[Nettime-bold] <nettime> Smoking Gun on Government-Directed Political Censorship at Pacifica

[t byfield <tbyfield@panix.com>]

----- Forwarded 

Date: Tue, 27 Mar 2001 13:44:56 -0500
To: cpsr-activists@cpsr.org
From: Hans Klein <hans.klein@pubpolicy.gatech.edu>
Subject: fwd: Smoking Gun on Government-Directed Political Censorship
  at Pacifica 

This is a pretty remarkable bit of news about content control in another
medium.

Hans

>From: "Lyn Gerry" <redlyn@loop.com>
>Date: Tue, 27 Mar 2001 13:18:29 -0500
>Subject: Smoking Gun on Government-Directed Political Censorship at Pacifica 
>
>"I was also told by the executive director to tone down the news 
>coverage. CPB wanted me to tone down the news coverage, to be 
>more "balanced" as they put it. Especially this was at the time of 
>the war against Yugoslavia, and they didn't want to hear, as the 
>present management of Pacifica used to tell me, "about 'our boys' 
>dropping bombs and killing babies in Iraq. We don't want to hear 
>about that on our airwaves.  We don't want to hear about the police 
>brutality."  
>
> - Former Pacifica News Director Dan Coughlin speaking in 
>Berkeley, CA 3/24/01 streaming video of this talk at 
>http://www.brightpathvideo.com
>
>===============
>
>Dear All,
>
>Below is a transcript of a presentation given last weekend by 
>former Pacifica Network News director Dan Coughlin in Berkeley, 
>CA. This is one of the most important pieces of testimomy I have 
>come across in the six years, that proves conclusively that 
>Pacifica, as well as community and public radio in general, are the 
>targets of a government operation to silence critical journalism.
>
>I urge you to read this and to distribute this as widely as possible, 
>to every activist, and especially every donor to Pacifica radio. 
>
>Lyn
>
>--------------------------------
>
>I want to thank the organizers of this afternoon, friends of Free 
>Speech radio, of course Dennis Bernstein, Barbara Lubin, Lauren 
>Coodley and Robbie Osman, who picked us up from the airport a 
>short while ago.  
>
>I'm really pleased to be here today, especially after last night in 
>Los Angeles. Amy, Juan, Bernard and I got into LA yesterday 
>afternoon and we right to the First Baptist Church in downtown Los 
>Angeles. And it was a cavernous hall, a huge place, with balconies 
>up on the right and the left. And Amy and I and one of the 
>organizers, we just started putting red tape on the chairs in the 
>back, to seal off the chairs so that all the people who would come 
>would fill up the front, and at least it would look a little filled. We 
>were very worried that nobody...that maybe three, four hundred 
>people might show up but that the hall would look empty. And we 
>were stunned when, about 7 o'clock somebody rushed into the 
>reception and said, "Please, please, we need volunteers at the 
>door. There's hundreds of people coming in!"  
>
>And last night was the biggest meeting in the recent Pacifica crisis 
>of the last two years. 1200 people showed up and packed the 
>meeting and stayed until 11:30 last night. [cheers and applause]  
>
>Dennis mentioned a very important word: silence. And that's what 
>Verna Avery-Brown mentioned last year at a speech in Los 
>Angeles, when we were in California together. And, she asked 
>listeners, and reminded listeners, that it wasn't so much what you 
>hear on the radio, but what you don't hear.  
>
>That's also what Amy teaches us as well, which is part of her 
>practice as a journalist, which is to go where the silence is. And 
>what Mark Schubb, and Marc Cooper, and Pacifica Radio 
>executives, Pacifica Radio lawyers, PNN News staff tried to do over 
>the last several weeks was to silence that event in Los Angeles. 
>They worked overtime pressuring men and women of good will who 
>were coming for a discussion on a national and international 
>debate, to pressure them to withdraw from the event. Sadly, some 
>people did withdraw.  
>
>Pacifica had their hired gun anti-union attorney on the phone for five 
>hours on Thursday night pressuring AFTRA to tell Amy not to 
>announce the event on Democracy Now! on the air. This is what 
>listener money is going to, to gag us. They sent down, last night, 
>to LA, two people from PNN to address, to come in, to hand out 
>leaflets denouncing our campaign and our struggles for a free radio 
>network. They flew down from San Francisco, the Pacifica News 
>Director and a Pacifica reporter.  
>
>After spending two weeks trying to gag the meeting, they had the 
>audacity to show up and demand a place to speak. Same with 
>Mark Schubb. We said, " yes, we're not afraid of what you have to 
>say. Bring them up onto the platform!" [cheers]  
>
>And they came up and they had their piece. And they had their 
>piece. And we heard from them, and we heard from Juan, we heard 
>from Amy and we heard from Bernard. We heard from brothers and 
>sisters on strike in LA, and we had a great meeting and we were 
>energized and mobilized to fight for our radio network that belongs 
>to the listeners, belongs to the people of this country and this world 
>who are engaged in a struggle to build a better society so that we 
>can live without war, racism and poverty,  
>
>[cheers and applause]  
>
>I'm particularly pleased to be here with Dennis for this event for 
>Flashpoints, because Flashpoints is the kind of journalism that 
>we've practiced for many years at Pacifica, the kind of journalism 
>that is under severe attack. Wake Up Call, the morning show in 
>New York, hosted by Bernard White and Amy Goodman, which 
>you will hear a little bit about, has been purged.  
>
>Dozens, I would say about fifteen people participated in that 
>program over the course of the week. They've all been fired and 
>banned, including Robert Knight, including Amy Goodman and 
>including Bernard White. They've been subjected to a scurrilous 
>and vicious campaign of defamation on the air, where for instance 
>Amy is openly called: a "racist", a "liar", "unprofessional",  
>"responsible for the firing of Bernard and Sharan", a "bitch." And 
>that her contribution to Pacifica is "defecation."  This is the subject 
>of discourse in the newspapers in New York, that she "vomits" on 
>the air. And this is the kind of statements that Pacifica 
>management, that supposedly wants to "professionalize the 
>network, is busy making.  
>
>Because what is in fact happening, as we know, as we've 
>experienced here in KPFA, as we've experienced in PNN, as we've 
>experienced at Democracy Now!, as we've experienced at WBAI, is 
>nothing but a political purge targeting the most successful, the 
>most relevant, and the most politicized programmers, producers 
>and activists in the network. And that is what is happening.  
>
>So we have to understand that this "debate" about audience 
>building, and about diversity has nothing to do with reality in the 
>network, as we know here at KPFA. The two, obviously the two 
>most successful radio stations in the network, KPFA and WBAI, 
>are the ones that are being attacked and destroyed. Because this 
>Pacifica management, this Pacifica management can only do one 
>thing. And that is to go to war against us. That's all they know how 
>to do. There's not been one programming initiative over the past few 
>years. There's not been one administrative initiative of any kind. 
>The organization is in complete disarray.  
>
>We were just down in KPFK. They don't have a news director. They 
>don't have a program director, they don't have a development 
>director because they keep power to themselves and they can't 
>share it because people don't agree with them. And this is what's 
>happening to the network; it's being destroyed and a political purge 
>is happening.  
>
>And this is happening for a number of different reasons, and one of 
>the reasons that I want to touch on this afternoon, briefly, is to tell 
>you a little story about my tenure as news director. And I was 
>news director during the height of the KPFA crisis and I thank the 
>hundreds of people who called me during that time to inform me 
>about what was going on. [audience laughter] And send me e-
>mails, as Lynn Chadwick and the Pacifica Board used to talk 
>about, used to refer to it as the "great Northern California e-mail 
>machine." [audience laughter] Which is absolutely true. I still have 
>the e-mails.  
>
>A couple of things that happened which are pretty interesting. I 
>think one was in June, end of June in '99, after a Pacifica Board 
>meeting. And Lynn Chadwick came to me, and she said, "Oh, 
>Dan, it's really great, we're meeting, Mary and I are meeting with 
>Kevin Close."  
>
>And I thought, wow, that's interesting, you're having lunch with 
>Kevin Close. Kevin Close is the boss of National Public Radio. And 
>he comes from Voice of America, from Radio Free Europe in fact. 
>He was responsible for...he was a journalist with the Washington 
>Post, went over to Radio Free Europe, was responsible for the shift 
>of Radio Free Europe from Munich to Prague, part of the eastward 
>expansion of NATO and the eastward expansion really, of US 
>imperialism. And he, from Radio Free Europe, became head of 
>NPR. And they were meeting with him to discuss the KPFA crisis.  
>
>A little while later, Lynn then said to me, "Well, we met with "Uncle 
>Bob," as she used to call Bob Coonrod, the head of CPB. And Bob 
>Coonrod also comes from VOA, and he was in charge of things like 
>Radio Marti. And she said to me, "Dan, you know it was really 
>interesting...we had this meeting with Uncle Bob, and you know 
>what? He promised to give us some money to see us through the 
>KPFA thing." (To defeat the KPFA struggle) And she said, "You 
>know, all these years we've been asking CPB for money and they 
>say they never have any. And here you are, now, they're ready to 
>give us money!"  
>
>And whether this is true or not, whether CPB in fact ended up 
>giving money to Pacifica, fact is that Bob Coonrod, according to 
>Lynn, told her that and she interpreted that obviously as political 
>support.  
>
>I was also told by the executive director to tone down the news 
>coverage. CPB wanted me to tone down the news coverage, to be 
>more "balanced" as they put it. Especially this was at the time of 
>the war against Yugoslavia, and they didn't want to hear, as the 
>present management of Pacifica used to tell me, "about 'our boys' 
>dropping bombs and killing babies in Iraq. We don't want to hear 
>about that on our airwaves.  We don't want to hear about the police 
>brutality."  
>
>Whenever we used to do a piece on Mumia Abu Jamal, they'd joke, 
>" Oh Dan why don't you just get a, and Amy, why don't you guys 
>get a direct ISDN line to Mumia's cell. Wouldn't that be easier for 
>you?"  The belittling, the pressure, the demands, the repression, 
>about what we're covering and why at Pacifica National 
>Programming is very serious and this is why we have to take 
>Dennis' words very seriously. That what is happening here is 
>political repression in the network. And we, many of us who have 
>been in the network for several years, feel this quite directly. And 
>it's not hidden. It's told to us openly.  
>
>We are faced with a drastic situation in Pacifica. It is the eleventh 
>hour. We have seen the KPFA crisis, we have seen the crisis at 
>PNN. And by the way, let me say just one thing about the crisis at 
>PNN since I was the National News director. The stringer's strike 
>has been one of the most important struggles that has occurred in 
>the Pacifica battles over the last two years. We've seem more than 
>40 stringers from around the world stop their work, organize 
>themselves, and refuse to contribute to PNN until editorial integrity 
>and journalistic integrity is respected.  
>
>Stringers...[applause] And they've put out a newscast to 42 
>community radio stations cross the country every week. It's a 
>remarkable feat. And they spread the struggle, and they circulated 
>the struggle all across the country. And so wherever you go now to 
>talk about Pacifica, people know about it, because they hear it on 
>that Free Speech Radio newscast.  
>
>But stringers are notoriously difficult to organize. Stringers...we've 
>all been stringers, many of us...we're independent, we're fierce, 
>we're our own minds. Some of us speak many different languages. 
>We go seek the truth in Indonesia, or in Nigeria, or wherever the 
>struggle is, we go and take a look. Stringers have been so 
>independent that even the CIA couldn't organize stringers in the in 
>the 1950's. [Audience laughter]  
>
>You know, you read about it in Graham Greene novels. You 
>couldn't organize stringers. They hated stringers. Stringers, these 
>stringers, came under attack by PNN news staff, by the AFTRA 
>unit of Pacifica. "Oh, you're striking against a real union and you 
>guys don't know what you're doing. We're the unionized workers."  
>
>But stringers, in fact...the term "stringers" comes from a string. 
>Where journalists, news reporters used to string together their 
>news reports for a telegraph wire, and that would determine how 
>much pay they would get. And that was based on printers. 
>Because printers, to see how much type you used to lay out, 
>would take a facsimile of the type they print out and put it up on a 
>string, and then as many pages as you collected, you would 
>measure the width and that's what you would be paid, along with 
>some kind of piece rate.  
>
>And it's very interesting because the printers have always been at 
>the forefront of free speech, going back to the Gutenberg bible in 
>the 15th Century and the struggle against ecclesiastical authority, 
>the struggle against dictatorships, against colonialism. Ben 
>Franklin was a printer. So, here we have a struggle for free speech 
>that is rooted in trade unionism, remember printers were the first 
>trade unionists, and in free speech. And they are routinely derided 
>by Pacifica management, when they represent the most deeply 
>rooted sentiments in our society and in the world. And that is the 
>struggle for free speech and we should support, continue our 
>support, we should applaud Friends of Free Speech Radio for 
>supporting the stringers' strike, and that noble fight for free speech. 
> 
>
>[Applause]  
>
>But as I was saying, we have a drastic situation at Pacifica. KPFA, 
>PNN, Democracy Now!, and now this horrific, horrific coup at WBAI 
>involving armed guards, firings and bannings, new surveillance 
>equipment being put in, the use of the NYPD, arrests, gag orders - 
>the usual story. And we have to sit down and really think about 
>what we're doing as a movement, and how we're going to win this 
>struggle, because we can't keep going around putting out these 
>fires.  
>
>They go from one place to the next place. And, know they're going 
>to come back to KPFA. It's only a matter of time. And they're going 
>to be much more clever about how they do it, just how they were 
>clever about what happened at WBAI by doing an internal palace 
>coup, which is what they did at PNN.  We have to figure out a 
>strategy that's going to defeat these people. And we think, at the 
>Pacifica Campaign, that our strategy is simple and it'll be effective. 
>And, it's based on one simple goal: that the Pacifica Board, the 
>corporate clique that is now in charge of the Pacifica Board, has to 
>resign now. [cheers] They have to resign now!  
>
>And we're going to remind them of that. And we want to remind 
>them of that in pickets at their homes, talking to their business 
>partners, putting pressure on them. And of course in a non-violent, 
>anti-racist, anti-sexist way. We're totally clear about that, even 
>though Pacifica labels...claims that we're racist, violent and sexist, 
>as they put in their press releases. But want to turn up the heat 
>against the individual board members.  
>
>Groups around the country are adopting a Board member. 
>[applause and laughter from audience] And we would like to see, in 
>San Francisco Bay Area, [raucous laughter from audience] there's 
>one person I think in the Bay Area you can perhaps persuade, 
>persuade, that she should resign now. She has abrogated the trust 
>placed in her as a steward of this great treasure, the Pacifica Radio 
>network and she needs to resign now.  
>
>The second aspect, and this I don't need to tell you about, you 
>know how to do that...I didn't say anybody, but I heard from the 
>crowd, they were saying "Carolyn Van Putten." And she has 
>proved to be a very negative force on the Board. She has supported 
>the Christmas Coup at WBAI, supported, the firings and bannings 
>of workers around the system, supported the gagging of free 
>speech and she needs to resign. She needs to take responsibility. 
>It's a simple thing. It's not complicated. Anybody looking at what's 
>happening in the network can realize the chaos and 
>mismanagement that exists! These people have to take 
>responsibility for their actions, which they singularly refuse to do. 
>It's unbelievable! They need to resign now!  
>
>It's a simple issue. But we need to maybe help them to come to 
>that conclusion. But the way that we can do that, apart from 
>pressuring them and lobbying them, is, we do have to turn up the 
>heat against them individually, but we have to cut off the water. We 
>have to cut off the water, we have to stop the funds from going into 
>Pacifica, because they, every three months, [applause] every three 
>months they get three more million dollars. And they come back to 
>us to USE IT TO KILL US!  
>
>To fire us at seven in the morning and to drag us out of bed 
>and to tell us we've been fired. It's got to stop! And the way 
>to make it stop is to hold them accountable for the money 
>that they're spending. And it is something that listeners can 
>do. All of us can do it.
>
>It's a giant national referendum. We can all participate in it. If 
>the Board doesn't like the boycott, then fine, hold a national 
>vote of the listeners. But let's put it to the vote! [applause]
>
>But in the meantime, let's cut off the water to this Pacifica 
>Board so they can't continue these policies. I'm outta here. 
>Thanks you very much. Please go to the website of the 
>Pacifica campaign, pacificacampaign.org, and cut off the 
>heat and cut off the water.
>
>[sustained clapping, cheering from audience]
>
>________________________
>http://www.radio4all.org
>http://www.radio4all.org/freepacifica
>
>Public PGP Block: http://www.radio4all.org/pgp/
>

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