After meeting for all of 8 minutes to conclude they had no budgets, no update, and nothing they could think of to do, Pacifica’s national finance committee adjourned their meeting. Continue reading National Finance Committee Runs For The Hills
Tag Archives: pacifica
Grievances To Make Your Head Spin
Berkeley -“There have been so many grievances filed it will make your head spin” were the words of one of KPFK-FM’s two SAG-AFTRA union stewards on Friday September 4th, a week after the LA entertainment union stated it was taking Pacifica Radio into arbitration alleging union-busting and contract violations. The handling of staff reductions has been an unmitigated disaster, with laid off employees receiving notices days late with incorrect job titles on them, Pacifica not applying for promised workshare benefits until one day before all employees were shifted to half-time, and employer-provided cell phones shut off this week with no notification. Continue reading Grievances To Make Your Head Spin
Frontiers Mag: KPFK Airs Homophobic Rant As The Station Faces Financial Failure
September 2, 2015 – by Karen Ocamb
Since 1959, KPFK, the Pacifica radio station in Los Angeles, has broadcast a wide range of liberal and hard-left-leaning programming under the rubric of multiculturalism. KPFK, for instance, airs the only LGBT-specific broadcast in the Greater L.A. area—IMRU, produced by award-winning out journalist Steve Pride.
But constant rebellion doesn’t necessarily entail respect among the programmers and community board members of the commercial-free, listener-sponsored station, so Pride created a Hate Speech Prevention policy. It took seven months to pass, but the interim policy was in effect on Aug. 15-16 when KPFK aired an unchallenged homophobic rant in which a psychiatrist compared homosexuality to bestiality, among other offensive comments. Continue reading Frontiers Mag: KPFK Airs Homophobic Rant As The Station Faces Financial Failure
Audit Information Was A Lie? Paid, But Not Started
Update 8/26/2015:
Thanks to some detective work, there is an update of sorts on the audit situation.
The payment pulled from KPFA’s bequest fund in July was made to Armanino in the amount of $45,000. Although Pacifica’s lead auditor at Armanino Grant Lam apparently is unaware, Armanino cleared the check.
However the audit has not started. The statement by Grant Lam that no work has been done on the 2014 audit despite it being 60 days past the deadline for both CPB and the Registry of Charitable Trusts at the CA AG Office is correct.
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Pacifica’s fiscal 2014 audit (for the period 10-1-2013 to 9-30-2014) was due to the State of California Registry of Charitable Trusts (which is currently investigating Pacifica for failure to comply with charitable laws) and to the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (which suspended Pacifica from eligible status for public media funding in June of 2014) was revealed on Tuesday night to have been neither paid for nor started, 11 months after the close of the fiscal year and 56 days after the legal deadline for submission to the State.
Continue reading Audit Information Was A Lie? Paid, But Not Started
KPFK Bookkeeping Problems i.e. Embezzlement
This sound clip comes from an August 17th KPFK staff meeting and contains a description of the bookkeeping problems at KPFK, including embezzlement and staff reactions to the news.
Two Credit Cards Are Better Than One
Berkeley -The severe financial distress at KPFK-FM, which resulted on Monday in an announcement by Margy Wilkinson-appointed general manager Leslie Radford of the immediate reduction of all KPFK employees to 50% work schedules and the layoff of three employees, has been accompanied by growing evidence of a year and a half of financial mismanagement of the station, Pacifica’s highest earner as recently as 2013. KPFK abruptly fired its second consecutive temporary business manager after finding out about monthly checks issued to an outside person by the business manager, along with unauthorized cash advances never paid back. The business manager was personally hired and trained by former CFO Raul Salvador to “fix” the accounting mess at KPFK in the fall of 2014, and per a motion passed by the national board in 2014, reported directly to Salvador rather than the station’s general manager. Continue reading Two Credit Cards Are Better Than One
Forget About That Election Thing
Berkeley – On Thursday night, Pacifica’s election supervisor announced that despite soliciting over 100 local board candidates across the country, the Pacifica Foundation would not be mailing ballots to its 55,000 members on August 29th to replace 72 local and national board members squatting in their seats for the 20th month past the expiration of their elected terms. The reason given: an inability to pay the approximately $50,000 printing and postage bill. Continue reading Forget About That Election Thing
Dead Man Endorses Save KPFA by Daniel Borgstrom
This article was published by the author on their blog at: http://danielborgstrom.blogspot.com/2015/08/dead-man-endorses-savekpfa.html
A similar article was published by Diana Bohn at http://www.unitedforcommunityradio.org/?p=3161
After these articles were published and a third problematic endorser (deceased two and a half years ago) was observed, the “endorsers” page at savekpfa.org was hidden.
Among SaveKPFA’s most distinguished endorsers is Walter Johnson. According to an obituary in the SF Chronicle, the late Mr. Johnson was for many years the Secretary-Treasurer of the San Francisco Labor Council. He died on January 12, 2012. Obituaries in several newspapers, and also the Labor Council’s website, confirm that reports of his death were not exaggerated. The man is dead. He’s been dead for over two and a half years. Continue reading Dead Man Endorses Save KPFA by Daniel Borgstrom
August 15th Homophobia Special on KPFK
Among other questionable Radford programming decisions at KPFK contributing to plummeting fund drive results, the new manager put the struggling pledge drive on a “break” this weekend to air a 30-hour Afrikan Mental Liberation Marathon, an independently produced dawn to dusk black nationalist-oriented program . The program has disturbed queer-identified listeners with aggressively homophobic positions presented with little to no counterpoint.
A KPFK staffer provided this clip of an interview with female psychiatrist Frances Cress Welsing in which she compares queer sex to human-dog mating, states that male semen is a dietary protein like sweet potatoes and greens, and that homosexuality in Ancient Greece was caused by shock at the larger sizes of African genitals – among other bizarre statements deeply disrespectful towards LBGT people. You can hear for yourself here.
Majority on Pacifica Board Refuse To Discuss Secret Corporation to Acquire KPFA License
Berkeley – In a shameful display, the majority on the Pacifica National Board refused to discuss the public matter of the 2013 secret incorporation of the KPFA Foundation by Margy Wilkinson and Dan Siegel for the purpose of acquiring KPFA’s broadcast license. Continue reading Majority on Pacifica Board Refuse To Discuss Secret Corporation to Acquire KPFA License