This announcement is running on KPFA encouraging listeners to donate to make up for money withheld by a “quasi-governmental agency.” It does not mention that the money is being held up due to incomplete bookkeeping both at the radio station and its parent, the Pacifica Foundation.
From Richard Uzzell, Pacifica Board of Directors, KPFT Listener Rep. Announced publicly on December 23, 2014
The Pacifica Board of Directors was informed today by IED, Margy Wilkinson of a December 17, 2014 letter (sent almost a week earlier) from California Deputy Attorney General, Julianne Mossler, “for Kamala D. Harris, Attorney General.” This was the first that the Board (as a whole) was informed of this letter the California Attorney General and the action it is taking toward the Pacifica Foundation Radio.
Continue reading California Attorney General To Audit Pacifica
The enclosed sound clip details the CFO report from the Pacifica National Board meeting of 12-18-2014. The report provides details on the stalled 2013 audit, the financial straits of the network and its radio stations and a heated discussion with KPFT listener rep Richard Uzzell about months of promises that the audit would proceed in as soon as June of 2014, although it did not begin until November 15th, ended after less than a week due to the inability to provide audit schedules and now has no scheduled date of completion. Pacifica stations will not be able to get out of suspended status with the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and regain a million dollars in annual funding unless the 2013 and 2014 audits are completed and filed by March 31, 2014.
The enclosed sound clip is from the Pacifica National Board meeting of December 18th 2014 and chronicles a weird interchange where in response to a question from KPFA listener rep Janet Kobren about open hiring practices at KPFA-FM in Berkeley, IED Margy Wilkinson hems and haws and basically admits hiring processes for temporary and casual positions were not open and that should be changed. KPFA staff rep Brian Edwards-Tiekert strangely jumps into the dialogue to aggressively defend the hiring of a temporary producer for his own program “Upfront” only to be reprimanded that the question was not specifically about his own program.
Pacifica’s personnel policy specifies that the nonprofit is an equal opportunity employer that practices affirmative action to increase workplace diversity.
Originally posted December 17, 2014
Berkeley-A listener representative from Houston has resigned from the Pacifica personnel committee in disgust, citing severely flawed hiring practices. Richard Uzzell submitted his letter of resignation, which can be found here. In the letter, he provided two examples. The first statement is that board chair and current interim executive director Margy Wilkinson (who is not on the search/personnel committee) ran separate private ads for the executive director position. She directed the application materials to herself at the national office, instead of to the search committee. The private ads had different deadlines and requested different materials from the applicants than ads run by the personnel committee, which was the only body authorized to collect candidate materials. The second statement was that after the committee developed a survey for candidates to be scored numerically on a list of qualifications for the position, members of the rogue board majority, upset that a favored candidate or candidates had not scored high enough, narrowly passed a motion to include several applications with low scores in the semi-finalist pool, including some not even ranked in the top half of the 25 applications. Continue reading Corruption in Executive Director Hiring Process
Janis Lane-Ewart and the Pacifica National Board,
Although I have a great deal of respect and admiration for the Pacifica Personnel Committee Chair, I must hereby resign from the PNB Personnel Committee. I am unable to be part of a committee that reflects another deeply flawed hiring process. Continue reading Board Member Resigns in Protest of Corrupt Hiring Practices
Public Comment by Carol Wolfley and Robin Collin (KPFA CAB)
*Note: Readers are encouraged to donate to the Pacifica stations during the current set of fund drives, including KPFA. This post is provided here for two reasons
a) To document that the blizzard of Save KPFA propaganda about the Berkeley station being financially stable and in the black, always meeting its fund drive goals and an example for the rest of the network about how to be professional was always deceptive and the station has been living paycheck to paycheck for a very long time, as many UCR and PDGG board members have tried to point out for years and at various times, to ameliorate.
By Lisa Dettmer, KPFA unpaid staff member. Dettmer sent this email to her colleagues at 2:00AM on Monday, December 8, 2014 and consented to having it published here. Dettmer is a producer on KPFA Women’s Magazine.
Last night, I was covering the demonstration around midnight. In response to protestors setting garbage on fire the police got into a line and began pushing the crowd down the street. I was on the sidewalk and trying to explain to them that I was “press” and I was videotaping for KPFA, and instead of allowing me to continue videotaping from the sidewalk where I was not in their way at all, they hit the phone out of my hand and broke my phone and then shoved me and wouldn’t let me get my phone back. When I tried to approach a police car to ask to get my phone back, four armed police jumped out of the car with their guns drawn and told me to get away from their car. They seemed quite out of control generally, which is not new. I managed to get my broken phone back, but have not been able to upload my video coverage of the protest and my encounter with them from my Samsung to my Mac after they smashed the screen. If I am able to tomorrow, I will send the audio to the news department.
While this kind of behavior is not new for the Berkeley Police who have no better record than Oakland or anywhere else, I feel very strongly KPFA should be covering this – and not just from our desks. If Al-Jazeera can cover this from thousands of miles away, surely we can from one mile away.
I really hope others were out there this weekend and have tape and also will be covering this for the fund drive tomorrow. I think this is what is of interest to our audience, and selling premiums on an un-related topic feels quite uncomfortable, given what is happening.
