{"article":{"id":17009,"heading":"Eva Georgia and KPFK: See today's LA TImes!","author":"LSandrah","created":"2002-06-08 12:41:53","modified":"2002-06-10 00:39:51","last_modified":"Mon, 10 Jun 2002 07:39:51","article":"

In Friday June 7th's LA Times, Calendar section, F21, the following article appears: \"A KPFK Pledge to Listen to Listeners. The liberal station's new general manager, who got her start in South Africa, knows a thing or two about activism and community involvement.\" Around the Dial by Steve Carney.

Hmm, I don't think I've seen anything like this in the Weekly....<\/p>\n","contact":"","link":"","address":"","phone":"","parent_id":0,"mime_type":"text\/plain","summary":"See June 7 LA Times Calendar section, F21, for a long story entitled \"A KPFK Pledge to Listen to the Listeners\"","numcomment":2,"fileurl":"\/uploads\/","filesize":null,"article_url":"\/news\/2002\/06\/17009.php"},"attachments":[],"comments":[{"id":17011,"heading":"article text","article":"This is the article text... it's kind of chunky, so you might want to go to the URL to read the original.\r\n\r\n\r\nAROUND THE DIAL\r\nA KPFK Pledge to Listen to Listeners\r\nThe liberal station's new general manager, who got her start in South Africa, \r\nknows a thing or two about activism and community involvement.\r\n\r\nBy STEVE CARNEY, Special to The Times\r\n\r\n\r\n As bitter as it got, it must seem like a mere playground spat--the \r\ninfighting and turmoil that beset the left-leaning Pacifica radio network and \r\nits Los Angeles outlet over the past several years. The station's new general \r\nmanager is used to dealing with more than pickets, angry phone calls and \r\nspam. \r\n Eva Georgia was a pioneer in community radio in South Africa during the \r\napartheid era, when she was harassed, threatened at gunpoint, and had \r\ncolleagues killed and kidnapped while they all sought to expose police \r\ncorruption, the AIDS epidemic and violence against women and children. On \r\nMonday, she takes over KPFK-FM (90.7), and pledges to re-connect the \r\ncommunity-supported station with alienated listeners. \r\n \"I'm extremely excited about the prospect. There's a lot to do,\" said \r\nGeorgia, 34. \"It will take time, and I hope that people will allow us the \r\ntime. It's important that the process of democracy and transparency continue. \r\n \"We have to keep chiseling away at this big iceberg,\" she said. \r\n\"Pacifica has a rich history and it has so much potential. It's \r\nelectrifying.\" \r\n The Pacifica Foundation, started by pacifists in Berkeley after World \r\nWar II, originated listener-supported radio and evolved into a five-station \r\nnetwork devoted to progressive politics and social-justice issues. But the \r\nfoundation has been embroiled in conflict for several years, with disaffected \r\nlisteners and even foundation board members suing the organization. They \r\nalleged that a majority of the board was steering the network to the \r\npolitical center, ignoring the listener-supporters, firing longtime staff \r\nwithout cause, and even moving to sell the valuable broadcast licenses. The \r\nsides settled the lawsuits in December, and since then the new regime of \r\nformer dissidents has overhauled the organization. \r\n Georgia replaces a pair of interim general managers, who themselves \r\nreplaced general manager Mark Schubb, fired in January after clashes with the \r\nnew Pacifica board. \r\n \"We thought her selection sends an important signal. We're serious about \r\nbuilding a democratic organization,\" said Dan Coughlin, the Pacifica \r\nFoundation's interim executive director. He noted that Georgia played no part \r\nin the fight against previous management. \"We're not engaged in cronyism or \r\npurges. We're really trying to select the person who is best for the network. \r\nJust because you were a reform activist doesn't mean you're going to get a \r\njob now.\" \r\n A 13-member search committee consisting of staff, listeners and Pacifica \r\nboard member David Fertig sifted through nearly 50 applicants and chose three \r\nfinalists, Georgia and the managers of a community station in Moab, Utah, and \r\na college station in San Jose. Coughlin made the final selection. \r\n \"She stood out, both with her experience in community radio and her \r\ncommitment to Pacifica and KPFK. She really shined,\" Coughlin said. He also \r\ncited her background in \"managing a station in a highly charged environment.\" \r\n Ironically, Georgia had been trying to get a job at KPFK since she moved \r\nto Long Beach from South Africa in 1999, but could never get an interview \r\nwith previous management for openings as news director and program director. \r\nNow she'll be the one hiring for those jobs, which she said still haven't \r\nbeen filled permanently. \r\n Programming disputes and the lawsuits estranged KPFK from many \r\nsupporters, with the station refusing even to air meeting notices for its \r\nlistener advisory board. So, in addition to improving staff morale, Georgia \r\nsaid she wants to embrace and enlarge KPFK's audience, and get more active in \r\nthe community. \r\n The community station she started in South Africa, Radio Atlantis, not \r\nonly aired programs about sexual abuse, but also worked with government, \r\nlabor and social organizations to create safe houses for battered women, and \r\nsponsored education programs for schoolgirls. \r\n \"How else do you define community radio? It has to have the community \r\nparticipation, not just on the air, but in community outreach,\" she said. \r\n\"That is just so important, that we don't just talk the talk, but find \r\nsolutions to the problems in the community.\" \r\n Georgia's Commitment Convinced the Committee \r\n Fertig, an Altadena-based employment discrimination attorney, said that \r\ncommitment is part of what swayed the selection committee. \r\n \"She not only spread the news, but helped address the problem,\" he said, \r\nwhether it was mediating between factions involved in gang violence, or \r\nopening a forum to discuss community problems in Atlantis, the black township \r\nwhere she lived, which at one time had the world's highest murder rate and \r\n47% unemployment. \r\n As a teenager, Georgia started writing for newspapers in her hometown, \r\nCape Town, until she noticed her articles were being censored. At 21 she \r\nstarted her own community paper in Atlantis, north of Cape Town. Then she \r\ndecided to fulfill a lifelong dream: \"Since the age of 10, I said I'd be in \r\nradio. I'd run home from school and listen to radio serials.\" \r\n Gathering support from community groups and the area's powerful South \r\nAfrican Clothing and Textile Workers Union, she finally received a government \r\nlicense and went on the air in 1995. The station became so integral to the \r\ncommunity, factories played it nonstop during the workday, and workers went \r\non strike when employers shut it off. \r\n Radio Atlantis hosted numerous party candidates before an election, and \r\ninvestigated the background of the politicians they were going to be \r\ninterviewing--standard practice in American journalism, but risky behavior at \r\nthat time in South Africa. The research led to drug and prostitution ties, \r\nand threats and intimidation from those being scrutinized. \r\n When 8- to 12-year-old black children began disappearing, their bodies \r\nlater turning up dismembered, Georgia called the police racist for not \r\npursuing the cases more diligently. That brought 200 officers swarming the \r\nradio station. Then, when police arrested a suspect on what Georgia thought \r\nwas flimsy evidence, she put the accused on the air to give his \r\nside--angering the citizens of Atlantis. \r\n \"Even if you don't agree with somebody,\" she said, the sides ought to \r\nhave a forum to air their views, and discuss their differences peacefully. \r\nThen \"the listeners should decide for themselves.\" \r\n But the dangers persisted. A police commissioner investigating \r\ncorruption died in a mysterious car crash, while a journalist subpoenaed to \r\ntestify about what he had uncovered was murdered the day before the hearing, \r\nshe said. Georgia herself was accosted at a stoplight by an assailant who put \r\na gun to her head, and her home was ransacked. And a friend working with her \r\nto uncover corruption disappeared without a trace. \r\n It was 1999 and Georgia finally reached a breaking point. Fearing the \r\nviolence would reach her family if she kept muckraking in South Africa, she \r\nfled to the United States and was granted asylum by the Immigration and \r\nNaturalization Service. She moved to Long Beach, where she had friends, and \r\nmanaged an HIV-prevention program for youth at the Gay & Lesbian Community \r\nCenter of Long Beach. \r\n \"I never wanted to leave, to let them get the upper hand, but I also had \r\nmy family to think of,\" she said, adding that she hasn't seen them in three \r\nyears. \"It was, to me, worth it to risk everything to give a voice to the \r\ncommunity. And I'd do it again in a heartbeat.\" \r\n Fertig said Georgia is committed to broadening KPFK's audience, to \r\nappeal not only to \"lefty liberals west of La Cienega,\" as he said, but to \r\nLatinos and blacks and Asians. \"We've got a really diverse audience, and need \r\nto get that on the air more.\" \r\n Under new management, the station has held consecutive record-breaking \r\nfund drives, raising $719,000 in February and $618,000 last month, Coughlin \r\nsaid. Fertig said those figures prove that once-disgruntled listeners are \r\nreturning to the station, and that new ones are responding to programming \r\nchanges. Much of that money has gone to repair transmitter and antenna \r\nproblems that have kept the station broadcasting at reduced power for more \r\nthan a year. \r\n But over the next two weeks the station's new transmitter will get up \r\nand running, boosting the signal from 8,000 watts to 28,000 and finally back \r\nto its original 112,000 watts--what station officials have long boasted is \r\nthe strongest signal west of the Mississippi. \r\n As with almost all matters at Pacifica, Georgia's selection was not \r\nwithout controversy. The manager of Bush Radio, another community broadcast \r\noutlet in Cape Town, wrote Pacifica officials saying that his station was the \r\nfirst on the air, not Radio Atlantis as a Pacifica news release about Georgia \r\nhad said. And he criticized her move in 1997 from Radio Atlantis to Cape \r\nTalk, a commercial talk-radio station in Cape Town. But Georgia said she made \r\nthe choice simply because the commercial station gave her a more powerful \r\noutlet for her advocacy and investigations. \r\n \"I grew up in a highly politicized community with a lot of activists,\" \r\nshe said. \"We were willing to put our lives on the line to tell the truth.\" \r\n","author":"imc","parent_id":17009,"mime_type":"text\/plain","created":"2002-06-08 17:20:22","modified":"2002-06-08 18:00:38","fileurl":""},{"id":17037,"heading":"General Manager at la","article":" couple of questions...\r\n 1. were there really no qualified Mexic@ns or Latin@s or New African candidates?? we'll let it go at a question...\r\n 2. doesnt she also say that she went to work for a commerical outfit\/\/\r\n","author":"juan","parent_id":17009,"mime_type":"text\/plain","created":"2002-06-10 00:39:51","modified":"2002-06-10 01:00:25","fileurl":""}]}