LISTENER VOICES

Interviews By Gregory Wonderwheel

On Sunday April 30, 2000, I attended the event at the Unitarian Universalist Church in San Francisco titled "Making Speech Free - Building a Nationwide Movement to Support Pacifica's Peace and Justice Mission." The speakers included Dan Coughlin, Laura Flanders, Tomas Moran, Sam Husseini, Aaron Glantz and David Adelson, and listeners may be hear them on the internet at www.freespeech.org

The speakers were eloquent, but I wanted the views of listeners in the audience. My concern has been that listener-sponsored radio has never found an effective way to bring listeners into its radio culture to create what Lew Hill called "the creative tension between broadcaster and audience that constantly reaffirms their mutual relevance." Hill warned that listeners responding "to a special gift offer" does not contribute to that "extremely productive balance of interests and initiatives."

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Janice Heiss

GW: Why did you come here tonight?

Janice Heiss: Because I'm concerned about everything that's happened in the last year. I'm concerned for the future of KPFA which I love.

GW: What is your vision for the future of KPFA?

JH: Well, for local representation, and I would hope for a complete removal of all of the board except for Tomas Moran and a couple of other people who are against the autocratic Mary Frances Berry-Chadwick group of people who have taken over the national board and even discuss the possibility of selling the stations for profit.

GW: Do you feel that the national board that we have today has taken the network away from its mission?

JH: Yes, absolutely, I think in the whole idea of Arbitron ratings. You know I guess my point of view is not too unusual from the very loyal committed people who are outraged as to what has happened over the last year, well ever since Pat Scott. What was your question again?

GW: Just in what way has the national board changed the mission or taken the network away from the mission?

JH: I think that their primary goal is to increase audience share, which is to me a very short-sided point of view that very much jibes with the absolutist economic point of view of the country we live in.

I think it's just a very narrow vision. Their idea, especially really top-down management and a lot of the shotgun arbitrary gag rule type rules, and things that they've done have just been really detrimental to increasing the listenership, if that is what they want.

GW: How do you think we got into this problem?

JH: I think just gradually by corrupt power just sort of somewhat stealthily, somewhat not stealthily. It's been a political education for me in that you really have to stay awake at the wheel in terms of entities that might not have the common good interest in mind taking over gradually. I don't have any inside view, but from an outside listener point of view it seemed like it started back with Pat Scott and that we would have to compete, that we were losing market share. The whole market share mentality started many years ago, and I think people were busy doing their jobs at the station, and listeners like myself could never imagine that such a thing like this could happen, that we weren't very activist in opposing these sometimes subtle and now not very subtle changes and power grabs that happened.

GW: As a listener, what role can you, or listeners as a group, have at the station?

JH: To be active in any way you can, be out on the street, give money, work to form local groups to try to make change to take back our station and for more local participation at the national level definitely.

GW: There's a local station advisory board, do you feel listeners should have a vote on who's on that board?

JH: I'm trying to understand. I can't say, because I'm studying all the different possible ways to go.

GW: Are there any other concerns you have as a listener about how KPFA or Pacifica is run?

JH: Yeah, I mean, I'm concerned, I'm shocked by this situation that we're in and I'm extremely concerned for the future of KPFA. I don't know how I feel about the network right now, I'm very ambivalent. But I guess that's from a local point of view. I'm very concerned about the health and continuation of KPFA.

 

Marston Schltz

GW: And you're a listener of KPFA?

Marston Schultz: Yeah. Mostly I focus on Democracy Now and Flashpoints. I used to listen to the Morning Show also, but I found that it's kind of watered down now. I'm really concerned about what Dan Coughlin said about going to several meetings where Pacifica was discussing all these corporate bias issues, which was kind of startling to me. If you're going to get demands from the government agency giving the funds, you should just cancel the funds. That's my feeling. Don't sell your soul for a couple of million dollars from the government.

GW: Many people feel that when the CPB money was first offered there were no strings attached but then strings became attached.

MS: Right.

GW: Then at that point, instead of saying no thanks to the money, they started responding to the strings.

MS: Yeah, I think as soon as they say you're in violation of the rules, then we should say, "Thank you, we don't want your money." That's what they should have done.

GW: Can you sum up in a way what your vision is for KPFA and the Pacifica network?

MS: Well, the original vision which was not about numbers, it's about content and giving service to the community and not service to the corporate interests.

GW: What is service to the community in the radio field?

MS: Well, basically the other side of the story. What you don't get on the regular news. I like Democracy Now. There I get information that I'm not going to get anywhere else on the radio. And that's a life line. I'd be really upset if we lose it.

GW: What role do you feel the listeners have in trying to fix this or bring Pacifica back to its essential mission?

MS: Well, I don't know. I'm contributing to the suit as much as I can, and I hope that that will succeed. And I wish I could be out on the streets more myself, but I work at my job so I can't.

GW: What do you think about the movement of some listeners trying to get the local station boards to be elected by the listener subscribers?

MS: I think that's an interesting idea. I think the logistics of all of that is really difficult. Its sounds great, and I'd like to see more democracy at the local level, but I also understand that there's the logistics of getting the right people to be the ones that are voting and stuff. And there's this, I know that there's amongst the station they're terrified in a way, because they're used to running the thing the way they want to run it. It's a kind of benevolent, "We're progressive, we know what's good for you. You should understand that what we're doing we're doing for you're benefit." That sort of thing.

GW: How do you feel discussion could be brought back onto the air, more discussion of topics, content?

MS: Well, I suppose the Larry Bensky type of thing. I respect Larry a lot. Sometimes he's a little conservative for me. I have one experience where Larry asked a guy who's a representative of General Motors, "What about the situation where General Motors bought out all the railroads, the commuter trains, and put them out of business?" And he said, "Well I wasn't working for General Motors at the time so I really don't want to comment on it." And then Larry Bensky let that go and went onto something else. That's one of the big issues in my mind about how they did that. I haven't seen much of that discussed. I mean a lot of people know that that's happened, but it really hasn't been highlighted, and I don't think there's been any documentary on NPR or anything about that and I'd love to see that kind of thing exposed. Just that one particular instance I was kind of annoyed that they didn't put him on the spot.

GW: Is there anything else about what you would have for a vision for KPFA or the Pacifica network that you'd like to see?

MS: Oh, I don't know I'm not much of a visionary. Sometimes I think the more you have of a network the less you have of local. As soon as you put someone on five stations at once then there's four jobs gone, four shows gone, and if you go too much in the network thing, I mean, I don't find the network news to be that useful to me over what we were getting locally. But that, I thought, was this idea of going to the corporative attitude. So I guess I'm reactionary, I'd like to go back, you know, five or ten years to the way it was done. And I don't long for, quote, professionalism, you know, the image of the corporate media. It just feels out of place. I like the so called nonprofessional sound. It makes you feel like there are people like you there. I just want to hear the alternative news, that's why I listen. And all the potential for the organizing and stuff that we get or have gotten in KPFA, and it scares the hell out of me what they're doing at the network level.

 

Carolos Kohan

GW: Why did you come here tonight?

Carlos Kohan: Well, I'm a listener-subscriber to KPFA. I've been for many, many years. I think its a vital source of information. I mean, KPFA feeds me like food feeds me. Without it I think we'd be lost in the commercial media. I'm very interested in keeping it alive.

GW: Do you have any concerns about the mission of the Pacifica radio network and KPFA?

CK: At this point I thinks its secondary. My main concern is the attack that the network is under, by what I believe is behind the scenes corporate interests, and the attack that free speech is under all over the country. So that's my first concern. I'm afraid that if we get too much into internal discussions we may debilitate ourselves. I think we need to fight the enemy, get a democratic Pacifica, democratize the national board, and then we can revise our mission if we want to. This is my feeling.

GW: Are you aware that in 1989 the Pacifica national board adopted a motion to make the Houston station, KPFT, a PRI affiliate and that it uses corporate underwriting for some of its programming?

CK: No, I didn't know.

GW: Now that you know, what do you think about that?

CK: Well, with this national board I'm not surprised. And maybe that is showing us the way they want to go with all of the stations.

GW: The director of KPFT, Garland Ganter, is now the national program director, just recently appointed. Does that concern you?

CK: Yes, that would concern me very much. Is that the station that plays country music most of the time?

GW: Yes.

CK: Of course I would be concerned, very much so. One of the things that I would hope this beautiful incipient or very young movement, that has shown us in Seattle and Washington some of its strength, I would hope that one of their aims is also to recover public radio for the public, in other words, not only Pacifica. I guess what I'm trying to say is maybe we as progressives should not attack National Public Radio because that's what conservatives do. What we should attack is their need to get corporate funding. We should push for the government to support National Public Radio the way it used to be, or more, and sever their ties to corporations. And I would like this movement to take on that, to value that. I think it is crucial for a democracy to have independent media otherwise it's dead.

GW: You mentioned democratization of the national board, what's your vision for local listeners participating in the local running of the station?

CK: Well I don't have a clear idea. I'm very flexible as long as the local board is elected among say for instance a base of subscribers, and maybe listeners but that's harder to prove, at least basic subscribers. Anybody say, for instance, that donates more than $20.00 per year, it doesn't have to be a high number, could vote and then have a board that represents this base of listeners, and then from those local boards to select people to the national board. You know, set up a structure that somehow has democracy built in. That would be very important.

GW: Anything else as a listener that you feel, like where do we go from here?

CK: I think I would like the present stations, or at least people that are aware in the present stations, like at KPFA, to talk more about what's going on and to explain how people can, for instance, participate in different activities that are going on. For instance, this lawsuit, I just suggested an idea. I would like them to set up a way to do electronic fund transfer automatically per month so they would have a stream of money that would last until the end of the law suit. Some people here thought that it was a good idea. I would like KPFA to help propagate things like that.

GW: You mean on the air?

CK: On the air, so that we can all fight for democratization of Pacifica. This is a fight for survival for us, the way I see it.

GW: Do you feel that currently KPFA has the opportunities for listeners to discuss these things, a forum on the air?

CK: Probably not enough. I heard today Larry Bensky a full hour, but I may like to hear more in an organized way, maybe two or three hours per week, one in the morning, one in the evening. I think it would be healthy to do that. I know it is jeopardizing the station because Pacifica will get angry, but we have no option. If we don't do anything they'll take over anyway.

 

Tracy Larkins

GW: Now you drove up from Los Angeles for this?

Tracy Larkins: Yes I did.

GW: What do you see as the problems of the Pacifica network? and if you want to focus on KPFK that's OK too.

TL: They are two very different questions. I would say I totally agree with every thing Dan Coughlin had to say tonight. It’s the nature of the privatization process going on around the world and globalization. It’s horrible, and how are we going to organize the other struggles if we don't have Pacifica? On KPFK, we have particularly a problem that's probably not as bad as in Washington at WPFW, but in a sense it's worse, because we have Mark Cooper who's entrenched with, I don't know what we call it, the liberal wing of the Democratic Party or false progressives, and he is a main enforcer of the gag rule.

GW: Do you feel that Pacifica as a network has left its original mission?

TL: Absolutely.

GW: In what way?

TL: Well they've done it. I think obviously at different speeds and different ways at different stations. At KPFK it still appears progressive, but I knew we were in a lot of trouble when, around the war in Yugoslavia last year, there was disinformation that was coming over KPFK about that.

GW: What's your vision for Pacifica Radio?

TL: Completely democratic. I don't know how that should be, given everybody's different ideas, such as whether the listener's should directly elect the Pacifica national board members or the LABs should. So I'm not sure myself how that should be, but I think we definitely need to have recall methods for the General Manager. And for certain programmers, there needs to be accountability. They need to be accountable to the listeners, but they need to be able to operate and not have too much democracy over them, or they wouldn't be able to function. But there needs to be a recall process somehow. What is my vision as a whole for the network? That it would change the world, and that everyone would listen and go "Oh my God, we've been lied to. Hitler never died; Geobbles is still here." It's worse today than it ever was. We're living in the propagandized society. We've been conditioned to believe the opposite of the truth in America.

GW: Did you feel like tonight's event was worthwhile?

TL: Yeah, it was really good. It was worth the drive. I loved to hear that KPFA was democratizing their LAB and that Thomas Moran believes it's so important and that he's developing this mission statement metric for listeners. I've been talking about it in L. A., but there's not enough people, we're not organized well enough to do it. And we have entrenched programmers on KPFK that are protecting their own air time. So we're really up against what I'm considering the progressive ruling class in L. A. who are turning KPFK into their own domain.

GW: Do you think there is any role for a program that allows the listeners to have ungagged input, where listeners are able to talk to each other on the air?

TL: There's no chance we'll get it. I mean Mark Shubb doesn't even do the Report to the Listener any more. People are cut off if they mention Pacifica. They are derided and they're marginalized immediately and taken off.

GW: Any thing more about tonight's events or the mission of Pacifica?

TL: The mission of Pacifica? It's a fine mission, and we ought to have it. We don't, not in L. A. really. I mean there's a guise of it; there's a veil as if it is. But I almost think it's more dangerous that they're calling this progressive radio.

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