Pacifica: The Listener in the Hearings Room : Radio: The nonprofit broadcaster is the only outlet to carry the ‘Keating Five’ proceedings from beginning to end.

Pacifica Radio’s Dennis Bernstein says that when he got into the thick of investigating the savings and loan scandal, he was followed through the streets of Houston by an unmarked car and received death threats after broadcasting reports in San Francisco and New York.

Now the reporter and commentator is on the air daily with the story, as Pacifica, a Berkeley-based nonprofit community broadcasting organization that owns and operates KPFK 90.7 FM in the Los Angeles area, is broadcasting live, gavel-to-gavel coverage of the “Keating Five” Senate Ethics Committee hearings.

This time, Bernstein’s critical commentaries reach not only Pacifica’s typical eclectic audience, but people throughout the political spectrum--who are listening to the hearings on Pacifica because there’s nowhere else to hear them.

The senators under investigation--Alan Cranston of California, John Glenn of Ohio, Donald W. Riegle Jr. of Michigan, and Dennis DeConcini and John McCain of Arizona--are accused of improperly intervening with federal regulators in favor of Charles Keating, the owner of failed Lincoln Savings & Loan and other thrifts who contributed heavily to their campaigns. Keating has been indicted for fraud in connection with the failure of his thrifts.

The Pacifica coverage, which also includes interviews with committee witnesses, has attracted participants from staunch Republicans to avowed leftists to its call-in segments.

“I think (Pacifica) serves a very useful purpose,” said William Drummond, professor and associate dean of the Graduate School of Journalism at UC Berkeley, who specializes in radio. “In the Berkeley area where we have KPFA, I run into people all the time who are talking about what they heard on those Keating hearings.”

Pacifica, which calls itself “free-speech radio” and broadcasts to a network of five owned and about 30 participating stations, broadcast the Watergate and CIA oversight hearings in the 1970s, and in recent years the Iran-Contra hearings and confirmation proceedings for Supreme Court nominees William H. Bork, Anthony M. Kennedy and David H. Souter.

Currently, about 15 stations across the country are pre-empting regular programming to carry the hearings, including North Hollywood-based KPFK, WBAI in New York, KPFA in Berkeley and KPFT in Houston.

“I think people living in a democracy need to know how their government works,” said Lucia Chappelle, program director for KPFK. “Hopefully, more people will go to the ballot box if they can really understand how this think works day to day. I really think (running the hearings) sparks more active participation.”

Besides C-Span, the not-for-profit cable television service that covers Congress, Pacifica is the only outlet to broadcast the hearings from beginning to end.

“The only network there on a regular basis is CBS,” said anchor Larry Bensky. “The rest come depending on who the witness is.”

According to Bensky, the coverage has broadened Pacifica’s typically narrow listener base and might account for increased financial contributions to its admittedly shoestring operations.

During the Iran-Contra hearings, for example, listener contributions went up $500,000, nearly 25% of its $4.2 million budget.

“We don’t always (participate in ratings services like) Arbitron, but because we’re listener-sponsored, it’s easy to tell when the audience increases, because revenues go up directly,” said David Salnicker, Pacifica executive director.

The current budget is so low that Bensky, a winner of the George Polk Award who lives in Berkeley, must stay with friends and pay all of his own expenses while on assignment in Washington. The broadcast booth is a makeshift operation. In order for callers to hear the answers given by guests and host to their questions, Bensky and others in the booth must hold a microphone up to the telephone.

During a program last week which involved listener call-ins and several prominent guests, the telephone was passed around the room from person to person for guest responses.

Founded in 1949 by Louis Hill, a disenchanted network journalist and poet, Pacifica was set up as a pacifist--hence the name, Pacifica--alternative to commercial radio. “There are a lot of Pacifica veterans who are now part of the broadcast establishment,” said UC Berkeley’s Drummond.

“(Pacifica) is thought of as being free-form and they never have the money to do anything, but the content is more in line with what public broadcasting was intended to do,” Drummond said. “They are much more ‘alternative’ than National Public Radio.”