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News :: Miscellaneous |
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Democracy Now! Returns from Exile Monday (4pm on WEFT 90.1 FM) |
Current rating: 0 |
by Paul Riismandel
Email: paul (nospam) mediageek.org (unverified!)
Address: Urbana |
05 Jan 2002
Modified: 07 Jan 2002 |
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The daily alternative news program Democracy Now will return from Exile on Mon. Jan 7 and begin airing on the Pacifica Radio Network for the first time since Aug. This first program will air on WEFT 90.1 FM at 4:00 PM. |
The daily alternative news program Democracy Now will return from Exile on Mon. Jan 7 and begin airing on the Pacifica Radio Network for the first time since August. This first program will air on WEFT 90.1 FM at 4:00 PM.
Democracy Now returns from exile after a momentous change in the direction of Pacifica management. In December the network's national board finally agreed to a settlement with several groups of listeners and former volunteers who had filed suit against the network, alleging that the board had made illegal changes to its by-laws, disenfrachising listeners and volunteers, and otherwise mismanaged the network. The terms of the agreement include the formation of an interim national board whose charge it is to rewrite the its by-laws and redemocratize itself. On December 29 the newly formed interim board voted to bring Democracy Now back to Pacifica.
Democracy Now's exiling was the result of the network's failure to properly deal with DN staff complaints of a hostile work environment at the network's NYC station, WBAI, where the program had been produced, the site of a large staff purge by Pacifica management in Dec. 2000, now known as the "Christmas Coup." While in exile the program was produced at a New York City community TV studio but was not distributed by the Pacifica satellite network, nor did it air on Pacifica-owned radio stations.
Local community radio station WEFT ended its affiliation with the embattled Pacifica network this past Fall after continuing contract disputes and the network's forcing of Democracy Now into exile. Like WEFT many other community stations ended their affiliation with Pacifica this year, but continued to air Democracy Now while it was in exile, using audio files of the program made available daily on the Internet by the program's staff.
E-mails from the Democracy Now staff indicate that stations in exile -- those community stations that ended their Pacifica affilation -- can continue to air Democracy Now even as the program returns to the Pacifica network, with no indication as to when this period will end.
The change in the Pacifica Board and the planned democratization of that group may again make the network accountable to the listeners, volunteers and staffs of its five network-owned stations, but it is not yet clear what this means for affiliate stations, like WEFT, and their listeners. No plans have yet been made public to repair relations with affiliates after several years of contract disputes and poor communication and service. Although it owns five radio stations in major cities, much of Pacifica's national reach, especially in the Midwest where it owns no stations, was the result of affilates carrying their national programming. The loss of many of these affiliates has meant the erosion of the network's reach and listenership outside its owned stations. Many affiliates replaced Pacifica's daily half-hour news broadcast, Pacifica Network News, with Free Speech Radio News, a daily news program produced by former Pacifica stringers who left the network over complaints of censorship by Pacifica management. It is also still unclear if those stringers will be welcomed back to Pacifica Network News, and, if so, if that will bring an end to Free Speech Radio News.
A press release on Democracy Now's return from exile is below.
For more information about these changes at Pacifica, see the Pacifica Campaign (http://www.pacificacampaign.org) and Save Pacifica (http://www.savepacifica.net).
=============================
For Immediate Release from DN!x:
January 4, 2002
Democracy Now! Returns from Exile in Bold Move at
Pacifica Radio Network
The Award-Winning Radio Show That Broadcast
Blocks from Ground Zero even as it was banned
from the airwaves of its parent organization,
returns to Pacifica radio stations
throughout the United States on Monday, Jan. 7.
NEW YORK (January 4)-- Democracy Now!, the
award-winning national radio show that was banned in
August from the progressive Pacifica Radio Network
returns to the Pacifica airwaves on Monday, bringing
to the general public the voices of some of the harshest
critics of the "war on terrorism."
On Monday, Goodman will be reunited on -air with former
co-host Juan Gonzalez for the first time in a year, when
Gonzalez resigned to found a national grassroots campaign
to reclaim the Pacifica stations. Guests will also include filmmaker Michael Moore.
Democracy Now! was banished from Pacifica as part of
the Pacifica Radio crisis, which many community radio
activists say was an attempted corporate takeover of
the only progressive radio network in the United
States. The crisis moved toward resolution last
month when three lawsuits against the Pacifica board of
directors were settled, and the board of directors
was reconstituted. The new board majority is determined
to return the 50+ year old listener-sponsored network
to its peace and social justice mission. One of the first
moves of the new board was to vote at their first
board meeting, a conference call on December 29,
2001, to bring back Democracy Now!
Democracy Now! is the flagship national program of
the Pacifica Radio Network, and its host Amy Goodman has
won numerous journalism awards. But, as part of the
ongoing conflict within the Pacifica Radio Network,
Goodman was forced off the airwaves at most Pacifica
stations and joined the ranks of dozens of journalists
who were censored or banned by Pacifica.
Democracy Now!'s host and producers were physically
and verbally harassed out of the studios of WBAI in New
York City when that station was "re-programmed" by
Pacifica management and board leaders and subsequently
banned from four of the five Pacifica Radio stations:
WBAI in New York, WPFW in Washington, DC, KPFK in Los Angeles and KPFT in Houston.
But rather than stop producing the show, Democracy
Now! has expanded. In addition to broadcasting on Pacifica
Station KPFA in Berkeley, the program aired on
community radio stations around the country and has
begun broadcasting a daily national TV show which airs on
Free Speech TV--channel 9415 of dish network
(Satellite TV)-- and public access cable tv stations
around the country.
Since the attacks of September 11, Democracy Now!
has provided some of the most incisive programming on
war and terrorism to be found anywhere on radio or
television. On December 10, 2001, Democracy Now!
broke the news of a University of New Hampshire
professor's study documenting that close to 4,000
civilians have died in Afghanistan as a result of
the U.S. bombing.
Other recent guests on the show have included Ahmed
Rashid, Pakistani journalist and author of 'Taliban:
Militant Islam, Oil, and Fundamentalism in Central Asia',
discussing the oil-slicked road to war in Afghanistan,
Tahmeena Faryal, spokeswoman for Revolutionary
Association of the Women of Afghanistan (RAWA),
Arundhati Roy, activist and author of The God of
Small Things, Howard Zinn, Professor Emeritus of History at Boston University, author of A People's History of the United States, and Noam Chomsky, author and linguist at MIT.
Pacifica Radio has been embroiled in controversy
since1999, when the Network's managers shut down KPFA of
Berkeley. That shut down caused the largest protests
in Berkeley since the Vietnam War. In December 2000,
Pacifica "re-programmed" its New York City station,
WBAI, by firing and banning long-time programmers
and eviscerating the station's progressive political
programming. Last August, Pacifica suspended Amy
Goodman and removed Democracy Now! from the Pacifica
airwaves.
But on December 12, 2001, it was announced that
plaintiffs who sued the Network reached a settlement with the Pacifica board of directors that could end years of
strife at Pacifica. The settlement created a new
interim board of directors that draws its members from
Pacifica's local advisory boards, its current board majority, and its board minority.
Now there is hope among Pacifica Radio activists that the crisis is coming to an end and they will have a chance to rebuild the progressive radio network. Among the issues yet to be resolved are the return of the fired and banned producers at network-wide and resolution of the news stringers strike against Pacifica Network News.
For more information about Democracy Now!, see
http://www.democracynow.org
###
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See also:
http://www.mediageek.org
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DN Censored in NYC and LA |
by Paul R.
paul (nospam) mediageek.org (unverified) |
Current rating: 0
07 Jan 2002
|
On Monday Jan. 7 progressive radio news program Democracy Now returned from four months of exile to the Pacifica Network, but wasn't heard on Pacifica's New York City station, where the program originates, or on the network's Los Angeles station.
See the whole story here: http://urbana.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=3676&group=webcast |
