Originally posted September 16, 2014
Berkeley-The turmoil engendered at Pacifica Radio earlier this year sunk to a new low last weekend, with a shockingly deliberate exhibition of cooking the books by Upfront host and current treasurer Brian Edwards-Tiekert, distributed in an email newsletter by the “Save KPFA” group.
The blatant lying to members of the foundation is dishonest reporting on Pacifica’s financial condition and a shocking display for a journalist who asks for the trust of the public as a reporter.
The Save KPFA newsletter, adorned with Pacifica’s logo, said “according to a report from Pacifica National Finance Committee chair Brian Edwards Tiekert “ last year produced the the largest loss the Pacifica National Office has posted since the height of Pacifica’s civil war in 2001.”
Nope. Edwards-Tiekert and the Pacifica CFO are listing for last year $650,000 of expenses from a program contract that expired before the year began — and lying about the expiration date of the agreement — saying it expired in September of 2013 when it expired in September of 2012.
In other words, in order to make his predecessors look bad, the Pacifica treasurer and the CFO are including bills in last year’s totals and leaving them out of this year’s totals, although they stem from an agreement that was just as expired in 2013 as it is in 2014.
The $537,000 deficit ascribed by Edwards-Tiekert to the national office in 2013, is caused by $650,000 in unpaid bills from a contract that expired on September 30, 2012 . Of course things look better if you include $650,000 in bills in 2013 and don’t include them in 2014.
Call it “factional accounting”. Call it deliberate deception. Call it exceedingly bad journalism.
But call it. Pacifica Radio and its long-suffering supporters deserve better than three-card monte from the board officers.
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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.
