Corporate Programming And Pacifica's Convention Coverage: An Open Letter To Pacifica

From: Nora Barrows-Friedman
Date: Thu, Aug 28, 2008 at 10:34 PM
Subject: An open letter to Pacifica and its listeners


An Open Letter to Pacifica and Its Listeners
August 28, 2008


As a programmer, listener and staff member at KPFA, Pacifica's flagship
station, I have to publicly denounce the national coverage that was forced
upon our listenership during the DNC.

It is our duty as a so-called "alternative" media network to monitor the
centers of power; instead, what we heard was overt cheerleading for the
Democratic party and its Presidential candidate.

As former VP Al Gore prepared to take the stage this evening, thousands of
people in New Orleans were preparing to take shelter and once again brace
for the worst as a new storm brewed overhead. A KPFA reporter brought us
the voice of Malik Rahim who demanded that the Democratic Party, the
Republican Party and its respective candidates stop what they were doing
and come down and protect the people in New Orleans.

After this passionate report, the kind of segment that KPFA should be
proud of, the DNC anchors barely segued into a breathless excitement of Al
Gore's moment in the spotlight at the Pepsi Center.

What a shame. Lou Hill did not establish Pacifica so that voices of poor
people would be overshadowed by corporate politicians' quadrannual beauty
pageants. If we were truly the "alternative network," providing
"unconventional coverage" of the political conventions, then we would have
heard more from New Orleans, we would have been out in the streets, we
would have stopped the regular programming to go be the voice of those who
are truly voiceless.

We should have been reporting from the trenches, not from within the
fully-secured and sanctioned establishment of the DNC. We should have been
marching with the poor, with the anarchists being beaten by riot squad
paramilitary police forces, with the activists at the Food Not Bombs
table. That's more the voice of the people than anyone inside the Pepsi
Center, certainly more than the nominated head of the Democratic Party. We
have more in common with the people in the streets than we do with the
corporate politicians who send our people to fight their wars, consume
their chemicals, and swallow their foreign policies as our children remain
uneducated, without healthcare, and bracing for the next shoe to drop.

There is a disturbing trend happening within the network that must be
addressed and challenged. More often than ever before, programmers and
station managers are tending to lean toward NPR-style programming and news
structure; moving away from the original mission of Pacifica in favor of
mainstream "liberal" content. During the DNC, anchors offered challenges
to the Presidential and Vice-Presidential candidates' positions that were
tepid at best, and sounded tokenized.

Democracy Now! produced some very good, hard-hitting segments (Jeremy
Scahill dissecting Joe Biden's interests in bombing Afghanistan and the
larger Democratic party's abysmal foreign policies; Iraq Vets Against the
War speaking out and leading protests; protesters getting pepper-sprayed,
etc.). I had hoped to hear similar analysis and truly alternative
coverage, and was really disappointed at the lack of creativity and
follow-through that the Pacifica National coverage presented to our
listeners.

At KPFA in particular, we still do not have a show that addresses and
serves the Black community. Managers have decided to keep Youth Radio off
the air. At fundraising meetings, programmers and staff have exalted the
KQED style of fund drives. The KPFA News department still uses Associated
Press and Reuters wire copy verbatim, without reference or context -- an
expensive "service" that listeners looking for an alternative pay for, and
do not deserve.

Listening to the Pacifica cheerleading section on-air in Denver, a few
days after the horrific and unprecedented police attack inside the KPFA
building -- KPFA management is responsible for calling on Berkeley Police
to come inside our so-called community radio station, which resulted in an
unpaid programmer, a pregnant Black single mom, being beaten, hog-tied and
arrested for "trespassing" -- I am ashamed to be an employee of Pacifica
Radio.

This is not what we come to work, every day, with our without pay, to be a
part of. As not only a programmer, but a lifetime listener (my parents met
at KPFA in the late 1960's as unpaid programmers themselves), I demand a
full investigation and challenge to the Pacifica programming management.
Take a good look in the mirror, and let's start the revolution already.

In real, uncorporatized and sustained struggle,

Nora Barrows-Friedman
Senior Producer and co-host, Flashpoints