{"article":{"id":5089,"heading":"Struggle for Pacifica Radio made clear in Haiti Progres","author":"Haiti Progres","created":"2001-01-13 21:44:00","modified":"2005-08-15 00:31:02","last_modified":"Mon, 15 Aug 2005 07:31:02","article":"

CHRISTMAS COUP ROCKS PACIFICA'S WBAI:

PURGE TARGETS COMMUNITY BASE, RADICAL VOICES



HAITI PROGRES

\"Le journal qui offre une alternative\"

* THIS WEEK IN HAITI *

January 10 - 16, 2001

Vol. 18, No. 43



In the early morning hours of Saturday, December 23, programming

at radio station WBAI-FM in New York City suddenly ground to a

halt. Utrice Leid, a well-known producer and host of the

afternoon program \"Talk-Back,\" went on the air to announce that

she was the new general manager of the station, replacing

long-time administrator Valerie Van Isler. \"There are no SWAT

teams here,\" announced Leid to the stunned listenership at 1:40

a.m. \"This is not a coup.\"

But it sure looked like one. Leid and managers from WBAI's

Washington-based parent Pacifica Foundation changed all the

locks in the station, installed security guards, restricted access to

a list of \"approved\" persons, then fired and banned key producers

and staffers from the station. Also fired were Program Director

Bernard White, who hosted the popular morning show \"Wake-Up

Call\" and the show's producer and WBAI shop steward Sharan

Harper. They were awakened early Saturday morning by a courier

informing them that they had been sacked and that if they came to

the station, they would be arrested.

WBAI staffers and listeners immediately protested the move,

calling it a \"Midnight Massacre\" and a \"Christmas Coup.\" \"We

deplore the [Pacifica] Foundation's coming in secret in the

middle of the night at the start of a holiday weekend to change

the station's locks, and the illegitimate installation and

imposition of new station management,\" protested WBAI staff

members, including \"Democracy Now!\" host Amy Goodman and

\"Afrikaleidoscope\" producer Elombe Brath. \"We deplore the

firings, the bannings, the presence of security guards in the

station, and the denial of access to personal property belonging

to staff.\"

Listener-sponsored WBAI in New York City has long been an

independent and radical voice for community and activist groups

in the New York area and internationally. Through its programming

-- particularly through \"Democracy Now!\" -- it has helped fuel

resistance to the World Trade Organization, the death penalty,

police brutality, violence in East Timor, injustice against

immigrants, and media disinformation about Haiti, to name just a

few issues.

The station, through producers like Goodman, White and Van Isler,

has also provided an important outlet for the Haitian community

in New York. Van Isler, a former producer at WBAI who received

the New York Association of Black Journalist's award for her

reporting on Haiti, continued covering the country even after she

took over as general manager in 1990. Of Haitian heritage on her

father's side, Van Isler traveled to Haiti as a reporter and

delegate to national congresses of the National Popular Assembly

(APN) in 1989 and 1995. Goodman also visited and reported from

Haiti following the U.S. military occupation in late 1994,

revealing the complicity of U.S. military commanders with agents

of the right-wing paramilitary organization FRAPH. This is why

one finds many Haitian cab drivers in New York with their radio

set to WBAI.

The station's radical programming and grass-roots character has

increasingly vexed the rightward-drifting Pacifica Foundation,

which owns WBAI and four other radio stations around the country.

The Pacifica National Board is moving to centralize control and

soften the left-wing content of WBAI and other stations. Some

board members have advocated taking corporate funding for

programming.

Pacifica Radio was formed in the 1940s by radical writers and

conscientious objectors to World War II who started the network as

a forum for marginalized voices and a vehicle to promote peace and

social justice. They started broadcasting out of KPFA in Berkeley,

California, in 1949 and pioneered the concept of supporting the

station through listener contributions, shunning commercial

advertisements. The formula worked and, in addition to KPFA and

WBAI, Pacifica Radio now owns KPFK in Los Angeles, KPFT in

Houston, and WPFW in Washington.

In the 1980s, Pacifica managed to secure funding from the

Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), a Federal agency

funded by the U.S. Congress, despite the opposition of some

right-wing Republican lawmakers. But the additional support

turned out to be a double-edged sword. Since the mid-1990s, the

CPB has prodded Pacifica to end its radical programming and to

wrest control of its stations from local listener boards.

Congress had sharply objected to Pacifica's airing voices like

that of famed journalist, former Black Panther, and death row

inmate Mumia Abu-Jamal.

In 1998, Pat Scott, who was the Pacifica Board's executive

director, solicited an opinion from the CPB, which then began to

directly interfere in our governance structure, which they had

never done before, explained Mimi Rosenberg, the co-host of a

labor-oriented program entitled \"Building Bridges\". The result

was that the national board completely severed its relationship

with the local advisory boards [of Pacifica's member stations]

for fear that CPB funding would be lost.\"

Previously, each local Pacifica station elected two of the

national board members. Gradually, some national board members

began to seat their friends and allies as \"at large\" board

members, even if those people were from areas not covered by

Pacifica\"s radio signal. With the \"at large\" seats they could

put on the board whoever the hell they wanted, Rosenberg

explained. Then finally, you had a by-law change which resulted

in a board which was 100% self-appointing.\"

To make matters worse, the national board's executive committee

began to illegally make decisions without ratification by the

full board, a move which is now being challenged in court.

In March 1999, the crisis between the national executive and local

stations exploded. Pacifica fired the general manager of KPFA and

a number of other producers. Listeners and the community

objected, and Pacifica closed down the station for 23 days. Only

after a protest of more than 10,000 people in the summer of 1999

did Pacifica reopen the station.

\"Pacifica, founded by 'discontented leftists,' now openly

expresses discontent with leftists,\" noted the late WBAI Program

Director Samori Marksman, referring to the recent red-baiting and

political witch-hunts launched against radical voices in

Pacifica. Verna Avery-Brown, known as the \"Voice of Pacifica\"

after 11 years as national news anchor, walked out of the

Pacifica Network News (PNN) in late 1999 because of a dramatic

shift toward mainstream orthodoxy and blatant censorship. \"I left

because I no longer felt the renegade spirit of Lew Hill was in

control of Pacifica,\" said Avery-Brown, referring to Pacifica's

founder. \"I left when I realized the majority of the board

members were too timid, too uninformed, or too conservative to

give a damn to step in and make the necessary changes. I left

because the Pacifica I had fallen in love with no longer

existed.\"

Dan Coughlin, a former correspondent of Inter Press Service in

Haiti who broke such stories as the U.S. government's theft of







































































































































&



























































































































































































































































<\/www.haitiprogres.com><\/editor><\/p>\n","contact":"","link":"","address":"","phone":"","parent_id":0,"mime_type":"text\/plain","summary":"Informative and comprehensive article on the community radio crisis engulfing Pacifica and its five stations.","numcomment":0,"fileurl":"\/uploads\/2001\/01\/struggle_f.txt","filesize":"18.6 kibibytes","article_url":"\/news\/2001\/01\/5089.php"},"attachments":[],"comments":[]}