Pacifica and the Internet

On Tuesday night PBS's POV aired a fascinating hour long documentary on the listener sponsored radio network called Pacifica, focusing on the first affiliate station, KPFA, founded in 1950 in California's Bay Area.

It was strong on the history of the station but was somewhat weak on the current crisis at the station. In a nutshell, the current Pacifica board, run by a high level official in the Clinton administration, is trying to purge the station of leftwing voices and convert it into something more like NPR, the bland public radio network that relies mostly on corporate and government handouts rather than listener subscriptions. NPR has consistently given propaganda support for imperialist interventions overseas by systematically excluding voices like Michael Parenti's or Noam Chomsky's.

KPFA was launched by radio journalist Lew Hill back as an attempt to save the world from nuclear destruction. Hill was a pacifist and had been confined to a prison camp in rural California during WWII for refusing to serve in the military. I should mention, by the way, that the role of the CP can sometimes be exaggerated. During the 1930s and 40s there were many, many radicals who identified with earlier radical traditions in the United States, in Hill's case a kind of transcendentalism associated with figures like Thoreau.

Appalled by the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and the escalating arms race that shortly ensued, Hill came to the conclusion that a humane voice committed to peace and social justice had to be heard. In order to make sure that it be kept free of corporate and warmaking influences, it would have to rely exclusively on listener contributions. He decided that the Bay Area (San Francisco, Oakland, Berkeley) would be a good locale for the station since it had a long-standing left, bohemian and working-class milieu that would be supportive of such an initiative. He was correct.

Even though Hill had big problems with the Communist Party and Marxism in general, he made a point of including the Stalinist and non-Stalinist left in the station's programming. One such figure was economist William Mandel, who although breaking with the CP, presented a fair-minded analysis of the USSR each week on his program devoted to a discussion of recent articles in the Soviet media.

Furthermore, even though Hill was critical of the CP, he was totally committed to free speech and made sure that the station covered the 1955 HUAC hearings in the Bay Area from the point of view of protestors. He also took a step that was considered very risky back then, even to the point of arguing down local board members who thought the station might be jeopardizing its existence. He aired interviews with an ex-FBI agent who told hair-raising tales about the agency's interference with the right to political association. It was the first instance of whistle-blowing on America's political police.

The HUAC coverage and Mandel's show were provocative enough in their own right, but the interview with the ex-agent was too much for the repressive forces to tolerate. The government demanded that KPFA sign a loyalty oath that would purge the station of all CP'ers. After a bitter internal fight, the station relented and the reds were given the boot.

Failing health (arthritis) and internecine battles at the station revolving around the purge and how to keep it financially afloat took their toll on Hill. He committed suicide in 1957.

It was ironic but understandable that one of the first broadcasters to be purged from the station during the recent NPR-ization of KPFA was William Mandel, the very first to be hired by Hill in the 1950s to present a balanced analysis of the USSR. In the current war drive of American imperialism, it is necessary to demonize every state that operated or operates on the Soviet model. The Pacifica board would find a voice like Mandel's an obstacle to their propaganda mission.

The PBS/POV website has a feedback section:

http://www.pbs.org/cgi-bin/pov/postbox1999/discuss.cgi?mode=AREA&area=zz1308

It has been completely sympathetic to the documentary but even tougher on the question of the Pacifica board. Many of the participants appear to be involved with the struggle to maintain the listener-sponsored character of the network. One of the messages that caught my eye was from Bill Adams who wrote:

<startquote> Having just watched your program about KPFA, I had to comment. Have you ever wondered why the internet is thought of as needing to be regulated? Answer: It is one of the last forums for really independent thought and it scares the hell out of our government. Any body with a computer has the ability to broadcast their opinion. Every other type of media has been taken over by large corporations, and the news that makes it through has been so sanitized and packaged for their benefit that it would make Pravda envious. The United States is slowly being turned into a huge deaf, dumb and blind labor pool that can be "downsized" at any moment. If we, the free and the brave are in such dire straits, can the rest of the world be any better. <endquote>

This point must be underscored. If the NPR-ization of Pacifica continues unabated, the only alternative to the corporate media will be the Internet. The issues are the same as they were during the days of KPFA's birth. Instead of leftwing Jews like the Rosenbergs becoming martyrs to the cause of nuclear superiority, we see a Chinese-American arms scientist being threatened with becoming "another Rosenberg".

In a startling development, yesterday's NY Times was forced to admit that the United States was openly funding electoral opponents of Milosevic in defiance of Yugoslavia's right to determine its own destiny. It was so brazen that reporter Steven Erlanger appeared to take the side of the radical movement which had been arguing something like this all along:

"In his race for re-election, President Slobodan Milosevic of Yugoslavia is running against NATO and the United States, not against his democratic opposition.

"He is not entirely mistaken to do so. The United States and its European allies have made it clear that they want Mr. Milosevic ousted, and they have spent tens of millions of dollars trying to get it done."

Although I missed this reference at first, Jared Israel of the "Emperor's Clothes" website brought it to my attention:

"Just today, in the state-run newspaper Politika, a long article used public information from the United States - including Congressional testimony and Web site material - to show that the United States is financing the opposition."

Apparently the Web site material Erlanger is referring to includes "Emperor's Clothes" itself. Imagine that, the NY Times is forced to admit that the dastardly Yugoslav government might have a case on the strength of the evidence of outside interference. And that evidence is being pulled together by the American radical movement and its allies worldwide.

During the Vietnam war and the war against Nicaragua, we did not have such resources at our disposal. We did have a courageous Pacifica network that provided reporter Dale Minor's groundbreaking coverage from Vietnam. Pacifica also broke the news about the secret and illegal funding of the contras through Dennis Bernstein's "Contragate/Undercurrents" investigative series. When Bernstein was dragged by security guards from the KPFA studios last year for mentioning the fight against the Pacifica board, this sparked protests including the largest demonstration in Berkeley in over 20 years.

The struggle to preserve the listener sponsored character of Pacifica is an ongoing one. For information about it, check the following:

http://www.savepacifica.net/index.htm

http://www.radio4all.org/freepacifica/