The story
Early history
Pacifica was founded in 1946 by pacifists E. John Lewis and Lewis Hill. During World War II, both of them had filed for conscientious objector status. The foundation was created as an alternative to commercial broadcasting, with listener support intended to fund radio programming without relying on advertisers or educational institutions.
After the war, Lewis, Hill and a small group of former conscientious objectors created the Pacifica Foundation in the town of Pacifica, California, in the San Francisco Bay Area. Its first station, KPFA in Berkeley, began broadcasting on April 15, 1949. By 1977, the network had added WBAI in New York City, KPFK in Los Angeles, WPFW in Washington, DC, and KPFT in Houston.
FCC v. Pacifica Foundation
In 1973, one of Pacifica's stations, WBAI, broadcast comedian George Carlin's Filthy Words routine uncensored. Following a listener complaint, Pacifica received a letter of reprimand from the FCC, censuring it for allegedly violating broadcast regulations that prohibited airing indecent material. The foundation took the matter to the U.S. Supreme Court in FCC v. Pacifica Foundation and lost in a 5–4 decision. This became a landmark moment in the history of free speech, and the case continues to define the power of the government over broadcast material it calls indecent.
1990s–2002
For most of its history, Pacifica gave each of its stations independent control of programming. During the 1990s, a major controversy arose over rumors that the Pacifica National Board and national staff were attempting to centralize control of content, to increase audience. The rumors included accusations that the board proposed changing the network's funding model away from a reliance exclusively on listener donations and toward a mix of listener donations and corporate foundation funding similar to that of NPR. There were also accusations that the Board was considering selling both KPFA and WBAI in New York City, which operate on commercial-band FM frequencies (94.1 and 99.5, respectively) worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
This led to years of conflict, including court cases, public demonstrations, firings and strikes of station staff, whose common plight inspired creation of Radio4all.net to preserve what they saw as the original spirit of Pacifica. Many listeners of the individual stations, especially KPFA and WBAI, objected to what they saw as an attempt to tone down the overtly left-leaning political content on Pacifica stations. The controversy included highly publicized ideologically charged disputes between grassroots listener organizations and Mary Frances Berry, a former chairperson of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, who chaired Pacifica's national board at the time.
The board eventually was embroiled in counter-lawsuits by board members and listener-sponsors and, after global settlement of the lawsuits in November 2001, an interim board was formed to craft new bylaws, which it did in two tumultuous years of national debates among thousands of listener-sponsors and activists, finally giving listener-sponsors the right and responsibility to elect new Local Station Boards at each of the five Pacifica stations. These local boards in turn elect the national board of directors. Aside from some minor changes, the same 2003 bylaws remain in effect today.
2002–2009
Pacifica National News director Dan Coughlin (director) was voted Interim Executive Director of the network in 2002 (the "Interim" was later dropped). The years of internal legal battles and financial mismanagement had taken a toll. In 2005, Coughlin resigned, the network was still largely disorganized, and Pacifica reverted to operating with an interim executive director for most of the year.
In January 2006, Pacifica hired Greg Guma as the next executive director of the Pacifica Foundation. By the end of the year, the Foundation had fully recovered its financial health and had launched two new national programs: Informativo Pacifica, a daily Spanish Language newscast, and From the Vault, a weekly program drawn from Pacifica's extensive audio archives. Pacifica also produced Informed Dissent, a ten-week series for the 2006 mid-term elections that drew from talent across the network. Guma left his post in September 2007.
Read the full text
Pacifica's National Board unanimously chose former KPFA general manager Nicole Sawaya as the next executive director. Sawaya had been among the staff members fired by the national board in 1999 amidst Pacifica's internal crisis. Sawaya began her tenure as executive director in mid-November 2007, but abruptly changed her mind two weeks later. Pacifica historian Matthew Lasar said she "found the level of internecine dysfunction at Pacifica overwhelming, and fled her job." The Pacifica National Board spent the next several months negotiating with her, and Sawaya resumed her job on March 5, 2008. She resigned effective September 30, citing "dysfunctional" governance and "shoddy and opaque" business practices that had plunged the organization into a financial crisis.
Sawaya's departure was followed by major staff layoffs. In 2009, Pacifica Board chair Grace Aaron became interim executive director, former board member LaVarn Williams replaced Lonnie Hicks as chief financial officer, and the national office took control of WBAI in New York. Aaron appointed Williams acting GM of WBAI in May, and Hicks filed a lawsuit against the foundation alleging that he was dismissed because he is African American and a whistleblower.
Other Pacifica programming: 2000–2006
The Pacifica network, in addition to extensive community-based productions at its various stations around the United States, also featured a daily half-hour radio newscast called Free Speech Radio News (FSRN) from 2003 to 2013. FSRN was founded by Pacifica Reporters Against Censorship, a group of mostly Pacifica Network News reporters who went on strike against the Pacifica national board's policies of the late 1990s.
FSRN was primarily funded by Pacifica, and included headlines and news features produced by reporters based around the U.S. and in scores of countries around the world. In September 2013, the board of directors of FSRN issued a lay-off notice to all staff, and confirmed that their last broadcast would take place on September 27, 2013. The board cited financial difficulties as the reason for the decision.
In 2006, Pacifica added two new national programs: From the Vault from the Pacifica Radio Archives, a weekly program that thematically repackages archival material, making it relevant to contemporary listeners; and Informativo Pacifica, based at KPFK in Los Angeles, a daily Spanish-language newscast that includes reporters from the U.S. and many Latin American countries.
Initiatives 2007–2008
In 2007, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) announced that it would accept new applications for non-commercial radio licenses for the first time in more than a decade. In response, Pacifica joined forces with other advocates for independent media in the "Radio for People" campaign, helping local groups apply for these full-power licenses.
Pacifica has expanded its schedule of national special broadcasts, distributing more audio documentaries, covering the Attorney General Alberto Gonzales hearings live, and sending production teams to the United States Social Forum and the National Conference for Media Reform.
Pacifica expanded its offerings in multiple media platforms, using "Web 2.0" technology. In September 2007, one interactive website, KPFA's Warcomeshome.org, began to offer hard-hitting stories from reporter Aaron Glantz about the human costs of the Iraq War, as well as innovative ways of contributing to, and distributing information about, the impact of the conflict.
Pacifica suspended regular programming for three days to air a live broadcast of the Iraq War Winter Soldier event in Silver Spring, Maryland from March 14 through March 16, 2008. The broadcast was co-anchored by journalist Aaron Glantz and KPFA Morning Show host Aimee Allison.
From Wikipedia’s article on Pacifica Foundation, shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.3