Berkeley – Employees at KPFK, Pacifica’s LA station currently embroiled in arbitration with the SAG-AFTRA union, were startled when general manager Leslie Radford handed out “personnel action forms” on September 9th. In the signature line for the executive director, Lydia Brazon signed her own name, without changing the title or indicating she is not Pacifica’s executive director. An example is here. It has been cleansed of any personally identifying information to protect the employee who provided it. The employee in question, as with most union employees in the SAG-AFTRA bargaining unit, refused to sign the form.
Pacifica’s bylaws indicate the board chair, when the position of executive director is occupied (John Proffitt is currently Pacifica’s executive director), is only to preside over meetings of the board of directors or exercise other duties as delegated by the board. Roberts Rules of Order agrees stating “the by-laws should clearly set forth these duties, as they are outside of his/her duties as presiding officer of the assembly, and do not come within the scope of parliamentary law”.The board is directly prohibited from hands-on involvement with the administration of personnel paperwork for bargaining unit members in the middle of grievance procedures. Such board member actions are referred to as “tortious interference” with the union contract.
One day after taking to the pages of the UK Guardian newspaper, Uprising host Sonali Kolhatkar announced the end of the 13-year old programs run as a daily hour-long public affairs show, followed shortly by the termination of Pacifica’s contract with Free Speech TV to air the video version. Free Speech TV currently reaches 40 million homes via DIRECTV, DISH and Roku distribution. Pacifica collected $62,999 from 500+ donors on Indiegogo last year to install a TV production studio in LA, but managed to keep the TV show in production for only 10 months. Kolhatkar begged Pacifica interim ED Margy Wilkinson not to raid the Indiegogo funds last year and use them for general operating expenses, but that was to no avail as the bank account was emptied in the fall of 2014. Kolhatkar made an announcement of the end of Uprising on her Facebook page saying:
“It’s official. After much internal wrangling to work out a schedule that might have kept the integrity of the show intact, KPFK’s management has informed me that starting next week “segments of Uprising will only be required on a part-time basis weekly in accord with your reduced pay and hours”. So stay tuned next week for a show that is sometimes on and sometimes not, where paid unionized labor is replaced with I’m not sure who or what. Welcome to KPFK’s new economy. I’ve been put in the position where I volunteer unpaid for my own job or I get taken off the air”.
The beneficiary of Kolhatkar’s troubles may be PNB treasurer Brian Edwads-Tiekert, who hosts the Upfront show that precedes Uprising in Northern California and may at least temporarily expand his show to cover the program gap. Edwards-Tiekert contributed to KPFK’s financial troubles by championing a 2014-2015 budget for KFPK after the budget was shown to be based on a faulty pledge fulfillment percentage, using a 90% indicator despite five years of data demonstrating the real life average was 81%. This meant the station projected having more than a quarter million dollars more in income than it would actually have, even if the fund drive goals were met. Edwards-Tiekert’s close colleague Margy Wilkinson appointed Leslie Radford as KPFK’s general manager on her last day as interim executive director, over the strong objections of the vast majority of the station’s workers, none more in objection than Kolhatkar who sponsored a change.org petition to try to reverse Radford’s hire.
Thursday’s Pacifica National Board meeting mostly focused on the delayed board elections. ED John Proffitt was recently returned from a 3-week European vacation. After revealing he did not have the telephone number of L. Joy Williams, the national election supervisor, and procuring the telephone number from board chair Lydia Brazon (strangely Proffitt, the direct supervisor, said he never had her telephone number and Brazon, who should play no role in the supervision of the election supervisor, had the telephone number). Williams was located and participated in a surreal conversation with the board about the difficulties of procuring the needed $25,000 from all five stations combined. For a bit of perspective, Pacifica’s revenues for the first ten months of this fiscal year were reported as $10.6 million dollars. The board passed a motion encouraging the payment of the deposit by October 15th, more than a month after the July 14th date of record expires, and in the words of election supervisor L. Joy Williams: “thank you for passing the motion but I don’t write the checks”. Pacifica’s delay in extending the duration of employment for the national election supervisor and five local supervisors looks to have increased election costs by at least $8,000-$10,000 dollars, assuming the network moves ahead with the new October 15th date to mail ballots. When asked if he had received any legal letter regarding the election delay, ED Proffitt answered “yes he had” before being shushed by board chair Brazon. More than two dozen board candidates signed this public statement objecting to Pacifica’s ongoing delays of member elections to select a new board of directors.
The progress or lack of progress on the latest financial audit, which was due to the CA Attorney General and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting 73 days ago, was discussed by controller Efren Llarinas. Llarinas said he had received no audit schedules or prep work from KPFK, WPFW or the archives division and only parts of it from KPFA and WBAI. Llarinas then contradicted himself shortly afterwards saying “70% of the audit schedules were complete”, which if half the divisions have submitted nothing, would not be possible. No anticipated start date or completion date for the overdue audit was provided.
Continuing on financial matters, board chair Brazon passed the gavel to vice-chair Tony Norman and introduced a confusing amendment she authored to change the board’s previous assignment of hire-fire authority over station bookkeepers to the CFO. Brazon’s amendment changed it back to joint hire/fire supervisory authority between station general managers and the CFO, and names the board as referee if a station manager and CFO disagree, cutting the executive director out of any role in hiring, firing or supervising the network’s financial employees. This is consistent with Brazon’s long history of denuding the executive director position of authority, at least when it is not held by one of her factional colleagues. The motion is also contradictory to the organization’s bylaws which limits board roles in hiring and firing to executive employees, not rank and file local bookkeepers at the stations. Nonetheless, the board passed the Brazon amendment unanimously.
At KPFK, GM Radford announced on Sepember 9th the station had only $73,000 in the bank, 19 days after completing a fund drive that garnered $575,000 in pledges. Radford intended to take the station back into fund drive again on September 21, but after staff pushed back is considering delaying until September 29, five weeks after the last five-week fund drive ended. The delay is contingent on Radford being able to take out a “loan” from undisclosed parties. You can listen to part of the September 10th KPFK staff meeting here.
Veteran music programmer and host of Cosmic Barrio Derek Rath summed up staff sentiments after he stated “we are well past the point of forgiving for mere incompetence”.
As KPFA prepares to go back into fund drive on Tuesday, the first of the Pacifica stations to do so due to financial stress caused by the decision to skip a summer fund drive, the Grain Brain products, the subject of an investigatory expose in New York magazine, were pulled from the station’s premium list after the article was noted in this publication last week. The article traced Grain Brain author David Perlmutter’s long history of ever-changing supplement sites and questionable embrace of hyperbaric oxygen chamber treatments, glutathione treatments for Parkinsons, and recommendations for fecal transplants and probiotic enemas to combat multiple sclerosis. Those worried about dementia or suffering from other neurological ailments need not fear as the Grain Brain products were replaced with Bruce Fife’s book “Stop Alzheimers Now!“. Fife treats Alzheimers, arthritis, autism,multiple sclerosis, Parkinsons and ALS (Lou Gehrig’s disease) with “Amazing Coconut Oil” and runs the “Coconut Research Center” in Colorado Springs. Fife is a legitimate expert on coconuts having previously authored “The Coconut Oil Miracle“, “Coconut Cures“, “The Coconut Miracle Cookbook”, “The Coconut Ketogenic Diet“, “The New Arthritis Cure” (featuring coconuts) and “Stop Autism Now!” (with coconuts).
The removal of the Perlmutter premiums was handled less than gracefully, with unofficial Save KPFA spokesperson Richard Wolinsky stating on Facebook that KPFA had eliminated the premium gifts (which included several books and a $365 “combo pack) back in June when the New York Magazine article came out. When Wolinsky was shown an all-staff email with the approved premiums list dated September 3rd that contained the Grain Brain products, he admitted the mistake but refused to correct himself on the Facebook page. Pacifica in Exile will do so here, not to “waterboard” the indignant Mr. Wolinsky, but simply to set the record straight. KPFA management made a widely-publicized statement regarding “the scientific consensus” and the sale of alternative health products following the controversial on-air censoring of an anti-vaccine discussion with Natural Living host Gary Null in May.
“Richard Wolinsky: So, big shit. I misinterpreted what Laura said. My fault. Time to be waterboarded”.
Right on the heels of celebrating the arrival of their new solid-state transmitter and finally getting re-licensed by the FCC, KPFT’s local station board jumped right back into infighting, spending last Wednesday evening attempting to kick PNB staff representative George Reiter off the local and national boards. Reiter’s sin: a summer home in upstate New York the University of Houston physics professor retires to in July and August. Houston’s local station board decided Reiter’s summer plans, which had been disclosed to the board in advance, constituted an impeachable offense and his absences could not be excused. Leading the charge was PNB member Adriana Casenave, a board majority member, who strangely enough co-sponsored a pending bylaws amendment *allowing* local and national board members to remotely attend meetings via Skype or phone, which is currently prohibited for local boards. The contradiction is likely explained by factional affiliation, as Casenave allies with the Siegel/Brazon faction, and Reiter is historically affiliated with the independent opposition, having chaired the board in 2010. The actual outcome was messy with Reiter initially removed from the local board and then reinstated later in the meeting. Houston’s local station board has now spent much of the last three years going through a set of unsucessful attempts to pitch people off boards with Casenave targeting Reiter this year, Casenave targeting listener rep Richard Uzzell last year, and now-resigned board member Nancy Hentschel targeting Ted Weisgal the year before that.
KPFA’s Twit Wit Radio satire touched on some of Pacifica’s weekly news in their September 6th episode where a familiar-sounding voice comments that “It is next to impossible to privatize a solvent radio network.” You can listen to the 30-minute episode here or at www.kpfa.org.
Pacifica in Exile readers may write to the board at [email protected].
For readers who may wish to do more, any donor to a California-based not for profit organization like Pacifica may file a complaint to the open file at the Registry of Charitable Trusts at the Office of the CA Attorney General. Pacifica’s case number is CT011303. The form and instructions for filing may be downloaded here.
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Started in 1946 by conscientious objector Lew Hill, Pacifica’s storied history includes impounded program tapes for a 1954 on-air discussion of marijuana, broadcasting the Seymour Hersh revelations of the My Lai massacre, bombings by the Ku Klux Klan, going to jail rather than turning over the Patty Hearst tapes to the FBI, and Supreme Court cases including the 1984 decision that noncommercial broadcasters have the constitutional right to editorialize, and the Seven Dirty Words ruling following George Carlin’s incendiary performances on WBAI. Pacifica Foundation Radio operates noncommercial radio stations in New York, Washington, Houston, Los Angeles, and the San Francisco Bay Area, and syndicates content to over 180 affiliates. It invented listener-supported radio.