Originally posted November 8, 2014
Berkeley-In this past election cycle, one of the few bright spots was the strong support for lifting the minimum wage. At Pacifica Radio however, things are going in the opposite direction as indicated by an ad for an early AM part-time position at KPFT in Houston – paying $10 an hour.
The ad, which was posted as of November 2nd and has since been removed from the kpft.org website, read as follows: “Become a drive time on-air presence and get paid $10/hr to boot!: KPFT has an immediate opening for a morning operations coordinator at its studios near downtown Houston. Successful candidates will have a diverse skillset. Essential functions of the role include engineering/board operating during national and local programming; digital production of announcements and programming via tools like Audacity; providing IT support and maintenance; and taking responsibility for building safety and integrity while on duty. The morning operations coordinator is mostly working alone in a studio with minimal supervision, on a 5:45-9 a.m. shift. Applicants must on a typical day be able to run their own board, edit audio for air, serve as an on-air presence in various capacities, and hit posts with ease. While the role provides primarily a supplementary income ($10/hour), it’s an exciting opportunity for a personable multitasker to participate in media in a relaxed, mission-based environment. Please submit a short resume with relevant experience and contact information. Please, no phone calls”.
KPFT is the only one of the 5 Pacifica radio stations that is non-unionized. In the past, it has been stated explicitly that employees at the non-union station in Texas would be paid comparable wages to employees at the unionized stations, where entry-level wages are currently set at $20-22/hour. The advertisement also runs contrary to the board of directors vote for a network-wide hiring freeze last month.
Members objecting to the board majority’s actions over the past 10 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.
As Pacifica attempts to complete an audit of the fiscal year that ended 14 months ago – the auditing firm took a break in early November after schedules were not completed – a review of last years audit prep work revealed a startling trial balance entry for over $51,000 in outstanding salary advances at Berkeley station KPFA. No other divison had more then $5,000 in advances outstanding. All provided written explanations – except KPFA. Auditing firm Armanino did not correct or remove the $51K amount as erroneous. Inquiries as to whether the funds have been repaid have not been answered.
At a contentious program committee meeting on November 5th (PNB secretary Cerene Roberts and Texas staff rep George Reiter exchanged obscenities), the priority issue was spanish-language broadcasting at the Pacifica stations. The issue has a topsy-turvy history at Pacifica, where Informativo Pacifica was developed in LA as a national 30 minute news program in Spanish, only to have several of the stations refuse to broadcast it, including Berkeley’s KPFA. Attempts at a national must-carry rule for IP were unsuccessful. KPFA Newsmagazine Flashpoints later added a weekly segment Flashpoints en Espanol. All of the stations broadcast various programs on Latin American or Caribbean political affairs, Chicano politics, and music/culture from the Spanish-speaking world, almost always produced by unpaid staffers. A 2011 proposition to mandate 5 hours of bilingual programming at each station during prime-time hours was revoked in 2012. The Pacifica National Board asked a task force in February of 2014 to research spanish-speaking populations in the five Pacifica signal areas and develop a new proposal, but at the 11-5 meeting, it was revealed the task force had never met. The names of the individuals on the task force were not available.
The Tea-Party affiliated call center Comnet in use at both California Pacifica stations has been rolled back at KPFA in response to public uproar after owner Bruce Hough’s work as a right-wing campaign consultant was revealed. The decision from KPFA’s general manager came 30 hours after Pacifica In Exile chronicled his activities in Southern Oregon. The information had been sent privately to Pacifica’s board of directors earlier, but there was no response from the board nor Pacifica management until the information became public. KPFA’s general manager was less than gracious about the decision at the local station board meeting, asking if he was expected to “turn off the transmitter because PG&E was a big corporation”. KPFK is apparently planning to continue to use Comnet, although many in the signal area are bitterly opposed to continuing to use the service. Washington station WPFW also stated it was rolling back the use of corporate call center, Telerep, which is owned by Cox Communications, a big cable operator.
At New York’s WBAI, the uproar continues over the return to the air of former program director Bernard White. White sued Pacifica in 2009 after his termination on the basis of racial discrimination (a claim endorsed by board majority attorney Dan Siegel who referred to the termination as “ethnic cleansing”). The claim was summarily dismissed in court as lacking merit.The court decision can be found here.
None of the five Pacifica stations did particularly well in the last fund drive cycle, although real numbers have been slow to come in. Texas station KPFT came in at $262,000 of a $320,000 goal. In Los Angeles, KPFK booked $750,000 of a $1,000,000 goal. DC’s WPFW was also reported to be short of its goal. At WBAI in New York, fund raising will continue until November 9th, with $365,000 of a $470,000 goal pledged as of November 5th. At KPFA, the last-minute numbers have been inconsistent with the subscriptions department reporting $649,000 in total pledges on a $680,000 goal (station manager Quincy McCoy reported the *total-to-date* as $470,000 on 10-18, which was the same as the subscriptions numbers) and PNB treasurer Brian Edwards-Tiekert insisting the KPFA numbers did not include checks “walked into the station” and “match funds”.
One of the few bright spots in the last national political election, besides the strong support for raises in the minimum wage, happened in the Bay Area, where the Green Party-based Richmond Progressive Alliance staged a stunning victory against Chevron-backed corporate democrats, sweeping the Richmond mayoral race, three outstanding City Council seats and sending former Richmond councilmember Tony Thurmond to Sacramento, upsetting the Democratic party-approved candidate former Obama adminstration official and Google lawyer Elizabeth Echols. Thurmond’s victory was in the face of a vicious smear campaign participated in by prominent Save KPFA-supporters Mal Burnstein and political fundraiser Mal Warwick, which preposterously tried to paint Thurmond as “Big Oil’s” candidate. The RPA was aided by last minute coverage from Amy Goodman’s Democracy Now, which failed to mention KPFA and Pacifica’s role in removing the only drive-time mass media devoted to grassroots organizing in Richmond and Western Contra Costa County, Andres Soto’s edition of the Morning Mix. It was removed from 8am drive time in the months leading up to the election, greatly contributing to the media blackout on the East Bay city’s travails with Chevron-subsidized fake media. The replacement syndicated program from Los Angeles, supposedly put on to increase fund drive totals, caused no increase in KPFA’s fund drive totals which were the same as in October of 2013.
The ever-slimmer majority Siegel/Brazon faction on the national board continues to desperately try to bolster their numbers for the remaining two and a half months of their terms. While it isn’t clear what they need “one more vote” to accomplish, what is clear is they are willing to commit an almost unlimited amount of time to the goal. A failed attempt to remove Houston listener rep Richard Uzzell ate up 5 hours of board meeting time, and a continuing effort to remove LA listener rep Kim Kaufman has already taken 3 hours and is scheduled to resume on December 7th. The board spent more than an hour trying to kick off DC listener representative Luzette King for lack of attendance, apparently forgetting they had tabled King’s last request for an excused absence.
The concern may be Houston director Hank Lamb’s motion to remove unelected chair Wilkinson from her position as chair of the board. If Wilkinson is prevented from voting on her own removal, the motion is likely to pass on an 11-10 vote. The motion has never been heard and despite having been proposed on July 16th is now placed at the bottom of the 7th page of the national board agenda.
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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.