Pacifica Foundation Seeks New Leadership

The bitter internal fight over the future of the left-leaning Pacifica radio network reached a climax this week with the resignation of its controversial head, and a move to settle four lawsuits that have drained listener donations with legal fees.

On Thursday the Pacifica Foundation’s executive director, Bessie Wash, resigned, and foundation board members said they would enter mediation on Thursday to try to settle lawsuits filed by opposing board members and disgruntled listeners.

The foundation runs a network of five stations that includes KPFK-FM (90.7) in North Hollywood, as well as stations in Berkeley, New York, Washington and Houston.

“What happens in the next month will help decide what the future of the organization is,” said KPFK general manager Mark Schubb. He said Wash faxed him her resignation Thursday. “There was some indication that she was going to resign at the end of the year anyway,” he said.

Pacifica Foundation board Chairman Bob Farrell “asked to make it effective immediately,” said Schubb. Farrell wouldn’t elaborate on that request, but said: “We’re taking small steps, but important steps, along the path to bring the Pacifica family together.”

Farrell, a former Los Angeles city councilman, was named chairman of the Pacifica board last month. At the time, he said he wanted to bring peace to the network of community-sponsored stations, beset in the past few years by attacks from irate supporters. Those critics say the foundation has been squandering resources and moving from its traditional progressive politics toward the mainstream, and in protest have picketed stations, flooded the Internet with their outrage, and boycotted station fund drives.

Wash has long been one of their chief targets. During her tenure, the general manager and dozens of other longtime and high-level employees at the New York station, WBAI-FM, were fired, and the network’s signature program, “Democracy Now!,” has been off most Pacifica airwaves since Aug. 14.

Host Amy Goodman and her staff said they were threatened and intimidated at WBAI, where “Democracy Now!” originated, and began broadcasting from an off-site studio. Since then, only KPFA in Berkeley has carried the award-winning morning news show. Wash had refused to air the show until the staff returned to the WBAI studios; Farrell said one of his priorities was to get the show back on. Goodman said Friday she has not yet heard from Farrell, however.

In addition, Wash moved the network’s financial office from Los Angeles to Washington earlier this year. Wash could not be reached for comment Friday.

In a recent interview she said she was disappointed by the drain the internal strife had caused in legal fees and security expenses, but laid the responsibility on the dissidents. And giving no hint that she planned to leave soon, she said she looked forward to modernizing and expanding Pacifica, laying out objectives in what she called her “five-year plan.”

Leslie Cagan, a Pacifica board member and a plaintiff in one of the lawsuits against the foundation, said she heard that Farrell had fired Wash, then that she had resigned, and was dismayed Friday she hadn’t received any official notice of Wash’s departure. But, she said, that just exemplifies the current chaos within Pacifica.

Still, Cagan called the agreement to mediate the lawsuits “a good sign. I don’t want to sound overly enthusiastic, but I’m hopeful.”

Pacifica’s national development director, Joanne Meredith, takes over as interim executive director while the board searches for a permanent replacement for Wash. She was in a meeting Friday and could not be reached.

“I have full confidence in her integrity to ensure there’s a full and open accounting of all spending,” Schubb said. “If we can decrease the rhetoric for a few months, we’ll have a full and accurate picture of what’s gone on the last year and a half.

“This is a very fragile organization with huge ambitions and scant resources,” Schubb added. How it emerges from the upheaval this week will determine “whether it can have a national impact or revert back to five separate stations, each left to their own work by themselves.”