I've always tried to avoid writing about the internal politics of KPFA Radio. There are so many big issues that I'd rather spend my time covering - the wars, the economy, the November elections to name a few. But right now, KPFA is at a critical moment and I couldn't stay silent.
The station's board of directors is up for election this month and it's critically important that one slate of candidates prevail if the station is to remain relevant.
The battle here isn't between left and right. It's between competent, professional journalists who know how to dig up dirt and hold government and corporations accountable and a small group of gadflies who think following journalism ethics and protecting labor rights somehow constitute selling out.
One slate, Save KPFA, is made up of prominent academics, attorneys, labor and community advocates who understand how to get things done.
They understand that it takes experienced, professional journalists to break the big stories. They support important new programs like Letters to Washington, where host Mitch Jeserich breaks news on a daily basis. They supported the Winter Soldier broadcasts I hosted where dozens of veterans stepped forward and testified about atrocities they personally committed or witnessed while deployed overseas. And they support the hard work that KPFA's News Department does day in and day out to bring the best local, state, national and international information that you can get anywhere on the dial.
The candidates running under the banner of Save KPFA want to keep the station true to its founding goal of investigating the causes of conflict between people and nations, and to reach a broad audience--not by watering down its radical message, but by making well-crafted and intelligent programming that doesn't condescend to the listener. They believe that they can serve the station's mission, raise revenue, and weather hard times by producing smart programming for an expanding audience.
On the other side, are those who believe that "professionalism" is a dirty word. In a time when one expects to hear calls for austerity from the right, not the left, this group thinks that the unionized paid staff of the station should be dispensed with and replaced by a station of volunteers. If one were wondering what sort of content such a station might broadcast, these folks strongly support conspiracy programming, which they seem to forget is the province of the far right. (Their allies in the network have suggested that Amy Goodman, host of the award-winning Democracy Now!, is taking CIA money to cover up the "truth" about 9/11 and have been vigorously promoting the snake oil of various hucksters as a way of raising revenue for the stations).
It's not hyperbole to say that the future of this venerable and history-making institution hangs in the balance. Whichever side wins this election will determine whether KPFA will continue to put resources into high quality programming like Winter Soldier or whether it will go the way of the rest of the media towards gutted and lackluster programming, mass lay offs, and busted unions. If you're a KPFA subscriber, I strongly encourage you to vote for the ten SaveKPFA candidates for the Local Station Board: Matthew Hallinan, Dave Saldana, Tanya Russell, Margy Wilkinson, Mark Hernandez, Suzi Goldmacher, Terry Doran, Mal Burnstein, Jack Kurzweil, and Don Goldmacher.
Voting continues until September 30. You can find out more information on the SaveKPFA slate at SaveKPFA.org. The website of the competing slate, the Independents for Community Radio, is at http://bit.ly/awwRm0.
Follow Aaron Glantz on Twitter: www.twitter.com/Aaron_Glantz
But this isn't possible with the rest of KPFA News, or with KPFA's other pubic affairs segments, which are not edited out of the longer broadcasts, tagged for subject, and given discreet URLs. KPFA is thus losing its chance to expand its audience, community, and subscriber base. I'm voting for ICR candidates because they're closest to action on this.
While I am not included in or endorsed by any slate, there is ONE slate I am running AGAINST, and that is the 'Save KPFA for the Democratic Party and let the entrenched staff clique run things without listener interference!' slate that Glantz endorses.
While the Concerned Listeners -- rebranded as 'Save KPFA' -- slate and its supporters try to identify themselves with the 1999 rebellion that PARTIALLY reversed the hijacking of KPFA and Pacifica by Clintonian Democrats like Mary Frances Berry, they ignore and implicitly endorse the massive purges of large numbers of ethnically and politically diverse (and generally clearly opposed to the ruling class) volunteer programmers, most of whom were never invited back! In fact, the same "professionalism" mantra that was used to justify the 1995 purges is being used now by Glantz and his buddies to defend the jobs and power of the insider clique and their friends that they hired in a time of budgetary deficits that they were and are responsible for.
KPFA Listener-Members: Please vote for me, Aaron Aarons, and EVERYBODY EXCEPT the 'Save KPFA' slate!
My blog:
http://kpfa.blogspot.com/
My official Candidate Statement:
http://pacificafoundation.org/cand_page.php?id=405
Apparently these 'men" were sufficiently intimidated by my presence as a general assignment volunteer reporter at KPFA that they launched a failed attempt, using racist rhetoric and actions, to insult, intimidate and threaten me out of the KPFA newsroom. It did not work.
Aaron is a Concerned Listener advocate, this slate represents the entrenched elitist group that has taken over what used to be a progressive liberal station and converted it to tenured employment for a few mediocre snobs.
Aaron is not representative of someone or something whose opinion I would hold or who I will follow anywhere ever-
Margaret Kaigler-Armstead
KPFA-Reporter 2005-08
"Save KPFA" = doublespeak
John Pilger - http://www.georgewashington2.blogspot.com/2009/03/real-journalism-versus-professional.html
Robert McChesney - http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/2427/
James Owens: http://www.media-ocracy.com/?p=912
Welcome to my world where as one fears for loss of his job, the government continues to grow. The government continues to grow because the media continues to focus on every thing wrong, and how there needs to be a centralized "authority" to manage the wrong.
Soon you will come out of this mess. You'll find that you can do it without the benefit of something that "knows all".
You'll begin to see the wisdom of the farmers, the coal miners, the housewives, the refrigerator repair man and you'll see what our *great experiment in principle* is all about.
I mean this very sincerely. You will be a very happy man once you open your mind.
There have been many *paranoid conspiracies* about the US government. A lot of them have been proven to be true many years later. I remember when United Fruit and Guatemala, Allende and Iran-Contra were the ravings of paranoid crazies. But they weren't, were they?
Obviously, as anyone who reads my Huffington column knows, I'm an advocate for an open Internet. Capital letters and all. The tremendous economic, social and cultural benefits of open Internet platforms have demonstrated themselves over and over again. I would not trade them for a Dave-controlled browsing experience.
I realize Dave and his ilk are grownups who can tell me who knows what they are talking about and who doesn't, but I have a sneaking suspicion that the kind of revolutionary communication that fuels social change has to let people make those decision for themselves and learn to speak with their own voices.
To get back to KPFA and Pacifica, its about the people will support the work of professionals. At the moment, like much of the rest of the journalistic establishment, you guys are losing your shirts, even at the robust KPFA pay scale of $22/hour.
Adjusting to economic realities and the changing nature of journalism isn't an option, it's a necessity.
Does the desire to hear diverse ideas engaged in honest debate in a true marketplace of ideas, rather than the rantings of more-radical-than-thou political fundamentalists make me an elitist? If so, then I guess I am one, and I won't apologize for that. SaveKPFA.org.
Of course, the Save-KPFA-for-the-Democratic-Party gang and the small clique of entrenched paid staff that recruited them, originally under the name 'KPFA Forward', can't admit that that's what they're defending, so they invent straw men (and women) who supposedly want KPFA to have NO paid staff and NO editorial control.
I can't speak for Tracy Rosenberg, ICR, or any of the other candidates, but I DO support editorial control -- control that would allow access to KPFA's precious 168 hours per week of airtime to diverse anti-establishment activists and analysts, but greatly limit access by ruling-class spokespersons and their apologists, including Obamabots. And, if I had the power, I would retire Mericle and Alfandary and turn over management of the News Department to competent, critical thinkers like Anthony Fest.
* Three of the Save-KPFA-for-the-Democratic-Party candidates, including Dave Saldana, are present or retired attorneys.
There are two meaning of the word "professional" One is to do a good, thorough, skilled job at what one is trying to accomplish. The other is to create an "elite" who are accorded special privileges by the society they set themselves apart from. The use of the word professional is done to drive a wedge between us.
KPFA is too full of the latter - as is much of public media.
Public media elites offer us a “partnership” in which they’re the parents and we’re the children, anxiously waiting with our bibs on for our media to be spoon fed to us. Unless we change this power relationship, we will remain subject to the arbitrary dominance of wealthy, racist, militarists shaping new technologies to sustain their power.
Much as I love the work that many like Mitch J and Aaron G do, this time, I support ICR (www.voteindyradio.org).
The new media has developed as a result. It says we're all journalists and communication rights belong to the people. not just the professionals. It acknowledges citizen media makes important contributions, the first voice chronicles of real people are important, and power dynamics between professional gatekeepers and a consumer audience hasn't served the interests of justice and the most disenfranchised. The new media is younger, multi-ethnic and language-diverse, and doesn't buy the distinction Aaron makes between "professionals" and "gadflies". In this view, we all get a press pass. This is what ICR (www.voteindyradio.org) is about.
I understand Aaron's lament of "what about me?". It's been the cry of the journalism workforce as layoffs have swept through the industry. KPFA;s professional journalistic staff are not exempt from the economic bloodbath the country is going through.
The old credo of "adapt or die" applies to progressive journalism just like it applies to everything else.
There's many checks and balances built into the system. Neither group is going to go away after this so-called crucial board election. But the station might go away due to two things
1) failure to live within it's budget, and
2) mean-spirited factional grudges.
I have endorsed the Independents for Community Radio and I support their philosophical stance about media. (see link below for more on that). I hope the people Aaron supports lose. And, I hope they will accept their minority status with grace. It won't be the end of KPFA. It could be the beginning of something very important and fun. It's up to every one of us.
What do you say, Aaron?
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tracy-rosenberg/towards-a-just-communicat_b_721826.html