Board Member Slams Public Broadcasting Corporation : Television: Vic Gold says it rejected his proposal to cut off federal funds to KPFK, which he alleges engages in ‘a persistent pattern of anti-Semitic programming.’

The Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which last year drew congressional ire for allegedly funding a public-TV show on gay life, is under fire by one of its own directors--this time for supporting a Los Angeles radio station that he says has aired racist and anti-Semitic programs.

Vic Gold, a Washington author who serves on the nine-member CPB board, said he wants the powerful corporation to withdraw about $175,000 in annual financial support it gives Los Angeles’ KPFK-FM (90.7) because the station allegedly engages in “a persistent pattern of anti-Semitic programming.”

“I don’t think the federal government should be subsidizing the airing of racist and anti-Semitic hate material, especially in a city like Los Angeles that is trying” to heal itself from last year’s riots, said Gold, who noted that he is the only Jewish member on the board of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, the private, nonprofit organization that dispenses federal funds to non-commercial radio and TV stations.

Gold said he asked fellow board members to cancel the station’s funding after special Black History Month programs in February of 1992 and 1993 aired anti-Semitic remarks by Black Muslim leader Louis Farrakhan and City College of New York Professor Leonard Jeffries, who discussed allegations that Jews were involved in the African slave trade.

But last week, the board rejected Gold’s proposal, saying that while it decries hate programming, it would not cut off funds to controversial programs. Gold said he is still fighting to cut off funding to KPFK and that he may reintroduce his motion to CPB or go to Congress.

“I am heartened by the strong stand taken by the board of directors of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting indicating that . . . the station is entitled to its funding,” said David Salniker, executive director of Pacifica Foundation, the Berkeley-based owner of KPFK-FM.

“This is a clear defense of the First Amendment and is a marked change from the last 12 years in which controversies like this were used by critics of public funding of the arts and of broadcasting to attack views” they did not like, Salniker said.

The offices of many Jewish organizations were closed Tuesday in observation of Passover. But Jerry Shapiro, associate director of the Los Angeles chapter of the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith, told the Jewish Journal recently that while KPFK’s 1993 broadcast contained “the same twisted, accusatory version of history” as the first, “there was no blatant anti-Semitism.”

Still, the financing of public broadcasting and the debate over whether the government should shape the political or artistic content of broadcasts with extremist or controversial points of view has been a hot political topic since 1987, when the Federal Communications Commission eliminated its so-called “Fairness Doctrine.” The rule had required broadcasters to air both sides of controversial issues, although not necessarily in the same program.

The FCC still receives hundreds of letters complaining about fairness issues each year, said Milton Gross, the chief of the agency’s fairness and political division.

Last year, however, the Senate failed to pass a measure to freeze government financing of CPB after conservative senators became incensed at what they called the liberally biased programming funded by the Washington-based organization, including allegedly providing money for “In the Life,” a TV variety program on gay and lesbian culture that debuted on many public-television stations last June. (Producers later said the pilot had been produced without federal funding.)

First Amendment experts argue that the public television and radio stations should enjoy continued editorial independence and Congress and CPB should provide money with no strings attached.