Working on this new server in php7...
imc indymedia

Los Angeles Indymedia : Activist News

white themeblack themered themetheme help
About Us Contact Us Calendar Publish RSS
Features
latest news
best of news
syndication
commentary


KILLRADIO

VozMob

ABCF LA

A-Infos Radio

Indymedia On Air

Dope-X-Resistance-LA List

LAAMN List




IMC Network:

Original Cities

www.indymedia.org africa: ambazonia canarias estrecho / madiaq kenya nigeria south africa canada: hamilton london, ontario maritimes montreal ontario ottawa quebec thunder bay vancouver victoria windsor winnipeg east asia: burma jakarta japan korea manila qc europe: abruzzo alacant andorra antwerpen armenia athens austria barcelona belarus belgium belgrade bristol brussels bulgaria calabria croatia cyprus emilia-romagna estrecho / madiaq euskal herria galiza germany grenoble hungary ireland istanbul italy la plana liege liguria lille linksunten lombardia london madrid malta marseille nantes napoli netherlands nice northern england norway oost-vlaanderen paris/Île-de-france patras piemonte poland portugal roma romania russia saint-petersburg scotland sverige switzerland thessaloniki torun toscana toulouse ukraine united kingdom valencia latin america: argentina bolivia chiapas chile chile sur cmi brasil colombia ecuador mexico peru puerto rico qollasuyu rosario santiago tijuana uruguay valparaiso venezuela venezuela oceania: adelaide aotearoa brisbane burma darwin jakarta manila melbourne perth qc sydney south asia: india mumbai united states: arizona arkansas asheville atlanta austin baltimore big muddy binghamton boston buffalo charlottesville chicago cleveland colorado columbus dc hawaii houston hudson mohawk kansas city la madison maine miami michigan milwaukee minneapolis/st. paul new hampshire new jersey new mexico new orleans north carolina north texas nyc oklahoma philadelphia pittsburgh portland richmond rochester rogue valley saint louis san diego san francisco san francisco bay area santa barbara santa cruz, ca sarasota seattle tampa bay tennessee urbana-champaign vermont western mass worcester west asia: armenia beirut israel palestine process: fbi/legal updates mailing lists process & imc docs tech volunteer projects: print radio satellite tv video regions: oceania united states topics: biotech

Surviving Cities

www.indymedia.org africa: canada: quebec east asia: japan europe: athens barcelona belgium bristol brussels cyprus germany grenoble ireland istanbul lille linksunten nantes netherlands norway portugal united kingdom latin america: argentina cmi brasil rosario oceania: aotearoa united states: austin big muddy binghamton boston chicago columbus la michigan nyc portland rochester saint louis san diego san francisco bay area santa cruz, ca tennessee urbana-champaign worcester west asia: palestine process: fbi/legal updates process & imc docs projects: radio satellite tv
printable version - js reader version - view hidden posts - tags and related articles

Outwardly Progressive, Internally Corporate: Pacifica's Next Challenge

by Sonali Kolhatkar (KPFK Staff Member) Wednesday, Oct. 02, 2002 at 2:01 AM

Internal problems at Pacifica stations still plague the network. While the major battle at Pacifica was won early this year, the war against a corporate style hierarchy is not over. It was this very hierarchy which enabled the General Managers to abuse their power within the stations in the first place. In order for meaningful change to occur, this structure should change, not just the personalities. Please see attached open letter by KPFK staff, highlighting problems and suggesting some solutions. (To add your name in solidarity, see directions below.)

Outwardly Progressive, Internally Corporate: Pacifica's Next Challenge

by Sonali Kolhatkar; September 29, 2002



In an article on Pacifica titled "Gloves Off", Michael Albert wrote: "progressive organizations should employ participatory and self-managing rather than corporate structures ... advocating self-managing structures has not only long-run but also short-run relevance to Pacifica, because Pacifica activism will grow quicker and be stronger and wiser if it pursues positive aims."

(http://www.zmag.org/ZSustainers/ZDaily/2001-02/06albert.htm)

As a listener and subscriber to KPFK, Pacifica's Los Angeles station, I kept a close watch on the campaign to "save Pacifica" and wrote letters, and supported efforts to reclaim Pacifica. At the height of the crisis I heard Juan Gonzalez resign on the air on Democracy Now! and began withholding my donations from KPFK.



Today, I find myself in a unique position: from a listener/subscriber to a worker at KPFK. Since March 2002, soon after the lawsuit was won and the "old regime" replaced, I began hosting and co-producing KPFKs Morning Show on weekday mornings. As the months have passed, I have grown into my new job and have fallen in love with journalism, radio, and production for the purposes of raising progressive awareness and motivating to action. I have seen and continue to see Pacifica as not simply reporting on the movement for social and political justice, but as an integral part of the movement. I have grown to appreciate my fellow workers who are as passionate as I am to be a part of this station. Excited as everyone else was about the changes heralding a new era at KPFK, I embraced our new General Manager and new Local Advisory Board (LAB) with enthusiasm.



Before I go further, I want to emphasize that there are several aspects of KPFK and Pacifica that have changed for the better. Listeners have more power and input into station policies, new bylaws are being debated by listeners, there are plans for elections to the Local Advisory Board, etc. But, where working conditions and internal management structures are concerned, KPFK retains the structures that were designed to "corporatize" the stations in the first place.



While the players changed, the game remained the same. I should have been wary from the start about an essentially hierarchical structure working for progressive goals. Hence, the realization that KPFK, in my opinion, is replicating the very structures it replaced saddens me. A progressive organization like KPFK must reject corporate structures and "employ participatory and self-managing" ones. But that has never been the case. If anything, in the last seven months that I have been employed at KPFK, I have seen only a reaffirming of corporate structures. When I first came into the station, I was assigned an "executive producer", a "professional" who, I was told, was ultimately responsible for the show I hosted and would be the one responsible for the show. This executive producer was hired after the lawsuit was won, and was not a product of the previous management. This acceptance of mainstream media power roles came as rather a surprise to me. I imagined that as the person on the air, the words I spoke were my responsibility. I spent months battling the philosophy that I thought died with the previous regime. Egalitarian in theory, authoritarian in practice.



Eventually executive producer finally had enough of my resistance to this philosophy and asked to be taken off the show, much to my relief. The Morning Show is now run by myself and one other producer and newsreader. We make every attempt to share power and decision making on the show. About half our stories are pitched to us by members of the community whose lives are affected by the prevailing power structures in our society.



The experience with "professionalism" was only a taste of things to come. One of the actions by our new General Manager only weeks after her arrival at KPFK was to fire a beloved and dedicated staff member on impulse as a result of a dispute over a financial transaction. I have gathered that the official reason given was "insubordination". The staff at KPFK was shocked. The event galvanized us and, over the course of several long meetings, collectively decided upon a course of action. The attack on one staff member empowered the rest of us to collectively demand that the fired staff member be immediately re-instated and that financial transactions be made transparent. It was this part of my tenure at KPFK that has been the most exciting. We were exercising workplace democracy and cooperation based on consensus-based decision making! Our solidarity reaped rewards: the fired worker was immediately re instated. However, closed-door mediated sessions between the GM and that worker ensured that eventually no blame was assigned to either party even though one had the power to fire and used it, and the other had no say in the matter. We, the staff, were told to move on.



In 4 short weeks, an atmosphere of intimidation and harassment has returned to KPFK when the GM suspended the same worker. This time "for her own good" as the worker was apparently too stressed to work - a fact that was not supported by her or anyone else's observations on the staff. We're back to business as usual and old timers on the staff are reminded of the striking parallels between then and now.



When KPFKs new GM came on board, as part of her speech at the National Board Meeting in Berkeley she said her goal was to "take the hierarchy out of management". Unfortunately her actions are vastly different. Staff members at KPFK have been derided for having unauthorized meetings to plot against the GM and for showing disrespect to the GM. Lately the GM has asked that she be informed when staff members have lunch together outside of the station premises. Even a small gathering of staff members in the parking lot for 15 minute breaks is questioned. When management meets without larger staff permission and summarily fires and suspends highly respected and hard working staff members, somehow that is not "disrespectful". Staff has been told that the GM "does not report to them". Of course, what she means is that staff reports to the GM and the GM reports to the National Board - that is how it works within a hierarchical system.



Some might say, so what? She is the General Manager; someone has got to have the power to make decisions unilaterally for the good of the station, for "practical purposes". If I have learned anything from my six month tenure here, it is that many progressive thinkers find it disturbingly easy to separate political ideals of workplace democracy, egalitarian thinking and non-hierarchical decision making, from the actual workings of their own institutions.



Sadly our new General Manager not only has problems with challenges to her authority, but also seems to be bearing the weight of previous workplace conflicts. Various people have raised numerous questions about her background and the National Board promised to review any findings from an investigation. A month ago, the Pacifica Executive Director Dan Coughlin visited KPFK and happened to be in town when our fellow worker was first fired. When quelling the staff over the issue of the firing, I asked Coughlin about this investigation. His response was that the investigation had revealed nothing of concern. However, a few days ago, the person who conducted this investigation revealed to a few other staff members and me, that this was a lie. This person's investigations, which were thorough and came from a geographically diverse array of sources, were a devastating indictment of the suitability, skills and honesty of our new GM. A pattern of mismanagement, quite consistent with her current behavior at KPFK also emerged - enough to raise red flags. I was more shocked to realize that the top management at Pacifica was protecting their political investment in this GM on whom their reputation was staked. We, the staff, and the listeners were lied to.



There seems to be growing participation between listener activists and management on a national level, and this indeed a step in the right direction. More needs to be done to engage the larger listening community who may not be activists. However, on the station level, a replacement of the General Manager seems to be the length to which reform has gone. A search committee that was representative and democratic picked the current GM. But, once she was picked, the functioning of the station was left up to her, just like it was left up to her predecessor. The figurehead has changed; the system has stayed the same. It is akin to imagining that the state of our country will change if a Democrat replaces George W. Bush. Predictably the same abuses of power are being seen today. Staff members who stand up to the General Manager are being fired or have their hours reduced. Staff meetings are conducted by the GM through intimidation and authority.



So remarkable is the parallel between what is currently happening and the previous struggle to reclaim Pacifica, that sometimes the same language is being used that the previous regime used in trying to undermine the "save Pacifica" campaign. A February 2000 letter by Saul Landau was entitled "An Appeal to All Progressives: Stop the Pacifica Bashing!" In a GM's report to the listeners at KPFK, a caller began criticizing the station's output saying that nothing had changed. The GM's response to that was to berate the caller for "bashing Pacifica" and dismissed him without hearing him out. The parallels are clear.



Additionally, a few listener activists who are involved in rebuilding the station are vehemently opposed to airing dirty laundry and assert that it would only serve to prove the previous regime correct. It would just "play into their hands".



If Pacifica and its network stations are to recover from this very difficult period, the most destructive path it can take is to follow in the footsteps of the previous management. And it seems to be doing just that. Have things really changed?



One can imagine a major corporation undergoing internal upheavals where the top brass has an embarrassing closet of secrets, which, if exposed, would require an entire re-organization of structures and a re-evaluation of transparency and accountability. The corporate world is based on hierarchical top-down style management of workers that is geared toward maximizing production and minimizing risks at the expense of workers rights and human rights. Why are Pacifica stations continuing to adopt structures where a lone person at the top makes decisions? Don't we need to honestly assess our progress and risk exposing mistakes so that a truly revolutionary media institution can be rebuilt?



An excellent example of bottom-up structures is the Indymedia movement. The Independent Media Centers that span the globe first began in 1999 in Seattle, Washington when tens of thousands demonstrated against the World Trade Organization. Since then, there has been an explosion of these Indymedia Centers throughout the world from Los Angeles to Jerusalem. While I'm not suggesting that Pacifica needs to emulate this structure in order to be a truly progressive institution, I think many lessons can be learned. Namely that decision-making among those who create the output can be horizontally rather than vertically designed.



Ultimately internal honesty and a bottom-up structure are the only things that can build a station resistant to outside attacks. We need to move toward the "participatory and self-managing structures" that Michael Albert spoke of. Mimicking the very structures we criticize in our political analysis should never be an option.



Sonali Kolhatkar is the host and co-producer of KPFKs The Morning Show, a daily drive time public affairs and political show on global and local issues. She is also currently one of KPFKs Union stewards.





---



A Related Document:

24th September 2002



Open Letter to KPFK Listening Community, Local Advisory Board, Pacifica National Board, and KPFK Management



From: Members of the KPFK staff



This past summer, the state of staff / management relations at KPFK deteriorated significantly. There is no workplace democracy left at KPFK. As individual LAB members can attest after attending several staff meetings, morale is extremely low.



In the long history of KPFK and Pacifica Radio, it has been the goal of staff, management, and the listening community, that the stations run democratically. The implementing of community advisory boards, hiring committees, and public meetings on policy all came about as a way to ensure Pacifica is a democratic and consensus oriented organization.



The staff is concerned the Mission of Pacifica is being disregarded. Staff has been frequently forbidden from discussing matters concerning staff / management relations at some staff meetings. Programming decisions are increasingly being made unilaterally. We consider it important that both the Pacifica Employee Hand Book and the AFTRA Collective Bargaining Agreement is consistently adhered to from here on into the future. In general, we feel that without transparency there can be no democracy. Currently, the workplace at KPFK is running along the model of a corporate structure where workers have little or no say and decisions are made behind closed doors. Transparency is vital to the health of community radio.



It is true that KPFK staff have not attended LAB and by-laws meetings as often as we should. We regret this and sincerely pledge to remedy this by increasing our attendance of community meetings concerning KPFK while staying true to the Pacifica Mission. We do believe a strong relationship between the staff and listeners is critical to the healthy functioning of the station.



To this end, we propose the following solutions:



Internal decisions such as programming, budgetary, personnel, and others should have input by committees which are representative of the listening communities, volunteer programmers, volunteers and staff. (One prototype of such a committee is a proposal for a program council, which is detailed on the KPFK website);



- A 90-day trial period for such councils;

- The continual formation of collectives to produce programming on issues that those collectives are immediately involved in, and we pledge to provide all the support necessary for the nurturing of collectives;

- A freeze on programming changes until these issues are resolved and a permanent Programming Director is hired;

- A freeze of hiring and firing of non-management positions until budget issues are resolved;

- A process to effectively report and handle grievances (including grievances with management) for purposes of accountability and transparency.



The health of KPFK depends on the health of the listeners, the LAB, the subscribers, management, and staff. It is a travesty that this progressive institution, which covers the labor struggles of countless workers all over the nation and the world, is functioning as a workplace where there is no job security, and frequently inadequate or nonexistent benefits. We are reaching out to the KPFK listening community, the Local Advisory Board, and all interested parties to help improve the KPFK workplace environment and to help us continue the efforts making KPFK a truly healthy institution, on the inside and outside. We urge you to help us truly rebuild KPFK using the guiding principles outlined in the Pacifica Mission and which we uphold.



Signed by members of staff (listed alphabetically),



Eve Aruguete

Christine Blosdale

Bob Conger

Terry Guy

Amy Hyatt

Keola Kama

Sonali Kolhatkar

Esther Manilla

Ronnie Mikkelson

Stan Misraje

Dan Pavlish

Jerry Quickly

Michael Randolph

Eben Ray

Christopher Sprinkle

Justin Stinchcomb

Janee Taylor

Nathan Thompson

Steve Weatherwax



With a show of solidarity from these programmers and volunteers:



Dennis Allard, volunteer

Ric Allan, volunteer programmer

Diana Barahona, listener

Peter Dudar, volunteer

Bill Gardner, volunteer programmer

Leone Hankey, listener-sponsor and occasional volunteer

Sally Marr, listener, subscriber and LAB member

Alan Minsky, volunteer

Myla Reson, volunteer co-moderator online kpfk listener forum Rachel riKu

Matsuda, volunteer intern producer

Mark Maxwell, volunteer programmer

Robert Paine, KPFK listener and past supporter (Not currently financially supporting due to current state of affairs and confusion at Pacifica).

Dan Merkle, IMC Seattle, KPFK supporter

Frank Schweitzer, Listener

Yatrika Shah-Rais, volunteer programmer

Steve Sharp, volunteer producer

Mark Torres, Pacifica Radio Archives





To add your name in solidarity, please email your full name and affiliation (optional) to kpfkunionsteward@yahoo.com

Report this post as:

LATEST COMMENTS ABOUT THIS ARTICLE
Listed below are the 10 latest comments of 1 posted about this article.
These comments are anonymously submitted by the website visitors.
TITLE AUTHOR DATE
Ms. Diana Barahona Wednesday, Oct. 02, 2002 at 3:04 AM
© 2000-2018 Los Angeles Independent Media Center. Unless otherwise stated by the author, all content is free for non-commercial reuse, reprint, and rebroadcast, on the net and elsewhere. Opinions are those of the contributors and are not necessarily endorsed by the Los Angeles Independent Media Center. Running sf-active v0.9.4 Disclaimer | Privacy