Originally posted October 12, 2014
Berkeley-Pacifica narrowly acquired FCC permission to engage in fundraising for an outside organization – 4 days after doing it – and by accident. After happening to listen to an edition of the Sojourner Truth program on KPFK-FM in Los Angeles last weekend promising 1/2 the pledges raised to a health charity for Ebola relief in West Africa, former PNB treasurer Tracy Rosenberg sent a note to Pacifica’s FCC lawyer giving him a heads-up on the third-party fundraising and asking him to make sure KPFK would not be fined. The attorney hand-delivered a notification to the Federal Communications Commission two days later and received permission based on the relevant facts presented in his written request.
Unfortunately, the relevant facts turned out to be irrelevant, neglecting to mention the shows would also be rebroadcast on WBAI in New York and WPFW in Washington DC (affecting different licenses), and specifying two particular time slots that would run the appeals in LA, although neither one did and four other time slots did instead. All documentation, including the request sent in, the email to Pacifica’s FCC attorney, and broadcast archives can be found here.
Third-party fundraising (raising funds on-air for another organization) is forbidden for non-commercial radio stations without a waiver from the FCC. There has been some discussion about removing the prohibition, and occasionally the FCC has issued a blanket waiver after a natural disaster (as happened after Hurricane Katrina), but no blanket waiver is curently in effect for the Ebola crisis.
The intent of unelected chair/IED Margy Wilkinson appears to have been to proceed without FCC notification or permission, as Pacifica’s FCC attorney was neither notified nor consulted and the programs ran on KPFK on October 3rd, 4th and 5th. Notification was sent on October 7th, following Rosenberg’s email on October 5th. Although Wilkinson received a copy of the FCC notification which referenced only KPFK’s license, rebroadcasts in NY and DC commenced on October 9th, as well as one in LA at 5pm on October 9th in a broadcast slot not mentioned in the request, which stated LA rebroadcasts would occur on Saturday afternoon in spots reserved for Spot Light Africa and Radio Afrodicea. In fact, the third-party fundraising programs were rebroadcast on KPFK in spots reserved for Background Briefing, The Insighters, Hutchinson Report and Voices From the Frontline.
Pacifica could have collected more than 50 infractions by the end of the fund drive period. The rogue majority will not hire a qualified interim executive director, relying on an untrained retired volunteer with no experience. Resumes were submitted months ago by at least two individuals with decades of experience running radio stations.
The recipient of the relief funds is Partners In Health, an organization co-founded by Jim Yong Kim, the current president of the World Bank, which along with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) has been the target of worldwide anti-globalization protests for the last 15 years. Liberian partner organization Last Mile Health has strong ties to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and its CEO is the Global Health Advisor for the Clinton Global Initiative.
Members objecting to the board majority’s actions over the past nine months can sign a petition here.
A pending complaint to the CA Attorney General Registry of Charitable Trusts by 8 former board members can be found here (in a slightly updated version). The AG is responsible for California charitable compliance. Pacifica members can send a note to the AG here.
WBAI fell off the air for an hour and a half one evening this week. No explanation was provided. The station’s transmitter and antenna, like the one in Texas (which is on its 5th consecutive 6-month authorization to run at 1/2 power which expires in 5 weeks) is aging, and in need of replacement.
Meanwhile, the witch hunts continue at the local station boards, which increasingly resemble colonial Salem. Last month, LA’s local board spent over an hour unexcusing absences from a meeting which did not make quorum (and thus never happened) and next month it plans to convene a trial for its former treasurer Kim Kaufman on unstated charges. Houston’s local board convened two unsuccessful trials in the last year, failing on both occasions to secure enough votes to boot various members off the board. KPFA’s 2012 witch hunt was stopped by the Alameda Superior Court after documented balloting irregularities.
The controversial corporate telephone answering service, a necessity in NY due to lack of phone equipment, but recently introduced at both California stations, has been unpopular with the listening community. The calls begin with a notification that the call is to be recorded, which is not a hit with privacy advocates, since the calls contain names, addresses and credit card info. The call center is sending on comments by donors, but the comments are being edited as there have already been reports of programmers being told of comments left by listeners with the call center which were not forwarded on. The deleted comments appear to have been critical of the call center service.
The call center process is also wreaking havoc with keeping track of fund drive receipts, as all of the programs that are simulcast in Berkeley and Los Angeles are having their statewide pledges routed through KPFA’s 1-800-439-5732 phone number. LA interim GM Zuberi Fields could not provide fund drive dailies to his staff and board because the numbers had to be “reconciled” with Berkeley, and LA’s audience is being jerked back and forth between the two different telephone numbers for pledging 5 times between 5am and noon each weekday. LA-originated program Uprising is also directing all of its pledges to the Berkeley phone number rather than LA’s phone number and is broadcasting Berkeley’s call-in number on the air in Los Angeles.
The corporate call center is adding over $120,000 (and possibly much more) to fund drive costs and driving up the cost of doing business at both stations, which have both proposed laying off staff in 2015. The network continues to protest that it does not have the money to pay a qualified executive director nor to hold an election for the local boards, even as it voluntarily adds new expenses by replacing volunteer pledge rooms with the .90/minute call center service.
In Berkeley, similiarly strange resource allocations are being made, with the station’s flagship investigative reporting magazine Flashpoints losing 22.5% percent of its union staffing in order to add the Reuters-Thomson corporate news wire copy service, a second wire copy subscription as the station already subscribes to the Associated Press. While Flashpoints provides original international coverage from independent correspondents, most noticeably from Palestine and the Middle East but also from Latin America and the Carribean (the program has a 15 minute weekly Flashpoints in Espanol edition), KPFA’s evening news relies for international coverage on cutting and pasting content received from other sources acquired for it, previously Free Speech Radio News, Al-Jazeera English, and Feature Story News, as well as the Associated Press wire. In the last full fund drive report, Flashpoints raised 75% more funds than Evening News program that follows it, with 1/2 the staffing level.
The network’s 2003 bylaws, have proven to be difficult to navigate, and nowhere more so than in the process to change or amend them. An earlier attempt this year was botched with the board putting forward 12 amendments and then voting down 11 of them. The sole surviving amendment merely allowed a second bylaws amendment process in the calender year and even that has now been botched, as the KPFA local station board, while trying to approve the amendment failed to adjourn its local station board meeting and convene a meeting of the delegates, a parliamentary procedure necessary as otherwise it is akin to suddenly announcing during a meeting of a personnel committee that it is now a programs committee i.e. doing the business of a different body that needs to convene and call to order its own meeting. Any bylaws amendments based on a bad bylaw amendment would likely not stand up if someone challenged them in court.
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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.