Long-time WBAI and KPFA reporter, producer and host Robert Knight passed away on the evening of April 16th at the age of 64. A tribute can be found here.
Details are emerging about the double-secret-meeting that never happened on April 14th. After adjourning the noticed meeting, half of the board left for a private conference call number they did not provide to the other half of the board. There they retained Siegel and Yee, the law firm headed by Dan Siegel and the employer of board member Jose Luis Fuentes, who authored both motions to breach executive director Summer Reese’s contract. Previous declarations about retaining attorney Hunter Pyle, former Siegel and Yee employee from 1997-2003, apparently came to naught. The unnoticed meeting was not a Pacifica board meeting, but that didn’t stop the rogue board majority from issuing a “report-out“ from their private meeting and posting it on the website at www.pacifica.org in a blatant violation of Corporation for Public Broadcasting open meeting requirements.
The “report-out” appears to be fraudulent as it does not mention any decision to retain Siegel and Yee to represent the rogue board members “individually” in the lawsuit PBGG vs Pacifica, nor describe the relevant “conflicts of interest” discussed. The report attributed to the private meeting the power to authorize the retention of counsel for the foundation as a whole to the unilateral decision of disputed chair Wilkinson. The “report-out” also failed to mention the small majority plan to file a temporary restraining order to boot the executive director, the national staff and their supporters from the corporate headquarters prior to the May 6th preliminary injunction hearing.
The amended PBGG vs. Pacifica complaint can be found here in a 137-page full complaint and a 24-page Memorandum of Points and Authorities.
An open letter signed by hundreds of the network’s staffers and supporters objecting to the breach of Reese’s contract can be found here
At Thursday night’s board meeting, PBGG members were prevented from discussing their qualifications to serve on various committees. A motion to develop a network-wide bequest program by WBAI rep Manijeh Saba was buried in the depths of the agenda by the board majority, which was a bit of a weird decision for a nonprofit facing financial collapse. Board members Jose-Luis Fuentes, Rodrigo Argueta and vice-chair Tony Norman voted against recording who votes how in meeting minutes. KPFA staff rep Brian Edwards-Tiekert changed his vote from no to yes at the last minute.
In the late-night closed session that followed, the board *finally* approved minutes from the February 7-10 in-person meeting, although they left a bunch of stuff out. The fake minutes omitted several important points, including the second by WPFW rep Tony Norman of the motion to fire the executive director for not disclosing her social security number 15 months earlier when hired, and the deletion of legal advice received from former corporate counsel Terry Gross and HR attorney Cathy Harris from the written record. The board also refused a request from 5 board members to add a statement to the minutes of record regarding their temporary resignations from the board in disgust during the 4-day meeting.
Otherwise, WBAI director Cerene Roberts moved to censure KPFT director Richard Uzzell for no stated reason, the board failed to approve any report-out from the 4-17 closed session at all, and in response to the PBGG directors bemused comments about why there was no closed session agenda at all, KPFA director Brian Edwards-Tiekert posited that “no meeting agenda is necessary.”
Los Angeles-based listener sponsor Paul Jackson penned this piece about the intersection between democracy, justice, and fairness: Straight “Majority” Rule? Lewis Hill Would Be Disappointed
A complaint filed by 8 former national board members with the CA Attorney General can be found here..
Pacifica National Board member from KPFA, Janet Kobren, prepared this article summarizing her experiences after two and a half months on the Pacifica National Board and gave this report at the KPFA local station board meeting on April 12th.
Interviews with executive director Summer Reese can be found here and here and here. .
A satirical look at the chaos at the radio stations and what the future holds amid rumors of a network breakup by the Twit Wits comedy troupe (produced by noted theatrical producer George Coates) can be found here.
Disputed chair Margy Wilkinson is reported to have said with regard to Reese’s attempted firing; “it isn’t illegal until someone says it is”.
Reese has continued to report to work at the national headquarters since March 17th.
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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 invente! d listener-supported radio.