Flashpoints receives Top 20 Media recognition

Dennis Bernstein, Nora Barrows Friedman, and Flashpoints were listed by PULSE weblog among their " 20 Top Global Media Figures of 2009"

Flashpoints recently lost an estimated 50% of its personnel funding in staff cuts made by KPFA management, which Barrows Friedman says will gut the program.
The station needed to cut paid staff hours to meet budget requirements, and the cuts to Flashpoints were reputedly made because the hours put in by Flashpoints staff to produce their investigative journalism were not paid for by their donations during fundraising.
Flashpoints maintains that these cuts were politically motivated. Current management's supporting faction wishes to moderate KPFA's programming, and the News Department. which receives much criticism from listeners for not providing progressive enough news, has had its operations expanded. (We also know that there is extreme pressure from supporters of the current Israeli military regime for critics of their policies, with financial implications attached.)
The General Manager claims that basic cuts were 20% across the board for all programs, but has not provided the data which has been requested, to back up this claim.
(Several articles on this have been published to IndyBay, see links at the end of this article.)

PULSE:
"Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one."

20 TOP GLOBAL MEDIA FIGURES of 2009

. . . With the goal of recognizing those individuals and institutions responsible for exemplary reportage and awareness-raising in 2009, we asked our editors and writers to name their choices for the top 20 media figures, be they journalists, publications or publishers.

We aggregated these nominations into the following list. . . . Our criteria for choosing media figures included people/publications/publishers who have shown a commitment to challenging power, holding it accountable, highlighting issues pertaining to peace and social justice and producing output that encourages critical thinking and questions conventional wisdom.

See http://pulsemedia.org/2009/12/31/pulse-20-top-global-media-figures-of-2009/
for descriptions of the following honorees.
The Flashpoints text is included below.

Amy Goodman
Sherine Tadros/Ayman Mohyeldin
Jeremy Scahill
Jim Lobe
Mary-Kay Wilmers (London Review of Books)
Mondoweiss
Le Monde Diplomatique
Patrick Cockburn
Gareth Porter
Rahimullah Yusufzai
Gary Younge
Amira Hass/ Gideon Levy
Verso Books
The Electronic Intifada
Paul Jay (Real News)

NORA BARROWS-FRIEDMAN/ DENNIS BERNSTEIN (FLASHPOINTS)
Run by executive producer Dennis Bernstein and senior producer Nora Barrows-Friedman, the award-winning Flashpoints radio is an indispensable daily source for hard-hitting and incisive investigative and public affairs commentary. Bernstein and Barrows-Friedman (a recent recipient of a Lifetime Achievement Media Freedom Award from Media Freedom Foundation/Project Censored) continue to tackle those issues which even some progressive media outlets shy away from, with a particular emphasis on Israel/Palestine, and on-location reporting from various international hotspots. Their uncensored and independent reportage provides a needed counter to the biased and corporate-influenced productions of mainstream journalism.

Laura Flanders
Glenn Greenwald
Jane Mayer
Ramzy Baroud

Our list wouldn’t be complete without the following very honorable mentions:

Robert Fisk, Jasim al-Azzawi, Comedy Central (John Stewart/Stephen Colbert), Dahr Jamail, Rachel Maddow, Nir Rosen, Tony Karon, FAIR, Stephen Walt, Matt Taibbi, Peter Oborne, Naomi Klein, Bill Moyers, Richard Silverstein, Helena Cobban, Paul Woodward, Lewis Lapham, Seumas Milne, Jonathan Cook, Antiwar.com, The Onion, Alternet, Chris Hedges, Hamid Mir, Alexander Cockburn, P. Sainath, Juan Cole, Gregory Wilpert, Uri Avnery, Max Blumenthal, Mohammed Omer, Lalia El Haddad, Ron Suskind, Shihab Rattansi, Clayton Swisher, James Bamford, Seymour Hersh, Keith Olbermann, David Edwards and David Cromwell, Robert Greenwald, John Pilger, Venezuela Analysis, Roane Carey, George Monbiot, Black Agenda Report, Robert McChesney, C. S. Soong, Dori Smith, Rose Aguilar, Pluto Press and Abdul Bari Atwan.
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Links to IndyBay Flashpoints articles:

Open letter to GM from Dennis Bernstein
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2009/12/31/18633938.php?show_comments=1#18633982

Cuts to KPFA's Flashpoints Spark Outrage http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2009/12/24/18633560.php

Award Winning Flashpoints Radio Show Under Threat by KPFA Management
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2009/12/11/18632284.php