Verna Avery Brown Speaks

From the KPFA Evening News 1/19/00

 

For the life of me I really couldn’t understand why my colleagues at PNN, with the exception of Dan Coughlin, sanctioned the news being censored. [They] not only sanctioned it but condoned it, and encouraged it. The one story that we did [on the crisis] was actually edited out of some of the Pacifica stations, WPFW and I believe KPFK edited that story out of our newscast as if it never even existed. I was just outraged that that could happen at a network that was originally founded to stand up for freedom of the press and here we were, some of us, exercising censorship against the story. It was time for us to walk the walk that we had been talking and not everybody was prepared to do that. I saw the enemy and the enemy was us.

There was a tendency to dismiss what I considered to be legitimate news stories as "not real news" and there was a real concern that we not be "knee jerk liberals." That was very troubling. The fact that not only was Dan, who I considered to be a very reasonable journalist, that had good sound news judgement, being ousted unfairly for having aired a thirty second voicer on the crisis at KPFA [and for revealing] the fact that some thirteen affiliates - Pacifica affiliates - had decided not to air Pacifica’s programming -- that that was the basis of Dan’s ousting and then to put in his place Mark Bevis was just extremely troubling to me. I could give specifics or generalities but the bottom line is that I think the current team at PNN is probably the least progressive news team in the history of the PNN-- in the history of the network. At the end of the day I chose not to be a part of that. The opportunities for really independent news are just shrinking right before our very eyes. So it’s important, it’s imperative, that the listeners who want to maintain progressive coverage be aggressive and assertive about making sure that Pacifica is loyal to the mandates that Lewis Hill established back in 1949. I mean Lew Hill was a maverick and throughout -- for over a half a century, that maverick spirit has really saturated Pacifica and Pacifica’s stations and the listeners as well. I’m really saddened that at this point in the history of Pacifica that that spirit is really starting to wane in ranks of upper management.

Rob Robinson --

Verna was a reporter who effectively became the voice of Pacifica to millions all over the country. Verna’s eleven years at Pacifica were ample proof, if any was needed, of her loyalty and commitment to this organization. But I think what’s interesting about Verna’s voice was her compassion and creativity. She was the only reportorial voice at PNN that I could rely on to speak up for affirmative action -- about things like Gov. Wilson’s attacks on the ??-- really our only voice against -- raised against daily stream of ?? and hatred against everyday people in America. Her’s was in fact a voice of humor and warmth. To my knowledge Verna was the only African American anchor in public radio. After watching the mismanagement of successive Pacifica Boards and administrations create havoc at its local stations, one of the reasons that I personally agreed to come on the governing board was to become a voice for policies urging the network to keep and attract creative, competent, compassionate and outspoken staff just like Verna Avery Brown. It’s my personal belief that Verna resigned because she had no choice because she feared that this board would sustain Dan Coughlin’s adversarial reassignment and that she could not do her job under those conditions I think that this is a tragedy and a shame. Pacifica says that it is committed to diversity. In my view the best guarantor of diversity in the workplace is to create a workplace in which the qualities of creativity, competence and compassion as well as outspokenness have the highest value.

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