Open Letter to KPFK Listeners from Jim Lafferty


September 16, 2009

Dear Friends and Listeners of KPFK:

I believe that KPFK is in real danger of losing its political soul. My fear is that the current national leadership, perhaps out of a sincere desire to solve Pacifica’s very real financial problems, is prepared to turn the station, programmatically, into another KCRW. Now, KCRW is a perfectly fine public radio station. But it is not KPFK. L.A. does not need another KCRW, but it surely needs at least one KPFK! KPFK must continue to bring the “voice of the voiceless” to our airwaves. It must continue to host shows with a decidedly left, anti-establishment, anti-government, anti-racist, anti-sexist, etc., view point. It must use its ability to reach out to all the diverse populations in L.A. by broadcasting from the union halls and churches and meeting rooms of the rainbow of working class neighborhoods in and around L.A. so that their voices are heard and so that the progressive causes that concern them are known and advanced.

Another basis for my fear is that while it was a fight from the very beginning to get some Spanish language programming on the air at KPFK, it now appears that we are retreating on our committment to Spanish language programming at a time when we ought to be increasing its time on our station. After all, Spanish speakers represent the majority population in Los Angeles. Other Spanish language stations do not air the sort of left political programming that KPFK does. KPFK should be making a special effort to recruit the best new on-air Spanish language hosts it can find; work to improve the skills of current Spanish language programmers (just as it should be working to imrove the on-air skills of every non-Spanish language programmer at the station, myself included!); and, make every effort to employ more people of color, in general, at the station.

Internally, there must be transparency and true due process when any host, or any show is cancelled. While I was interim General Manager of KPFK it was always my position that all members of the station, be they employees covered by the union contract or volunteer programmers, had the same rights to due process when their status was to be altered. That should continue to be the case.

If we are to honestly still call KPFK an “alternative radio station,” and a “community radio station” that is true to the mission statement of Lew Hill, then we must be willing to do these things. We must stay true to our principles even as we tighten our financial belt.

One way to save KPFK, keep it true to its heritage, is for our listeners to chose the next Station Board carefully. I am not by this statement necessarily endorsing any candidate on any slate, or any candidate running as an independent (nor should this statement be taken to suggest otherwise). However, I do strongly urge our listeners to listen carefully to the on-air candidate forums, read the candidates’ statements, consider their personal backgrounds and expressed goals for the station, and where you find them to be consistent with what I have suggested KPFK must do and be if it is to have a bright, principled, future, vote for those candidates and urge your friends to do the same!

In Solidarity,
Jim Lafferty
host, The Lawyers Guild Show

Why was Allan Minsky (sp?) chosen to be the new interim manager rather than you, Jim? Why has Roy of Hollywood been so defensive about the decision to restore "his" half-hour? Does it have anything to do with his cozy relationship with Gary Null? Who makes millions off his magical herb potions which he plugs for several hours a week on Roy's show, especially during fund drive?

Why should Spanish-language programmers lose half an hour of programming? Agustín Cebada is gone, and that's a good thing. Surely we can find someone (with a decent command of both languages) to do a good bilingual show under the auspices of the Spanish-language programs? Why is Informative Pacifica going to be broadcast at 9:30 if its a compilation of the previous day's news? It'll be almost two days old by that time!

Why did Shawn Heitkemper step down anyways? He was the one that was KCRW-izing KPFK! With his sweepstakes and all that.

Why is there this upswing of white middle-class programming? Jimmy Dore and, what's his name, Harrison? may be liberal, and even a little funny sometimes, but they have these white middle-class values internalized. If we want to hear Democrats (and don't get me started on Leila Garrett) we can get them elsewhere.

What's the deal with Roseanne? She may have some attraction for mainstream audiences, but to me her populism is too right-wing at times. And she always seems to be off in Hawai'i or something! I mean if she's gonna commit, commit!

And why is Lafferty exhorting us to choose the LSB wisely and talking about programming when the LSB, as we are told almost ad nauseum, has no jurisdiction over programming?

Can anybody explain this to me???

Once upon a time, KPFK had web listener forums on its web site. I never heard about them on the air, but some people discovered them and a single place existed where KPFK followers could post information, raise questions, and post links about what was going on at KPFK and Pacifica.

Now no central place exists. Occasional articles appear in LA Indymedia. Recently a piece about the Spanish language programming appeared in Santa Cruz indymedia of all places

http://www.indybay.org/news items/2009/08/30/18620225.php

No one web site has seemed to have any staying power. Even people who posted on LA Indymedia seem to have lost interest.

KPFK didn't want listeners to have a place to post about KPFK for fear that if people knew what Grace Aaron was doing and who was financing her, listeners would boot her out quickly and demand reform.

When Lafferty was general manager, the forums were shut down. When others and I tried to complain to him, we got the brush off. He accused me of supporting the World Socialist web site, www.wsws.org, which I do. Lafferty was apparently against it and didn't like links to it and references to class consciousness in the KPFK community and web forums. Lafferty has had zero credibility in my book ever since. He talks transparency on his radio show but, when GM, transparency didn't apply to him and KPFK.

Lafferty bears heavy responsibility for KPFK "losing its soul" and developing as it has without the check of an open user web forum where listeners from around the area could discuss the station.

Jim Lafferty is a brain dead Stalinist hack. He runs one of the worst more boring shows on the station. He was a disaster as general manager. He is a relic of the 60's. Time for him to go,

If you believe that KPFK is in danger of becoming pointless, a waste of time, and souless, you haven't been paying attention, KPFA is already there.

Years ago I used to listen while driving, occasionally I donated money when I could, then after a while the programs changed, the right-wing extremists and corporate fascists started being allowed to creep in. Political infighting killed off what little there was left worth listening to.

Today KPFA has how many people listening? A few thousand at most? People who yearn for the way things used to be and believe that maybe some how magically KPFK will return?

It won't. Move on. Give up KPFK and start your own radio stations, I say. Clinging to the "once was" is a good way to be left behind, and it's what right wing corporate rapist want advocates to do the most.

everyone loves to decry what is happening because they have no power to make any changes or even try for improvement of our favorite station = KPFK.

we all complain, willingly, loudly repeatedly.

yet there is a lot that probably happens that is confilictual, competitive, fractionalized, and ego-driven within the station, in it's politics, in it's so-called "soul" [whatever you want to define that is ...what is it anyhow? does a nonprofit corp have a "soul" or a bldg or a set of staff have one of those ? huh ? ]

Minsky is interim program mgr, not General Mgr of station. Whatever he may attempt, success or trial with errors, is surely going to be labeled as wrong, bad, supremacist, and whatever bad words those who lose out prefer to use in their accusations.

It is not personal, it is business. KPFK needs to change and we wont know if the changes are better or not for a while....but static and same-old-same-old always want to keep whatever they think they "own" forever and never give anyone else a "chance" to move into their space.

Call it psuedo-entitlement. Call if holding on forever to a hard-to-get-spot program. Call it luck of the draw they got it to begin with. Call it their friends dont hold the power to keep them in that place any longer. Call it anything reasonable, but dont call it wrong right off.

If a program is shifted in time, it has not been eliminated. If their timing requires a different news format or covers news not in the usually heard media, then when it occurs does NOT have to instantaneous and immediate to be valid or valuable.
If they just repeat in Spanish or Chinese what is heard elsewhere, they are redundant and do not need to use KPFK's air spaces for that. There are enough spanish-english-more-languages that people know and hear to decipher what is important to them.
And maybe those who never bothered to learn to hear KPFK's news in English can learn how to from KPFA's
news now too...what an opportunity !

so Lalfferty has some say cuz he has a program and was interim GM and works in LA visibly and well. But his opinion is not more than just HIS own personal slant and not a "truth" or more valid than yours or mine. So if he doesnt like what is happening at KPFK,
what is telling us he is DOING to improve it ?

just complaining ?

we all do that rather well, even if we are less famous than he is.