An Open Letter to Brian Edwards-Tiekert - KPFA Local Station Board Election

Hello Brian,

One of the recipients of your somewhat impassioned endorsement email in the upcoming KPFA listener election took the liberty of forwarding it to me. While I would not normally go out of my way to respond, the personal nature of your very specific non-endorsement of *me* does seem to justify a reply.

I don't question your right to express your opinion. I do question anyones right to disseminate lies, exaggeration and misinformation. Doesn't help KPFA much. And more to the point, since my work largely concerns accuracy in media and a healthy progressive communications system, I really hate seeing garbage disseminated in the hopes of winning elections, here at Pacifica or anywhere else. And we all know a lot of garbage gets disseminated by people in the hopes of winning elections. A plague on our system in every way.

I'll mention here that you are a staff member and therefore are represented within Pacifica's system by the 25% of the delegates who are elected by the staff. Your role as an advocate for the interests of the staff is best served by your participation in the staff process. I will also note you are in the process of being subjected to a recall election by your constituency, the staff, some of whom do not feel their interests have been well-served by you. The charge is one of disseminating false information to the media - namely that Pacifica was raiding KPFA's bank accounts when no such thing occurred.

I agree with you that KPFA and Pacifica's audience is "stagnant". That is a very disturbing fact and one that has been true for many years. What do you propose to do about it? Is there a single unique program that has been generated at KPFA through any source but the 2002-2006 program council? Is there anything that did not merely rearrange the same voices on the somewhat stagnant air? No.

I do not bear any ill will towards yourself, Mitch Jeserich, or Phillip Maldari, but I don't see how moving yourself from the News to the Morning Show, Phillip from the Morning Show to the Sunday Morning program, Mitch from producing the Morning Show to producing Letters from Washington and importing programs from BAI in New York and KPFK in Los Angeles serves to invigorate and re-imagine Pacifica's programming. It's a bit like reshuffling the desk chairs on the Titanic.

Given that, why the fear of the program council? Why act to decimate it and work so hard to avoid reinstating it? New ideas and an open door is what is needed. All I have seen in over a decade of involvement with KPFA is an intense desire to slam the door shut on new people and new ideas. It is simply not working.

Pacifica is community radio. Its your mission. You made up the term and defined it. All community radio and much of community media walks in the footsteps of KPFA and Pacifica. Its a bit of a sad testament that nowadays a lot of it is more effective, more exciting and more radical than Pacifica itself.

The nightmare of the Healthy Station Project cost Pacifica the ownership of its flagship program Democracy Now, which after being assaulted by the professionalizers of the 1990's, ran away to save itself. The mantra of professionalization has only served to hurt community media. Its sad to see you upholding what has so clearly failed both radical media voices and radical media audiences.

KPFA's financial problems aren't rocket science. Listener donations are declining, largely because of a disastrous economic collapse, but also due to the stagnation you correctly identify. When you have less revenue, you have to cut your expenses. Or you do not survive.

As the board treasurer, you presented budgets calling for $300,000 in staff reductions in 2008 and $425,000 in staff reductions in 2009. But then you and the rest of the Concerned Listeners- Save KPFA board majority sat on your hands like a bunch of mindless sheep and allowed the management to fail to make those expense reductions during the 14 month period from October 1, 2008 to December 5, 2009. Until Concerned Listeners - Save KPFA lost the board majority to Independents for Community Radio.

Between 10/08 and 3/10, one million dollars of listener funds left the building. One million dollars. KPFA's entire cash in the bank. Paying salaries that KPFA could not afford in this recession and would have to eliminate sooner or later. It broke my heart to watch.

To this day, I hear only three things from you and the Concerned Listeners - Save KPFA crowd. Three things so essentially stupid that if anyone really believes them, they need a brain transplant.

1) The whole reason for any funds shortfall is the election and the cost of the boards. Namely that a $1,000,000 deficit was caused by a $40,000 election. That a foundation with 200 million dollars in revenues since 2002 has been destroyed by spending 1% of that on democratic governance. The other 99% of expenses have nothing to do with it.

2) Nonprofit boards play no role whatsoever in holding management staff accountable for carrying out budget plans and implementing them, nor in taking action when there are large operational deficits. Any board that insists budgets be followed or expenses be reduced in the face of a large deficit is out of control and a threat to the professional staff.

3) When large sums of money are not in the bank accounts they are reported to be in, and donor checks sit in desks for more than a year until they have expired, there is no problem and no action should be taken.

Well yes, I do not buy this garbage.

Finally with regards to your somewhat lengthy non-endorsement of my candidacy in particular; I recognize your former high hopes for me.They are, of course, based in my long-term previous service to the station, as an employee, program council facilitator and election supervisor. You are correct that I have tried for a long time to build consensus and avoid unnecessary turmoil that damages KPFA. You are wrong that my work with KPFA was uninformed by a deep commitment and set of principles that serious changes were necessary and long over due.

I see no point in going through a line-by-line refutation of specious accusations. We all make choices. KPFA management could have made the choice to work collaboratively with their large unpaid workforce: instead they derecognized the bargaining unit, interfered with unpaid staff voting rights, and called the police on Nadra Foster for trespassing where she had worked for over a decade. Save KPFA-affiliated board members could have chosen to honor basic confidentiality provisions regarding personnel matters : instead they encouraged news staffers who disagreed with the board to broadcast them. Finally you, yourself could have chosen to raise your uninformed concerns about KPFA bank accounts at a finance committee meeting : instead you chose to raise them in the Berkeley Daily Planet newspaper.

Choices always have consequences.

Even things as petty as changing the name of a group of candidates from Concerned Listeners to Save KPFA and forgetting to buy the domain name savekpfa.net.

Vote Independents for Community Radio. http://www.voteindyradio.org

Less garbage. More change.

Best,

Tracy Rosenberg
Executive Director, *Media Alliance
Member - KPFA Local Station Board
Member - Pacifica Foundation Board of Directors
Member - *Media and Democracy Coalition Board of Directors
Member - *Alliance for Community Media, Western Regional Board of Directors