WBAI Is Its Own Worst Enemy

Last year the battle for the Pacifica radio network raged over a confrontation between the network's mother station, KPFA (Berkeley), and the Pacifica Foundation, the "corporate" holder of the network's licenses for its five radio stations. Initially, it began when Nicole Sawaya, KPFA's station manager, was dismissed by Lynn Chadwick, Pacifica's then-executive director. Shots were fired verbally?and literally (someone fired at the station's building). Larry Bensky, a KPFA reporter, took to the air and castigated Chadwick for sacking Sawaya. Dennis Bernstein, another KPFA regular, was escorted from the station for violating a network stricture against publicly airing the internal affairs. The station was closed and a state of siege was the order of the day. Fortunately, both sides?the board of directors, headed by then-chair Mary Frances Berry, and the KPFA staff?pulled back from the precipice, and the station reopened to a cold peace.

As a volunteer segment producer for Pacifica's New York station, WBAI (City in Exile), I watched from the sidelines. WBAI itself was still reeling from the death of its beloved program director, Samori Marksman. But now the network's premier public affairs show, Democracy Now!, is in the line of fire.

The show, the brainchild of Marksman, was hatched at WBAI and pushed onto the network. (I worked for Democracy Now! for roughly two weeks in early 1999.) Amy Goodman, the show's host, is a good journalist and works very hard at producing the best show that comes out of Pacifica or WBAI, which ought to be censured for listener-abuse for some of its programming.

Despite its professionalism, Democracy Now! is hated by some at Pacifica. Although Pacifica was founded on the concept of being listener supported (the first public radio station in America), dedicated to peace and providing a forum for dissent, there are some who wish to take the network in a new direction in the model of National Public Radio or even mainstream commercial radio. The stakes are high. With the passage of the 1996 Telecommunications Act by Congress, deregulating the industry, Pacifica's five licenses (stations KPFA, WBAI, WPFW in DC, KPFK in L.A. and KPFT in Houston), may be worth more than $200 million.

This latest crisis stems from a faux pas committed by Goodman: she gave Ralph Nader, the Green Party presidential candidate, a press credential that allowed him on the floor of the Republican National Convention. While this was good political theater, it was bad journalism. It was also bad politics. Now Democracy Now!'s enemies have a "legitimate" reason to go after it. The powers that be want either a neutered program or none at all.

I'll admit I'm from the old school: You don't give your enemies a reason to go after you, especially when they hold power over you. Now, in the Pacifica-WBAI tradition, the true believers have been called out to defend Democracy Now! and Goodman. Not all are in her camp. In the eyes of some she has created bad blood at the station. She seldom, if ever, attends staff meetings, and has from time to time bogarted other producers from a studio that has been reserved for their productions. She can give the impression that she only cares about her show, not the operation of the station. To her credit, though, she does pitch in during the station's periodical fundraisings, and can be counted on to help keep the station afloat.

"But how long," as Bill Cosby's God asked Noah, "can you tread water?" WBAI is a rotting ship, but you won't hear that as the true believers gather and complain about Pacifica. It took the station more than a year to replace the program director, and the new one has been seriously compromised by the selection process. The station has no operations director since Paul Wunder died, and management has subsumed his functions unto itself. Worse still, the station?a radio station, mind you?has no chief engineer. It has recently lost two members of its development department. There is no real sense of planning. Administrative positions are held by people not encouraged to administrate; the tradition, it seems, is that you take a desk job to support your on-air habit. Thus the culture of the station often punishes the competent and rewards incompetence. As a producer I've spent hours roaming the halls looking for basic items like a take-up reel or tape or razors. Producers buy their own such supplies out of pocket.

There is no esprit de corps or solidarity currently. In fact, there is no leadership at the station. That died with Marksman, who held the place together by personality, intellect and vision. Now, true to the left's logic of racial balkanization and an overemphasis on identity politics, the station is merely a warren of cliques, fiefdoms and personality cults. Backstabbing, back-biting, nitpicking and sniping are rampant.

The most egregious crime at WBAI is that listener abuse. Once upon a time you received a publication called Folio that kept you abreast of programming and changes. That's gone. The station now reports to the listeners as a king coming to the balcony and gracing the masses with his royal personage. Listeners are kept in the dark about what's going on at the station even while they're expected to fund its lazy, sloppy and insulting programming?"community radio," shorthand for "no standards."

Pacifica, meanwhile, has engaged in a "consolidation/centralization" process that has hijacked WBAI's (and three other stations') ability to write its own checks. (Only KPFA has not capitulated.) This underscores another problem at WBAI: no one is allowed to see the books or knows where the money goes after the fundraising. The national board of Pacifica has instituted a corrupt and wholly undemocratic self-nomination process and divorced itself from the stations' local advisory boards. This allowed Berry, a federal government appointee, to become chair of the national board. (Berry has since been succeeded by David Acosta.) How did a government appointee get on the board of a network that is highly critical of government in the first place? There are real estate moguls and lawyers from union-busting law firms on the board. These people want to gut Pacifica and ensure that no programs like Democracy Now! are sounding alarms about the neoliberal regime being foisted on the world. They want to take the network into the blandosphere of NPR.

On the other side, the activist community that comes through WBAI pimps off the station. The station is seen only as a means to an end, a soapbox. As for how the station operates day to day, they really don't care.

Is it too much to demand that WBAI institute a regime of economic and administrative efficiency conducive to a nonprofit organization? Currently it's like a corrupt Third World dictatorship that bloviates about imperialism (i.e., Pacifica) but keeps its jackbooted foot on the necks of its own citizens (the listeners) while picking their ragged pockets. Democracy is a two-way street. Freedom of speech entails accountability.

Pacifica ought to back off Goodman and allow her to produce Democracy Now! within reasonable editorial guidelines that aren't designed to dilute the politics of the program. For their part, Goodman and WBAI supporters ought to hold the station to a level of public scrutiny. They ought to speak out against the current mismanagement, mediocrity and lack of accountability. Anything less suggests a double standard when it comes to confronting external and internal corruption, and capitulating to the rot within.

Norman Kelley has been at WBAI for two years and has produced segments for City in Exile, radio documentaries and a seven-part series on the New York Police Dept.