zenekar
08-24-2010, 11:32 AM
Article posted at https://www.robbie.org
Also see: https://www.indyradio2009.org/
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Independents-for-Community-Radio/137611924192
The Value of Democracy - a letter from Robbie Osman
We owe our adversaries the compliment of an argument.
—Bill Moyers
KPFA is, once again, holding elections for board members. And, once
again, listener subscribers are wondering what’s what and who’s who.
To make things even more confusing, at the same time, some people are
arguing that democracy itself is dangerous for KPFA and that the
reforms instituted after the station's staff and listeners
successfully resisted a board coup in 1999-2001 ought to be rescinded.
Here, for any who might be interested (and who might have the
patience to read this long essay) are my thoughts on some of the
questions before the station and its supporters.
For those with less patience I’ll begin with my conclusion. Listener
participation is necessary to KPFA’s health and effectiveness and the
station is weaker when it is absent or excluded. The upcoming
election may decide once and for all whether listeners and subscribers
will play a role in station and network decision-making. If an
antidemocratic majority is elected we could see the reversal of
reforms that came out of the struggles of 1999.
The very idea that there could be an antidemocratic faction in the
KPFA community will strike some as outlandish and unlikely. And, to
be clear, it is not that there are KPFAers who oppose democratic
decision-making as a matter of general principle. But many in the
KPFA leadership, and some in the community who support them, have
opposed and subverted the democratic reforms that followed the
attempted Pacifica board takeover and explicitly maintain that
democratic process is not appropriate for KPFA’s governance.
The station’s core staff is, practically speaking, free from
accountability to listeners and subscribers. The mechanisms of
listener participation that were won by the station’s supporters after
the struggle a decade ago survive in the by-laws but have been
undermined and ignored as far as actual programming has been
concerned. The station’s core leadership touts their freedom from
accountability as the only way to avoid condemning the station to a
future of incompetent leadership and lunatic programming which they
say would be the result of allowing listeners to have some control
over programming.
Here are some facts that are demonstrably not lunatic. KPFA is losing
listeners, it’s losing income, and it is cutting staff. Staff cuts
could negatively affect programming and that could lead to further
loss of listeners and income. This is a spiral we can't afford to get
caught in. If we want to arrest it we have to make an honest
assessment of its cause.
KPFA’s leadership blames ‘hard times’ for the station’s decline. They
point to the bad economy. But a bad economy doesn’t cause a radio
station to lose listeners; it doesn’t cost anything to turn on a
radio. And KPFA has always attracted its greatest income during
difficult times when listeners are especially appreciative of
information and inspiration. Besides, during the ten years that
KPFA’s audience has been declining, NPR’s audience share has soared,
and Democracy Now!’s reach has vastly expanded.
The station’s decision-makers also blame competition from new media,
but the spectacular expansion of progressive programming in various
venues over the last decade is not the cause of KPFA’s decline.
Rather than using it as an excuse for our failure to grow, we need to
be asking why KPFA has not shared in the explosion of attention to
left-of-center media during the last decade.
The station’s decision-makers and their defenders even blame the
decline in listenership on the democratization that happened as a
result of the community retaking the network from a usurping board of
directors a decade ago. But station programming decisions are
presently and have always been controlled by the inner station
leadership; a nominal change in governance that never materially
affected programming cannot decrease listenership.
One thing that the station’s inner group never mentions when
discussing possible reasons for KPFA’s stagnation and decline is their
own programming decisions. You don’t need to be a radio professional
to know that that’s the first thing that ought to be considered.
Most of the heated conversation in KPFA’s conflicts centers around
personalities and politics but at its core the station’s problem is
structural. The problem is that programming decisions at KPFA are
made by people who have a great personal stake in the decisions that
they themselves make. And that means that programming decisions at
KPFA are too often made in the interests of those who make them.
I hope we can agree on some axioms:
* KPFA ought to be mission driven. Our core purpose is to
promote peace and justice (to put it in shorthand). And we need to
structure station decision-making in a way that best serves that aim.
* Interested parties cannot be expected to make disinterested
decisions. We are people, we are good people, but we are not saints
or heroes and ought not be expected (or trusted) to act against our
own egos and interests.
* Guaranteed lifetime tenure and accountability are not compatible.
* There is no effective review where there is no possibility to
make changes.
Turf First!
The reality of decision-making at KPFA is that, in the realm of
programming at least, the division between management and employee has
been effectively erased. Managers usually come from among the core
staff and even when they come from outside they quickly learn that
they can’t rock the boat if they hope to survive. The station
allocates program time under a system of mutual protection and
patronage in which there is no one from outside the station staff to
provide restraint to the impulse to divide up the station’s airtime
and resources in the interest of those who work there.
This is not to say that KPFA does not produce excellent programming.
The station has always attracted talented and committed staff and
programmers. But we are human, and paid programmers will want to
defend their positions, unpaid programmers defend their programs, and
those with jobs defend their jobs. This is not wrong and this is not
the problem. The problem is that there needs to be an empowered,
disinterested counterbalance that puts the station’s mission first.
And there isn’t.
Those who lead the country into the abyss
Call ruling too difficult for ordinary men.
—Bertolt Brecht
The arguments made by core staff to justify excluding listeners from
station decision-making are pretty much the same arguments that
unaccountable leaders have always made to maintain their positions.
Those who hold power warn that if they are forced to share it with
other stakeholders, foolish, alien, incompetent, unworthy, or even
malevolent players will take control and destroy everything. In order
to keep the trains, or in this case the radio programs, running on
time, they argue, it is necessary to let the leadership set the
direction, make all the decisions, and be judged only by themselves
and each other. Conn Hallinan, for example, writing as a candidate
(during the last election) on the Concerned Listener (now renamed
SaveKPFA) slate's web page described his group's
leave-the-leadership-alone position saying 'We do not believe the
Local Station Board should interfere in the running of the station
unless there is a violation of the Pacifica bylaws and the KPFA
mission".
When Esperantists Attack
Supporting this claim that the community has to be kept from any
powerful role in station decision-making has necessitated one of the
most ugly aspects of this controversy. Those listeners who have
worked to realize the promise of a democratized Pacifica have been
maligned by caricatures so extreme it’s surprising that they were not
self-defeating. Ian Boal, writing in Counterpunch, told his readers
that the listeners elected to the station board tended to be
"esperantists, propeller heads, world government paranoiacs, and
stranded Maoists”. Max Pringle of KPFA’s news department argued that
it made no more sense to let listeners participate in making
programming decisions than it would to let the passengers take over
the cockpit of an airplane. And Concerned Listeners/SaveKPFA's Conn
Hallinan warned that if the listeners are allowed to control
programming we will end up with “all conspiracy all the time” radio.
It’s a wonder that such hyperbolic claims have been taken as seriously
as they seem to have been. Don’t accept them. Those who oppose
community participation in KPFA's decision-making ought to address the
problems caused by exclusively in-house decision-making rather than
just defame those who want change.
Elections belong to the people. It is their decision. If they decide
to turn their back on the fire and burn their behinds, then they will
just have to sit on their blisters.
—Abraham Lincoln
Listener-elected representatives have, for the most part, acted
thoughtfully and responsibly. It would be as easy to point to flaky,
disruptive, and even dangerous behavior among the station’s leadership
and staff as among the vilified listener-elected board and program
council members. More importantly, even if the listener-elected
representatives were every horrible thing they are accused of being,
the remedy would not be ending listener input to the station’s
deliberations but electing better representatives. Democracy has
never offered a guarantee of effective leadership, only the right to
remove bad leaders and replace them with better ones.
Democracy NIMBY!
Consider the argument that listeners don’t know enough about radio to
be taking part in programming decisions. It’s nonsense. KPFA’s
subscribers and listeners are in a far better position to make
considered judgments about what is and what is not effective
programming than the average American citizen is to make informed
judgments about, say, national security questions or health care
policy. If we accept the claim that bringing a degree of democratic
representation to KPFA is too dangerous and destabilizing to risk,
what democratic institutions and rights can we defend?
Loonies of Mass Destruction
The charge that allowing listener representatives be part of an
effective program council would lead to ‘all conspiracy-all the time’
radio calls for a more detailed response because of how starkly it
flies in the face of actual station history.
There is no concerted effort to increase so-called ‘conspiracy’
oriented programming. There never has been; it’s a fabricated danger.
On the other hand, here’s some station history that is real. It’s
worth revisiting because it illuminates the real ‘danger’ that that
‘lurks’ in listener participation. For a while, as part of the
democratization that followed the rescue of Pacifica, there was, or
seemed to be, listener and unpaid staff representation on KPFA’s
Program Council. At that time a proposal to change programming,
initiated by unpaid staff and listener representatives, precipitated
an actual conflict between the unpaid staff and listener
representatives on one hand and the station leadership on the other.
This conflict had nothing to do with ‘conspiracy’ programming. It was
about what time the station ought to air Amy Goodman’s Democracy Now!.
By examining studies of radio listening patterns and KPFA’s own
fundraising data the Program Council’s unpaid staff and listener
representatives saw that Democracy Now! drew between twice and three
times the listener support (measured by contributions and ratings) of
KPFA’s Morning Show. KPFA aired the hour long Democracy Now! then, as
it does today, at 6AM and again at 9AM. The Morning Show runs from 7
to 9. Generally more radios are on between 7 and 9 than at any other
time during the day. It’s called ‘morning drive time’. By 9 many
people who tune in between 7 and 9 are at work or at school and cannot
listen to the radio. The listener and unpaid staff representatives
proposed that the station air the more popular Democracy Now! at 7
rather than 9 so that folks who couldn’t tune in from 9 to 5 could
listen. That could be expected to increase listenership, increase
income, build listener loyalty and support the station’s mission. The
full two-hour Morning Show would air beginning at 8.
The paid staff Program Council representatives did everything possible
to avoid allowing the station's senior programmer's ownership of the
7AM to 9AM turf to be called into question. At first they refused to
discuss the idea. They kept the question off the Program Council's
agenda for months. After many months, the unpaid staff and listener
representatives managed to force the issue onto the agenda and the
change was mandated by the Program Council majority.
That was it. From that moment forward the station's leadership was at
war with the idea of listener and unpaid staff representation on the
program council. Even after the station board reaffirmed the
propriety of the decision to air Democracy Now! at 7 the station’s
paid staff flat-out refused to implement the change.
This all happened a long time ago, but it’s worth recounting because
it is the real event that the ‘all conspiracy all the time’ canard
seeks to misrepresent. The station's decision-makers who argue for
keeping 'outsiders' from influence over programming claim that they
are protecting the listeners against a takeover by what they
characterize as 9/11 conspiracy loonies but the reality is that they
are protecting themselves, their turf, and each other from the
possibility of change. That’s a hell of a difference.
There is no way to measure how much stronger KPFA might be today (in
terms of income or listenership) if, nearly a decade ago, the much
more popular Democracy Now! had been moved to an hour when students
and people who work 9-5 could listen. Media people know, however,
that a strong program is strongest in prime time and can boost the
audience for the programs that follow it. A 2008 presentation from
Pacifica contains a chart indicating that, although Democracy Now!
continues to be broadcast at a less advantageous time, it continued,
at least until then, to far out-perform the Morning Show.
If KPFA were run as a business, its owners would never allow the
station’s earning capacity to be thrown away like that. If it were
unambiguously mission-driven, it wouldn't squander the opportunity to
strengthen KPFA’s income, ratings, and effectiveness. But, as our
decision-making is presently structured, turf protection can veto a
clearly called-for change in the program schedule.
Here's another example:
A little over a year ago, when the Israeli Army began intensively
bombing Gaza, I arrived at the station to host my 11AM Sunday morning
program, Across the Great Divide. KPFA's news director, Aileen
Alfandary, met me outside the on air studio to let me know that the
first few minutes of my show would be pre-empted for news of the
invasion. We both shook our heads in horror at the brutality of what
was going on and I asked her if she would convey her horror to the
listeners. She said ‘No. We don’t do that’. And, of course, she
didn’t.
We have the right, we have the responsibility, to ask. How and why
and when did KPFA decide that ‘we don’t do that’?
I’m not a big fan of the 'neutral newscaster' model of news delivery.
I much prefer the fair but not faux-neutral style of, say, Rachel
Maddow or the out front engagement of Democracy Now! which put it's
agenda in its name—with an exclamation point. Others may prefer the
way KPFA presents the news. They can, not unreasonably, argue that
the station's values are reflected in the evenhanded way stories are
presented and in the stories the news staff chooses to cover and the
participants they invite to comment. It’s a question about which
honest people can disagree. But not at KPFA. Not in any practical
sense anyway.
This post is not the place to debate the relative merits of news
formats and styles. I do, however, want to flag the structural
question involved and highlight its importance. The choice of news
styles or formats is one with the potential to have a very great
impact on KPFA’s political effectiveness and financial wellbeing.
Olbermann and Maddow, Stewart and Colbert, a dozen different news and
commentary sources on the web, Democracy Now! on radio—all of the
stunning successes of the last decade, regardless of the medium—are
characterized by the willingness of the hosts to articulate and
reflect the concern, feelings, analysis, values and outrage that
listeners and viewers experience. At the very time a large and
grateful and supportive audience was beating a path to the doors of
those who offered passionate, intelligent, committed, effective,
audacious, creative, and explicit opposition to the Bush parade of
lies and horrors, KPFA news was maintaining its neutral ‘we don’t do
that’ style—and the station was losing listeners. And income. And
influence. It is at least possible that had KPFA adopted another news
philosophy and style, the station led by its newscast might have
shared in the huge expansion of audience that flocked to those other
left-of-center sources. And for that reason, the question of how we
present the news has to be open for real discussion among those with a
stake in KPFA’s success and the success of its mission.
But the question of what policies and standards KPFA should bring to
our newscast is off the table. The right to make that decision is, in
effect, privately owned. KPFA’s news directors make such decisions,
nominally, I suppose, in concert with the station’s program director
but practically speaking by themselves. Our news directors choose to
present the news the way they have presented the news for the past
twenty-five or thirty years and, unless KPFA opens up its
decision-making structure, that’s how things will be for many years to
come. Assuming we survive. Stephen Colbert, in mock praise of George
W. Bush’s consistency, said at the White House correspondents’ dinner
‘What he believes on Monday he believes on Wednesday. No matter what
happened on Tuesday.’ I don’t think that that's the sort of
consistency we ought to be able to brag about.
Even if you're on the right track,
you'll get run over if you just sit there.
—Will Rogers
KPFA's drive-time programming is crucial to developing and maintaining
the station’s listenership. Its success or failure will be reflected
in the general enthusiasm of the station's present and prospective
supporters and in the audience for all the rest of the station's
programming. It ought to be reevaluated often and decisions about its
style and content have to be made in the interest of the station’s
mission rather than in the interest of those making the decision.
That requires empowering disinterested decision-makers.
One doesn’t have to find fault with KPFA’s Morning Show to see the
value in having it begin an hour later so that our most appreciated
program can be on when it can attract and inform and inspire a bigger
audience. And no disrespect of our news programming is implicit in
saying that a station that won't adapt to changing times and learn
from the successes of others should not be surprised if its
listenership and income and political effectiveness decline.
What Can We Do?
KPFA needs to have programming decisions made by a Program Council
that is advised by station staff and led by a talented program
director but which has enough listener-elected representation to
prevent the Council from favoring the needs of the programmers over
the mission itself. It needs a manager who will insist that the
station’s paid staff respect and implement the decisions of such a
Program Council. And it needs an executive director who will back up
such a manager and a local and national board that will do the same
for the executive director.
The present election will determine who sits on the Local Board and
the Local Board will appoint representatives to the National Board.
Among the candidates for the Local Board are many who have supported
listener participation and some who think it should be minimized or
ended entirely. One entire slate, Concerned Listeners/SaveKPFA,
opposes listener 'interference' in programming decisions as one of its
principles. There is also a petition circulating that proposes that
the by-laws which mandate a degree of listener control be repealed.
If a board majority opposed to listener input is elected it will
likely rewrite the by-laws to end the possibility of bringing
accountability to the station's programming. That would be,
practically speaking, irreversible. Game Over.
I don’t mean to minimize the difficulties of bringing listener
influence or control back into KPFA’s programming decisions. I also
don’t think we should minimize the contributions of the people who
work at the station and make KPFA happen. My criticism of our present
decision-making structure does not mean that I don’t respect their
achievements or appreciate their effort and sacrifice. Producing
radio the quality of KPFA’s programming takes dedication and talent
and hard work of the sort that can’t be micro-managed by boards and
committees. The folks who do that work, paid and unpaid, deserve our
gratitude. But that doesn’t mean that the station belongs to them.
We do not have a lot of experience in merging democratic oversight and
creative radio production, so there will be missteps and mistakes.
And there will be people who find in each misstep a reason to entirely
abandon the effort to incorporate listener participation into the
station's programming decision-making process. But if an honest and
fair-minded effort is made by listeners and programmers I am convinced
that a way can be found to respect and honor KPFA’s staff and
volunteers, guarantee them the room to produce brilliant progressive
radio but stop well short of giving the station to anyone as personal
property.
I'm supporting the folks running as Independents for Community Radio.
I have not yet met them all but those I do know I respect and trust.
More to the point, I respect and trust the listeners and the
democratic process. And, when all is said and done, that's whats at
stake in this election.
KPFA is the achievement of generations of thoughtful and committed
staff, programmers and listener-supporters. It would be wrong for us
to let its potential be squandered in the service of turf protection.
Keeping things just as they are may seem more comfortable and less
demanding - but the station’s present course doesn’t lead to where we
want and need to be.
Thanks for listening.
Robbie Osman
_____
Also see: https://www.indyradio2009.org/
https://www.facebook.com/pages/Independents-for-Community-Radio/137611924192
The Value of Democracy - a letter from Robbie Osman
We owe our adversaries the compliment of an argument.
—Bill Moyers
KPFA is, once again, holding elections for board members. And, once
again, listener subscribers are wondering what’s what and who’s who.
To make things even more confusing, at the same time, some people are
arguing that democracy itself is dangerous for KPFA and that the
reforms instituted after the station's staff and listeners
successfully resisted a board coup in 1999-2001 ought to be rescinded.
Here, for any who might be interested (and who might have the
patience to read this long essay) are my thoughts on some of the
questions before the station and its supporters.
For those with less patience I’ll begin with my conclusion. Listener
participation is necessary to KPFA’s health and effectiveness and the
station is weaker when it is absent or excluded. The upcoming
election may decide once and for all whether listeners and subscribers
will play a role in station and network decision-making. If an
antidemocratic majority is elected we could see the reversal of
reforms that came out of the struggles of 1999.
The very idea that there could be an antidemocratic faction in the
KPFA community will strike some as outlandish and unlikely. And, to
be clear, it is not that there are KPFAers who oppose democratic
decision-making as a matter of general principle. But many in the
KPFA leadership, and some in the community who support them, have
opposed and subverted the democratic reforms that followed the
attempted Pacifica board takeover and explicitly maintain that
democratic process is not appropriate for KPFA’s governance.
The station’s core staff is, practically speaking, free from
accountability to listeners and subscribers. The mechanisms of
listener participation that were won by the station’s supporters after
the struggle a decade ago survive in the by-laws but have been
undermined and ignored as far as actual programming has been
concerned. The station’s core leadership touts their freedom from
accountability as the only way to avoid condemning the station to a
future of incompetent leadership and lunatic programming which they
say would be the result of allowing listeners to have some control
over programming.
Here are some facts that are demonstrably not lunatic. KPFA is losing
listeners, it’s losing income, and it is cutting staff. Staff cuts
could negatively affect programming and that could lead to further
loss of listeners and income. This is a spiral we can't afford to get
caught in. If we want to arrest it we have to make an honest
assessment of its cause.
KPFA’s leadership blames ‘hard times’ for the station’s decline. They
point to the bad economy. But a bad economy doesn’t cause a radio
station to lose listeners; it doesn’t cost anything to turn on a
radio. And KPFA has always attracted its greatest income during
difficult times when listeners are especially appreciative of
information and inspiration. Besides, during the ten years that
KPFA’s audience has been declining, NPR’s audience share has soared,
and Democracy Now!’s reach has vastly expanded.
The station’s decision-makers also blame competition from new media,
but the spectacular expansion of progressive programming in various
venues over the last decade is not the cause of KPFA’s decline.
Rather than using it as an excuse for our failure to grow, we need to
be asking why KPFA has not shared in the explosion of attention to
left-of-center media during the last decade.
The station’s decision-makers and their defenders even blame the
decline in listenership on the democratization that happened as a
result of the community retaking the network from a usurping board of
directors a decade ago. But station programming decisions are
presently and have always been controlled by the inner station
leadership; a nominal change in governance that never materially
affected programming cannot decrease listenership.
One thing that the station’s inner group never mentions when
discussing possible reasons for KPFA’s stagnation and decline is their
own programming decisions. You don’t need to be a radio professional
to know that that’s the first thing that ought to be considered.
Most of the heated conversation in KPFA’s conflicts centers around
personalities and politics but at its core the station’s problem is
structural. The problem is that programming decisions at KPFA are
made by people who have a great personal stake in the decisions that
they themselves make. And that means that programming decisions at
KPFA are too often made in the interests of those who make them.
I hope we can agree on some axioms:
* KPFA ought to be mission driven. Our core purpose is to
promote peace and justice (to put it in shorthand). And we need to
structure station decision-making in a way that best serves that aim.
* Interested parties cannot be expected to make disinterested
decisions. We are people, we are good people, but we are not saints
or heroes and ought not be expected (or trusted) to act against our
own egos and interests.
* Guaranteed lifetime tenure and accountability are not compatible.
* There is no effective review where there is no possibility to
make changes.
Turf First!
The reality of decision-making at KPFA is that, in the realm of
programming at least, the division between management and employee has
been effectively erased. Managers usually come from among the core
staff and even when they come from outside they quickly learn that
they can’t rock the boat if they hope to survive. The station
allocates program time under a system of mutual protection and
patronage in which there is no one from outside the station staff to
provide restraint to the impulse to divide up the station’s airtime
and resources in the interest of those who work there.
This is not to say that KPFA does not produce excellent programming.
The station has always attracted talented and committed staff and
programmers. But we are human, and paid programmers will want to
defend their positions, unpaid programmers defend their programs, and
those with jobs defend their jobs. This is not wrong and this is not
the problem. The problem is that there needs to be an empowered,
disinterested counterbalance that puts the station’s mission first.
And there isn’t.
Those who lead the country into the abyss
Call ruling too difficult for ordinary men.
—Bertolt Brecht
The arguments made by core staff to justify excluding listeners from
station decision-making are pretty much the same arguments that
unaccountable leaders have always made to maintain their positions.
Those who hold power warn that if they are forced to share it with
other stakeholders, foolish, alien, incompetent, unworthy, or even
malevolent players will take control and destroy everything. In order
to keep the trains, or in this case the radio programs, running on
time, they argue, it is necessary to let the leadership set the
direction, make all the decisions, and be judged only by themselves
and each other. Conn Hallinan, for example, writing as a candidate
(during the last election) on the Concerned Listener (now renamed
SaveKPFA) slate's web page described his group's
leave-the-leadership-alone position saying 'We do not believe the
Local Station Board should interfere in the running of the station
unless there is a violation of the Pacifica bylaws and the KPFA
mission".
When Esperantists Attack
Supporting this claim that the community has to be kept from any
powerful role in station decision-making has necessitated one of the
most ugly aspects of this controversy. Those listeners who have
worked to realize the promise of a democratized Pacifica have been
maligned by caricatures so extreme it’s surprising that they were not
self-defeating. Ian Boal, writing in Counterpunch, told his readers
that the listeners elected to the station board tended to be
"esperantists, propeller heads, world government paranoiacs, and
stranded Maoists”. Max Pringle of KPFA’s news department argued that
it made no more sense to let listeners participate in making
programming decisions than it would to let the passengers take over
the cockpit of an airplane. And Concerned Listeners/SaveKPFA's Conn
Hallinan warned that if the listeners are allowed to control
programming we will end up with “all conspiracy all the time” radio.
It’s a wonder that such hyperbolic claims have been taken as seriously
as they seem to have been. Don’t accept them. Those who oppose
community participation in KPFA's decision-making ought to address the
problems caused by exclusively in-house decision-making rather than
just defame those who want change.
Elections belong to the people. It is their decision. If they decide
to turn their back on the fire and burn their behinds, then they will
just have to sit on their blisters.
—Abraham Lincoln
Listener-elected representatives have, for the most part, acted
thoughtfully and responsibly. It would be as easy to point to flaky,
disruptive, and even dangerous behavior among the station’s leadership
and staff as among the vilified listener-elected board and program
council members. More importantly, even if the listener-elected
representatives were every horrible thing they are accused of being,
the remedy would not be ending listener input to the station’s
deliberations but electing better representatives. Democracy has
never offered a guarantee of effective leadership, only the right to
remove bad leaders and replace them with better ones.
Democracy NIMBY!
Consider the argument that listeners don’t know enough about radio to
be taking part in programming decisions. It’s nonsense. KPFA’s
subscribers and listeners are in a far better position to make
considered judgments about what is and what is not effective
programming than the average American citizen is to make informed
judgments about, say, national security questions or health care
policy. If we accept the claim that bringing a degree of democratic
representation to KPFA is too dangerous and destabilizing to risk,
what democratic institutions and rights can we defend?
Loonies of Mass Destruction
The charge that allowing listener representatives be part of an
effective program council would lead to ‘all conspiracy-all the time’
radio calls for a more detailed response because of how starkly it
flies in the face of actual station history.
There is no concerted effort to increase so-called ‘conspiracy’
oriented programming. There never has been; it’s a fabricated danger.
On the other hand, here’s some station history that is real. It’s
worth revisiting because it illuminates the real ‘danger’ that that
‘lurks’ in listener participation. For a while, as part of the
democratization that followed the rescue of Pacifica, there was, or
seemed to be, listener and unpaid staff representation on KPFA’s
Program Council. At that time a proposal to change programming,
initiated by unpaid staff and listener representatives, precipitated
an actual conflict between the unpaid staff and listener
representatives on one hand and the station leadership on the other.
This conflict had nothing to do with ‘conspiracy’ programming. It was
about what time the station ought to air Amy Goodman’s Democracy Now!.
By examining studies of radio listening patterns and KPFA’s own
fundraising data the Program Council’s unpaid staff and listener
representatives saw that Democracy Now! drew between twice and three
times the listener support (measured by contributions and ratings) of
KPFA’s Morning Show. KPFA aired the hour long Democracy Now! then, as
it does today, at 6AM and again at 9AM. The Morning Show runs from 7
to 9. Generally more radios are on between 7 and 9 than at any other
time during the day. It’s called ‘morning drive time’. By 9 many
people who tune in between 7 and 9 are at work or at school and cannot
listen to the radio. The listener and unpaid staff representatives
proposed that the station air the more popular Democracy Now! at 7
rather than 9 so that folks who couldn’t tune in from 9 to 5 could
listen. That could be expected to increase listenership, increase
income, build listener loyalty and support the station’s mission. The
full two-hour Morning Show would air beginning at 8.
The paid staff Program Council representatives did everything possible
to avoid allowing the station's senior programmer's ownership of the
7AM to 9AM turf to be called into question. At first they refused to
discuss the idea. They kept the question off the Program Council's
agenda for months. After many months, the unpaid staff and listener
representatives managed to force the issue onto the agenda and the
change was mandated by the Program Council majority.
That was it. From that moment forward the station's leadership was at
war with the idea of listener and unpaid staff representation on the
program council. Even after the station board reaffirmed the
propriety of the decision to air Democracy Now! at 7 the station’s
paid staff flat-out refused to implement the change.
This all happened a long time ago, but it’s worth recounting because
it is the real event that the ‘all conspiracy all the time’ canard
seeks to misrepresent. The station's decision-makers who argue for
keeping 'outsiders' from influence over programming claim that they
are protecting the listeners against a takeover by what they
characterize as 9/11 conspiracy loonies but the reality is that they
are protecting themselves, their turf, and each other from the
possibility of change. That’s a hell of a difference.
There is no way to measure how much stronger KPFA might be today (in
terms of income or listenership) if, nearly a decade ago, the much
more popular Democracy Now! had been moved to an hour when students
and people who work 9-5 could listen. Media people know, however,
that a strong program is strongest in prime time and can boost the
audience for the programs that follow it. A 2008 presentation from
Pacifica contains a chart indicating that, although Democracy Now!
continues to be broadcast at a less advantageous time, it continued,
at least until then, to far out-perform the Morning Show.
If KPFA were run as a business, its owners would never allow the
station’s earning capacity to be thrown away like that. If it were
unambiguously mission-driven, it wouldn't squander the opportunity to
strengthen KPFA’s income, ratings, and effectiveness. But, as our
decision-making is presently structured, turf protection can veto a
clearly called-for change in the program schedule.
Here's another example:
A little over a year ago, when the Israeli Army began intensively
bombing Gaza, I arrived at the station to host my 11AM Sunday morning
program, Across the Great Divide. KPFA's news director, Aileen
Alfandary, met me outside the on air studio to let me know that the
first few minutes of my show would be pre-empted for news of the
invasion. We both shook our heads in horror at the brutality of what
was going on and I asked her if she would convey her horror to the
listeners. She said ‘No. We don’t do that’. And, of course, she
didn’t.
We have the right, we have the responsibility, to ask. How and why
and when did KPFA decide that ‘we don’t do that’?
I’m not a big fan of the 'neutral newscaster' model of news delivery.
I much prefer the fair but not faux-neutral style of, say, Rachel
Maddow or the out front engagement of Democracy Now! which put it's
agenda in its name—with an exclamation point. Others may prefer the
way KPFA presents the news. They can, not unreasonably, argue that
the station's values are reflected in the evenhanded way stories are
presented and in the stories the news staff chooses to cover and the
participants they invite to comment. It’s a question about which
honest people can disagree. But not at KPFA. Not in any practical
sense anyway.
This post is not the place to debate the relative merits of news
formats and styles. I do, however, want to flag the structural
question involved and highlight its importance. The choice of news
styles or formats is one with the potential to have a very great
impact on KPFA’s political effectiveness and financial wellbeing.
Olbermann and Maddow, Stewart and Colbert, a dozen different news and
commentary sources on the web, Democracy Now! on radio—all of the
stunning successes of the last decade, regardless of the medium—are
characterized by the willingness of the hosts to articulate and
reflect the concern, feelings, analysis, values and outrage that
listeners and viewers experience. At the very time a large and
grateful and supportive audience was beating a path to the doors of
those who offered passionate, intelligent, committed, effective,
audacious, creative, and explicit opposition to the Bush parade of
lies and horrors, KPFA news was maintaining its neutral ‘we don’t do
that’ style—and the station was losing listeners. And income. And
influence. It is at least possible that had KPFA adopted another news
philosophy and style, the station led by its newscast might have
shared in the huge expansion of audience that flocked to those other
left-of-center sources. And for that reason, the question of how we
present the news has to be open for real discussion among those with a
stake in KPFA’s success and the success of its mission.
But the question of what policies and standards KPFA should bring to
our newscast is off the table. The right to make that decision is, in
effect, privately owned. KPFA’s news directors make such decisions,
nominally, I suppose, in concert with the station’s program director
but practically speaking by themselves. Our news directors choose to
present the news the way they have presented the news for the past
twenty-five or thirty years and, unless KPFA opens up its
decision-making structure, that’s how things will be for many years to
come. Assuming we survive. Stephen Colbert, in mock praise of George
W. Bush’s consistency, said at the White House correspondents’ dinner
‘What he believes on Monday he believes on Wednesday. No matter what
happened on Tuesday.’ I don’t think that that's the sort of
consistency we ought to be able to brag about.
Even if you're on the right track,
you'll get run over if you just sit there.
—Will Rogers
KPFA's drive-time programming is crucial to developing and maintaining
the station’s listenership. Its success or failure will be reflected
in the general enthusiasm of the station's present and prospective
supporters and in the audience for all the rest of the station's
programming. It ought to be reevaluated often and decisions about its
style and content have to be made in the interest of the station’s
mission rather than in the interest of those making the decision.
That requires empowering disinterested decision-makers.
One doesn’t have to find fault with KPFA’s Morning Show to see the
value in having it begin an hour later so that our most appreciated
program can be on when it can attract and inform and inspire a bigger
audience. And no disrespect of our news programming is implicit in
saying that a station that won't adapt to changing times and learn
from the successes of others should not be surprised if its
listenership and income and political effectiveness decline.
What Can We Do?
KPFA needs to have programming decisions made by a Program Council
that is advised by station staff and led by a talented program
director but which has enough listener-elected representation to
prevent the Council from favoring the needs of the programmers over
the mission itself. It needs a manager who will insist that the
station’s paid staff respect and implement the decisions of such a
Program Council. And it needs an executive director who will back up
such a manager and a local and national board that will do the same
for the executive director.
The present election will determine who sits on the Local Board and
the Local Board will appoint representatives to the National Board.
Among the candidates for the Local Board are many who have supported
listener participation and some who think it should be minimized or
ended entirely. One entire slate, Concerned Listeners/SaveKPFA,
opposes listener 'interference' in programming decisions as one of its
principles. There is also a petition circulating that proposes that
the by-laws which mandate a degree of listener control be repealed.
If a board majority opposed to listener input is elected it will
likely rewrite the by-laws to end the possibility of bringing
accountability to the station's programming. That would be,
practically speaking, irreversible. Game Over.
I don’t mean to minimize the difficulties of bringing listener
influence or control back into KPFA’s programming decisions. I also
don’t think we should minimize the contributions of the people who
work at the station and make KPFA happen. My criticism of our present
decision-making structure does not mean that I don’t respect their
achievements or appreciate their effort and sacrifice. Producing
radio the quality of KPFA’s programming takes dedication and talent
and hard work of the sort that can’t be micro-managed by boards and
committees. The folks who do that work, paid and unpaid, deserve our
gratitude. But that doesn’t mean that the station belongs to them.
We do not have a lot of experience in merging democratic oversight and
creative radio production, so there will be missteps and mistakes.
And there will be people who find in each misstep a reason to entirely
abandon the effort to incorporate listener participation into the
station's programming decision-making process. But if an honest and
fair-minded effort is made by listeners and programmers I am convinced
that a way can be found to respect and honor KPFA’s staff and
volunteers, guarantee them the room to produce brilliant progressive
radio but stop well short of giving the station to anyone as personal
property.
I'm supporting the folks running as Independents for Community Radio.
I have not yet met them all but those I do know I respect and trust.
More to the point, I respect and trust the listeners and the
democratic process. And, when all is said and done, that's whats at
stake in this election.
KPFA is the achievement of generations of thoughtful and committed
staff, programmers and listener-supporters. It would be wrong for us
to let its potential be squandered in the service of turf protection.
Keeping things just as they are may seem more comfortable and less
demanding - but the station’s present course doesn’t lead to where we
want and need to be.
Thanks for listening.
Robbie Osman
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