A censor's work is never done.
For several decades, the Pacifica Foundation -- which owns five
radio stations and operates a small national network -- nurtured precious
experiments in the arid terrain of radioland. Pacifica has provided
listeners with wide-ranging discussion, progressive analysis and
independent news coverage, in acute contrast to America's usual
corporate-backed media fare.
But during the last few years, Pacifica's board of directors made
itself a self-selecting body with an increasingly mainstream agenda. The
more highhanded the new hierarchy became -- and the more it deserved strong
criticism -- the more determined it became to prevent criticism of itself
from getting onto Pacifica airwaves.
Defenders of the "gag rule" argued that it's best not to air dirty
laundry in public. But when Pacifica's top executives turned into zealous
censors, the network began to self-destruct. Distinctive for its vigorous
advocacy of freedom and democracy at home and abroad, Pacifica foundered as
it brandished the implements of censorship. As Virginia Woolf wrote long
ago, "If you do not tell the truth about yourself you cannot tell it about
other people."
In the summer of 1999, the foundation's board of directors made
headlines with outrageous actions against KPFA, the trail-blazing Pacifica
station that has been on the FM dial in the San Francisco area for half a
century. Journalists were arrested in the KPFA studios -- even in the
station's newsroom -- where they had worked for many years. The crux of the
matter was that they had refused to lie to listeners with silence. Pacifica
management swiftly responded with a lockout.
Massive support for KPFA in Northern California -- including a
march of 10,000 people past the station's Berkeley headquarters -- showed
that Pacifica "leaders" had miscalculated. Pacifica backed off, and the
station re-opened. But the underlying issues have remained.
Pacifica's current national board -- dominated by an array of
corporate executives, business professionals, investors and political
people aligned with the Clinton administration -- is hostile to the
strongly progressive content that had been integral to the network's
strength. The latest target for Pacifica's ideological housecleaning is
award-winning journalist Amy Goodman, host of the finest national daily
radio program in the United States, "Democracy Now!"
From prisons, picket lines and forums in America to fast-breaking
events in East Timor, Nigeria, Yugoslavia and many other countries, the
hour-long syndicated "Democracy Now!" show has informed and challenged
listeners across the USA. Despite the program's successes -- or perhaps
because of them -- the Pacifica board majority is now attempting to push
Goodman out.
Longtime broadcast journalist Danny Schechter (executive editor of
Media Channel, www.mediachannel.org) commented days ago: "That Pacifica
would seek to undercut the one national show that is building audience and
generating attention showcases some of the crippling contradictions within
the network."
A lot of factors are involved in management's dispute with Amy
Goodman. But here's the crucial point: Pacifica is moving into a new stage
of an ideological purge.
Recognizing that grim fact, hundreds of people have mobilized to
defend "Democracy Now!" as part of ongoing efforts to reverse the ominous
trends at the Pacifica network. Demonstrations occurred Oct. 25 in front of
KPFA and the four other Pacifica-owned stations, located in Los Angeles,
Houston, New York City and Washington, D.C. (Details are available at the
www.savepacifica.net website.)
"Despite meeting and exceeding every stated objective for the show
-- i.e. audience growth, fund raising, new listeners, groundbreaking
programming -- 'Democracy Now!' is being subjected to a withering assault
by Pacifica management," Goodman wrote in an Oct. 18 memo. "The motivation
is blatantly political."
Goodman added that her show is "a hard-hitting grassroots program
that is not afraid of tackling controversial issues day after day in the
Pacifica tradition. We are not only being censored for our critical
coverage of the Democrats as well as the Republicans, but for giving voice
to a growing grassroots movement that fundamentally challenges the status
quo -- people fighting sweatshops, police brutality, prison growth and
corporate globalization."
A quarter of a century ago, the American historian C. Vann
Woodward chaired a committee that issued a major report on free speech. His
words now help to illuminate why it is so important to support journalists
who face the kind of incessant pressure that Amy Goodman is now withstanding.
"The history of intellectual growth and discovery clearly
demonstrates the need for unfettered freedom, the right to think the
unthinkable, discuss the unmentionable, and challenge the unchallengeable,"
Woodward wrote. "To curtail free expression strikes twice at intellectual
freedom, for whoever deprives another of the right to state unpopular views
necessarily deprives others of the right to listen to those views."
Norman Solomon is a syndicated columnist. His latest book is The Habits of
Highly Deceptive Media.
