of the current board, in the process of being gutted station by station. The destruction of these stations is a public disaster of serious proportions for all Americans who value free speech . The past 50 years clearly indicate the nature of Pacifica and what its overall goals and methods are. Only a mob lawyer--or Clinton appointee--would propose that the station's board has leave to destroy the fruit of 50 years of labor in order to replace it with their personal "vision" of public broadcasting, one that, not so coincidentally, is less diligent in pursuit of information about the misdeeds of the administration to which the board's chair belongs.

Not only are 50 years of history against the destructive actions of this board, so are the clearly stated intentions of Pacifica's founder. Lewis Hill knew that giving individuals, not program directors and sponsors, and certainly not board members, real authority over programming was the only way to generate worthwhile content. Here's what he said on the matter:

"By suppressing the individual, the unique, the industry reduces the risk of failure (abnormality) and assures itself a standard product for mass consumption."*

Hill intended not only that individual hosts and commentators be free to speak their mind, but that the very structure of the stations be designed to ensure that they are free to do so.

"It requires that the people who actually do the broadcasting should also be responsible for what and why they broadcast. In short, they must control the policy which determines their actions."*

Finally, Hill clearly stated that the content of Pacifica stations was to be a collaboration of listeners and producers--not station managers and board members:

"The (KPFA) schedule has two sources in almost equal balance as to their importance and influence. On the one hand, these happen to be subjects of primary interest to people working at KPFA. On the other hand, they happen also to represent the articulate interests of well-defined minorities in the audience of the San Francisco Bay Area. . . . A constant exchange between the staff and the audience enriches the schedule with fresh judgment and new ideas, materials, and issues. . . . Listener sponsorship makes possible this extremely productive balance of interests and initiatives."*

*from "The Theory of Listener Sponsored Radio"