Turmoil Continues to Rock Pacifica Stations

Appropriately enough, it was while listening to a show called “Wake-Up Call” that Juan Gonzalez realized what he had to do, that drastic action was necessary.

Gonzalez, an award-winning columnist for the New York Daily News, had been co-host of the Pacifica radio morning program “Democracy Now!” since its inception five years ago. Billed as “the exception to the rulers,” the show airs locally on Pacifica Foundation station KPFK-FM (90.7), and five days a week examines social justice and progressive issues from a far-left perspective.

But last week, Gonzalez quit on the air, the latest casualty in a struggle that has raged for more than two years within Pacifica, featuring protests, arrests, firings, lawsuits and midnight lock changes at radio stations. Co-host Amy Goodman (who is remaining with “Democracy Now!”) said she was surprised and disappointed by Gonzalez’s departure. Goodman, who has had her conflicts with the network, said, “I just feel I can’t give up on Pacifica.”

Facing off across the battle lines are a board of directors that contends it wants to modernize and increase the audience of the network, and listeners and staffers who fear for free speech and the soul of the 50-year-old organization, which invented listener-supported radio. In his six-minute swan song, Gonzalez told listeners to squeeze off Pacifica’s lifeline--he urged them not to pledge money during fund drives, and if they already have, asked them not to send in their checks.

“I thought it was a really cheap shot for somebody who decided not to work there anymore,” said Mark Schubb, general manager at KPFK, whose 10-day fund drive ends at midnight. “He’s a fine journalist, but on this one he’s wrong.”

Schubb was defiant about the proposed boycott--the current fund drive was averaging $38,238 a day in pledges for the first week, virtually the same as last winter’s drive. And said he expects the total to exceed the previous record of $503,744.

On the Jan. 31 “Democracy Now!” Gonzalez said the Pacifica board “has been hijacked by a small clique that has more in common with modern-day corporate vultures than with working-class America.” He said it doesn’t respect free speech, labor or civil rights, “and during the past two years, it has methodically sought to squash dissent throughout the network.”

The previous week, while driving to work at Pacifica station WBAI-FM in New York, Gonzalez was listening to “Wake-Up Call,” a show that precedes “Democracy Now!” On it, the general manager announced a gag order at the station, preventing staffers from talking on the air about internal station or network conflicts, Gonzalez said later in an interview.

“At that point, I realized if I was going to say anything about it, I’d be fired,” he said. “The trend was getting worse, not better, and something dramatic had to be done.”

Berkeley Firing Triggered Protests

Two years ago, Pacifica fired the general manager of its Berkeley station, which led to widespread listener pickets, a staff mutiny, trespassing arrests and the national board’s shutting down the station and playing taped programs until it restored order. Last year, Pacifica management told Goodman that she could be fired if she didn’t give her bosses notice of outside speaking engagements, and the topics of at least three of her five shows a week ahead of time. And in December, in what irate network supporters call “the Christmas coup,” Pacifica management fired longtime WBAI General Manager Valerie van Isler and two others, a move that also met with near-unanimous staff protests. The new general manager changed the locks at the station, and now security guards control access.

Gonzalez quit to lead the Pacifica Campaign, a grass-roots group working to drive out members of the network’s board who dissidents feel are too tied to corporate interests and not loyal to Pacifica’s rabble-rousing heritage. He said the group won’t resort to harassment, but hope that boycotts, protests and other means will make it too uncomfortable for those board members to remain. For example, listeners on Wednesday picketed the Los Angeles branch of the law offices of one board member and on Thursday protested outside KPFK.

And although it may be too late to dent the current fund drive, Gonzalez said the group hopes to have a greater effect on the spring drives nationwide. “If Pacifica doesn’t have money coming in, it won’t be able to pay its law firms, pay its security guards, all the things this board has been doing,” he said.

Schubb contends that without donations, Pacifica also won’t be able to pay staff salaries or fund programs such as “Democracy Now!” About 83% of KPFK’s budget comes from listener donations--which is typical of the funding around the network.

The combative language and warfare mentality on both sides of the dispute is strange for a radio network founded by a pacifist. Lewis Hill, a broadcaster and conscientious objector in World War II, joined with colleagues to form the Pacifica Foundation in Berkeley in 1949. The mission was to “promote cultural diversity . . . contribute to a lasting understanding between individuals of all nations, races, creeds and colors; promote freedom of the press and serve as a forum for various viewpoints; and maintain an independent funding base.”

“I don’t want our mission to be stifled because, internally, we can’t get it together,” said David Acosta, Pacifica Foundation chairman. “Instead of promoting the mission, we’re fighting each other.”

The scope of the battle depends on whom you ask. It’s either a bitter, internal squabble of great emotion but little substance, featuring the most damaging rhetoric from people who know best how to use it on each other, like family members. Or, it’s the defense of the Alamo, the last stand at the last outpost of independent journalism, a fortress of free speech not only attacked by right-wing and corporate foes, but being undermined by traitors from within.

Expanded Audience at Issue

“Pacifica holds a very important niche,” said Steve Rendall, senior analyst for Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, a New York-based media watchdog group. The network “has been sort of a bellwether, where you heard stories you haven’t heard elsewhere,” about injustice, inequality, environmental destruction and corporate malfeasance.

He said that increasingly, members joining Pacifica’s board, which oversees its five radio stations, have “little or no background in community radio or progressive politics. They’re pushing Pacifica toward a more corporate model, toward an institution that cares much more about ratings than in the past.”

Dissidents contend that the Pacifica board wants to make the network’s programming more mainstream, like that of National Public Radio, to be more attractive to potential corporate sponsors. They also say board members want to sell stations for huge profits and reap some of the proceeds. Acosta said he doesn’t think Pacifica can approach NPR’s reach of 17 million to 18 million listeners weekly, but he hopes to double or triple its current audience of about 850,000.

“I want to find a way to reach those people without selling out” to corporate donors, said Acosta, a certified public accountant in Houston. He said he wants to improve the network and attract more listeners by upgrading its technology, expanding its presence on the Web, and letting more people know Pacifica exists and what it is doing. And he insisted that “the Pacifica Foundation has no plans or strategies or intention to sell any of the Pacifica stations.”

“We spend a lot of time with internal struggles. It’s part of our history,” and stems from the political, social and ethnic diversity of the people who make up the network, he said.

“A lot of misinformation is forming the opinion of these people. As soon as you say, ‘They’re stifling free speech,’ you have a ready-made support group,” Acosta said. “They could see that we’re not that far off from each other.

“We want to include everyone. We want to include the listeners and staff. I just have been a little bit dismayed by some of the attacks management has suffered, and attacks some of the board members have suffered,” such as late-night phone calls and hate mail, he said. “I don’t want to make these differences of opinion personal. There are procedures in place where we can discuss those types of disagreements.”

Gonzalez said he has no problem with expanding the reach of the network--only with the increasingly harsh and anti-democratic tactics he said Pacifica management has used to quell dissent.

“I’ve always agreed with the perspective that Pacifica stations need to broaden their audience. The kind of information and news Pacifica stations put out is important for Americans to have,” Gonzalez said.

Of his departure from “Democracy Now!”, Gonzalez said, “I hope it’s temporary. I do believe I’ll be back on the show once the new board is in place.”