Pacifica Radio on the ropes; may be out of existence by middle of January

Pacifica Radio is on the ropes and if something is not done to save it, it may be out of existence by the middle of January. Seriously. Over-politicization of the network, blocked by competing political agendas and insufferable egos matched only by widespread incompetence, only begins to explain it.

After a major struggle in the mid-90s it ceased being a network based largely on volunteer programmers (who made their living from other jobs) after acceding to the "professionalization" of the sound and staff, implemented by a former member of the US Communist Party (and, I believe of the FBI, as well,) who received the highest complements when she retired as Pacifica's director, from the a former head of Voice of America and Radio Marti. Paying all the staff, however, was never really feasible for a network whose stations derived their income from listener contributions and so the stations, rather than returning t,o the format that had made them successful, ended up pitching for money at least 10 weeks out of every year.

Those intent on destroying or NPRizing the station had help from the network's "official" historian Matthew Lazar who penned the article from The Nation which some naive soul just posted on the Pacifica FB page. Having been heavily involved in the efforts to save the station from going the way of NPR and looking for liberal foundation grants, I co-founded two groups, the first Save KPFA in 1993, and Take Back KPFA in 1995 (who he refers to as the Take Backers but had nothing to do with it after 2001) after the ex-Communist had close to 150 volunteer programmers, all from the left, the hosts of prison, labor, Native American. etc., removed from the air five of whom were replaced by then out of work Gerry Brown, who was given the noon to 1 pm slot Monday thru Friday which he used as a springboard to become mayor of Oakland. The way this intellectual harlot who wrote this article tells it, he took a break from his stints as governor to do it.

I was the person who filed the complaint about Pacifica with the CPB when it not only would not allow its stations to announce its board meeting dates and then would not publish or provide the public with minutes of its meetings none of which Lazar attended. The government was clearly in cahoots with the Pacifica ex-CPer since the first two investigators from the CPB's Inspector General's Office, one of whom was the IG himself, were fired soon after opening the investigation into Pacifica's wholesale violation of CPB's meeting rules.

When a third IG, who formerly worked with the Army was hired, he found that the allegations I had made on behalf of Take Back KPFA were valid but to my surprise, when I arrived at his office in Washington, 20 years ago, he told me the "fix" was in, that despite his findings, the board chair of the CPB had already written a statement saying that the IG's investigation had cleared Pacifica of any wrong doing. Then, the Inspector General of the Corporation for Public Broadcasting suggested we enter the meeting room through separate doors after which point the meeting went as he had said it would and Jack O'Dell, then President of Pacifica who formerly had been close to Martin Luther King Jr and was, until that moment, a friend of mine, played the role of Uncle Tom to perfection. It was a very sad moment.

Unfortunately, I didn't see this article from 2015 until tonight. Had I read it at the time, I would carved the dishonest Mr. Lazar a new asshole. RIP Pacifica.