A comment posted in Current Magazine in April of 2014:

The Pacifica Foundation’s 1946 founding mission statement commits it to (in a small nutshell) delivering educational radio programming oriented to peace, social justice and conflict resolution, wide-ranging political, cultural and artistic expression, and to “the full distribution of public information”.

Such a small progressive non-profit national NETWORK of a 5 radio stations and some 180 affiliated community radio stations (that carry some Pacifica programming) is an extremely valuable thing. It exists and cannot in the current American media landscape be recreated for generations (if ever) if it were to be broken up via re-structuring or disappear altogether. Most of Pacifica’s 80,000 listener sponsors (donors) morally support not just their own station but the network as a whole.

It’s true that Pacifica’s impact on the national scene thus far (especially since the 1970s) has been rather small (although at certain times, such as during the run-up to the infernal Iraq War, it is virtually the only broadcast media outlet in the country where the truth can be heard). But there’s no reason whatsoever to give up on something as significant as the Pacifica 5-station national union just because we’re having some trouble “getting along”. If we’ve “failed” (in some way), then, as Samuel Beckett said, we just have to keep trying and “fail better” over time.

Leo Gold’s contention that Pacifica’s “five radio stations that are very different…” is simply false. Each Pacifica station is committed to serving the Pacifica Foundation’s founding non-profit, non-commercial educational mission and cannot materially deviate from it. Indeed, it’s clear that a network of stations each producing and sharing one or more programs that bear on national issues can better fulfill the Pacifica mission than 5 near or wholly autonomous stations.

Moreover, a small radio network’s national office, such as the one the highly capable Summer Reese runs in Berkeley, can keep the business affairs of a national organization ship-shape better than the local stations have ever been able to do throughout Pacifica’s history. Eg. Pacifica’s national office handled WBAI last FCC broadcast license application because the local station lacked personnel to do so. And the Houston station has been running its transmitter on low power for so long it is jeopardizing its ability to renew its FCC license. Leo Gold’s silence on that important “bread and butter” subject while he has time to pompously pontificate about radically restructuring the entire Pacifica network is telling.

And the idea being floated to alienate all or part of WBAI from the Pacifica Foundation’s union, is (or certainly should be regarded as) a complete non-starter. In 1959 New York philanthropist Louis Schweitzer gave his commercial FM station WBAI to Pacifica (as a charitable gift) because he admired the programming on Pacifica’s Berkeley and Los Angeles stations. He made clear at the time that (i) he wanted WBAI to remain a public broadcasting (ie. non-commercial) station in perpetuity; and (ii) that he wanted it to be run by the Pacifica Foundation (and no one else). The law insists that a charitable donor’s wishes be respected in such circumstances.

In sum, the talk about decentralization and local control is simply the way some involved with Pacifica choose to present their radical (and obtuse) and unpopular desires to dissolve the Pacifica union (ie. network), cannibalize WBAI and distribute the proceeds (from a sale or lease) to the other Pacifica stations. Such a politically and legally impossible agenda only serves to distract Pacifica from its mission to light a candle of reason, civilization and humanity against the darkness of the prevailing “neo-liberal inferno” (in the late great Alexander Cockburn’s phrase). Who benefits?

Eric C. Jacobson
Public Interest Lawyer
Los Angeles, California