Whatever one thinks about Burnstein’s attitude about accountability as an elected representative, the retired lawyer’s objection had no legal basis. The KPFA Local Station Board’s July 11th meeting was scheduled as an open-to-the-public meeting at the municipally-owned North Berkeley Senior Center and thus falls under the limited public forum rule per the First Amendment Center.  (Baca v. Moreno Valley Unified School Dist, Damon v. Ocean Hills Journalism Club, ACLU v. City of Las Vegas).

KPFA’s local station board meetings, like those at LA station KPFK and Houston station KPFT, as well as all national board and national committee meetings are recorded with audio archives available on the Internet. It isn’t clear why the addition of a video recording unnerved Burnstein and his rogue-majority-affiliated Save KPFA faction.

To top off a somewhat anguished week, Save KPFA listener rep Burnstein followed up the long 5-hour board meeting with an email assault on KPFA employee, board staff rep and colleague Frank Sterling, who continued to inquire why KPFA’s “video channel” website page continued to refuse to post a staff-submitted video of the June 18 Berkeley Black Student Union Protest/Memorial event marking the Charleston massacre. Burnstein called the employee a “failure” and questioned his intelligence. Sterling works a 4-hour weekly board operation shift and volunteers 20+ hours a week to coordinate KPFA’s Apprenticeship Program which trains women and people of color in media production in a widely-hailed 18 month internship which has trained much of the Bay Area’s public media talent, including several KQED and KALW employees.

Sterling didn’t take the Save KPFA bait, replying: “I presented my problem to people who have some vested interest in KPFA or Pacifica. It could just be love for the network, or an urge inside to make our world a better place through broadcast media. I ask for any solutions… opinions… ways to move forward. There is a simple question here for you all. Why not these videos? What is the video channel, that the video streaming task force got put on kpfa.org, for? Has anyone gone there to see for themselves what is there? Why is an eight year old video  and an unrelated music video of the band Antemasque at the top of the video page when we have recent and relevant KPFA material that is being denied access? These are the questions… not my competence or my intelligence.. Can anyone give me a good answer to these questions..not just try and insult me?

The full email interaction can be read here.

In other news, executive director John Proffitt has traveled to New York City to visit WBAI. Rumors are flying around that a managerial change might be in the offing, but no concrete information has been made available by press time.

Proffitt has been slowly coming to terms with the depth of Pacifica’s financial straits and has apparently had a hard time meeting basic financial obligations at the national office during his first two months on the job succeeding Save KPFA’s Margy Wlkinson. Every station spring fund drive in May fell at least 20% short of budgeted goals, and Proffitt stated the national office was owed $364K in back network services payments. The network’s only available cash is the quickly dwindling will bequests left to KPFA, which revealed that it had only $400,000 left in its  Mechanics Bank account at July 11th, despite receiving $951K in bequests and $540K in pledges in the last 3 months. The Berkeley station unaccountably canceled its summer fund drive, although its current bank balance will not cover its general operating expenses for two more months.

At Pacifica’s July 9th national board meeting, the board heard that auditor Armanino will not begin the FY 2014 audit (which is already two weeks late to the CA Registry of Charitable Trusts at 9.5 months past the end of the fiscal year) until they receive a full payment of the $65,000 balance remaining from the FY 2013 audit. That audit which was originally quoted at $50,000 in total ended up being the most expensive in Pacifica’s history under now-resigned CFO Raul Salvador. The board agreed unanimously to tap the only current source of cash in the network, the few hundred thousand remaining from KPFA’s million dollars in bequests to pay the auditor the balance due.

In a fascinating exchange, PNB treasurer Brian Edwards-Tiekert, who six years ago went to the press with allegations that Pacifica was “raiding KPFA’s bank accounts”, allegations that were withdrawn a week later, was confronted by Houston listener rep George Reiter who was on the PNB at the time Edwards-Tiekert made the public accusations. Edwards-Tiekert took a position diametrically opposed to his 2009 statements saying: “If management does not grab money from wherever it can around the network to meet the foundation’s obligations, it is not living up to its duty of care”. Apparently to Edwards-Tiekert the important variable is whether it is his own rogue majority  faction that is engaged in the money grabbing in question. (Edwards-Tiekert’s 2009 allegations were false and appeared to be motivated by local station board election campaigning).

To up the ante, the board discussion also featured the following exchange between board vice-chair Tony Norman and chair Lydia Brazon, both members of the 2014 rogue board, regarding accounts restricted by donors. Both are apparently in cognitive dissonance about the June 2014 removal of $30,000 in donor-restricted funds for KPFK’s music studio renovation by IED Wilkinson and CFO Salvador under their watch. The two conclude that any “dips” into restricted funds must be replaced by the end of the fiscal year although they know perfectly well $30,000 in grant funds were transferred to the national office in June of 2014 to pay health care benefits and never replaced, as project manager Maggie LePique informed the board (again) during public comment at the board’s June 2015 in-person meeting in LA.

To complete the “truthiness” trifecta, KPFK national board staff rep Rodrigo Argueta, who declared  the spanish-language program he hosts in LA “doesn’t charge Pacifica one cent” for premiums was actually found to have charged Pacifica 210,200 cents after KPFK’s check register showed 14 checks totaling $2,102 made out to Argueta in the last few years for premiums.

Pacifica’s much-delayed local station board election is scheduled to close candidate registrations and voter eligibility on July 14th. Listeners who wish to vote in the upcoming election need to have a $25 or more payment on record in the period July 14, 2014 to July 14, 2015 and can make online donations until midnight Tuesday local time to gain voter eligibilty. As of press time, only 10 candidates had completed applications for the 72 available local board seats across the country. An extension for candidate filings may be announced, but until it is, potential candidates should assume the current deadline of midnight Tuesday still applies. Details at elections.pacifica.org.

The election supervisor, L.Joy Williams has announced the selection of e-voting vendor Simply Voting to administer electronic balloting for Pacifica for the first time. Simply Voting’s website is simplyvoting.com. Balloting is expected to begin in August or September. Williams also announced plans to spend $51,000 on two mailings to voters to remind them to vote on-line and to provide PINs, which mean the move to electronic voting may not lower costs as much as Pacifica had hoped.

KPFA’s SB77 vaccination censorship controversy shows no sign of abating with program director Laura Prives reproaching two additional KPFA programs Project Censored and The Asian-Pacific Express (APEX) for programs incorporating anti-vaccine-mandate views.  Dorabji’s concerns with arbitrary decisions about producer access to station resources echoes Sterling’s. Prives stated in a June 24th email to APEX producers Robynn Takayama and Tara Dorabji:

As a trusted media institution KPFA’s policy is not to take sides on legislative issues. Presenting a public health issue and leaving out the side of scientific consensus is harmful to KPFA’s reputation and does a disservice to our listeners.

Dorabji responded (snipped for brevity. The full email exchange can be seen here):  I am relieved to hear that your prior email was not an editorial directive. As producers and hosts at KPFA we will not always agree on issues and angles, however having the ability to question government policies is a cornerstone of our role as independent journalists. I am glad that multiple journalists covered the issue of vaccine safety and public health from several perspectives–by doing this we are fulfilling our mission to promote dialogue and offer pluralistic perspectives. In addition, through taking on the tough issue of vaccine safety, we were able to reach more listeners and broaden our digital reach. I did want to follow-up on KPFA’s social media policy. I noticed that the posts for both APEX’s show and Project Censored’s on vaccine safety were removed from KPFA’s Facebook page. Both these posts generated significant dialogue and reach. The posts had reached close to 10,000 combined and generated a lot of feedback (positive and negative). I noticed that  Upfront’s show on vaccine safety was promoted on Facebook and not removed. What is the policy that determines which show/topics on KPFA will be denied access to our Facebook page? I know that these are challenging issues, but they are essential to address in building trust and integrity within our community and fulfilling our mission to deliver quality free speech radio. Thanks in advance for your thoughts on this.

With election season upon us, Pacifica in Exile readers can expect a full helping of campaign slogans, flyers and postcards from the various candidate slates in their signal area. Pacifica in Exile will be collecting real and satirical campaign slogans and providing a gallery of them, to help the network grapple with the structural changes that most observers suggest lie ahead for the troubled governance system. Our first slogan courtesy of the Siegel/Brazon faction is below. Please send yours to [email protected]: either real or spoofs and this publication will feature the funniest ones in future editions.

For today, we posit: ORGANIZATIONAL DARWINISM MATTERS.

To continue on the humorous path, please enjoy this week’s Twit Wit Radio from KPFA-Berkeley.

On a more serious note: some Berkeley listeners, staff and governance members have developed a “pledge” to seek calmer governance. You can read their website here. Oddly, four of the named participants in the talks have not, to-date signed on to the pledge they are credited with creating.

Pacifica in Exile readers may write to the board at [email protected].

To subscribe to this newsletter, please visit our spanking new website at www.pacificainexile.org

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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.