Journalism on the Cheap

Brian Edwards-Tiekert’s letter to the Berkeley Daily Planet is making the Pacifica email list rounds. Yet a subtext to the letter may prove more interesting than the board skirmishes it highlights.

In a recent article, Richard Phelps, fellow member of KPFA’s Local Station Board, criticized the station and staff for a variety of offenses; failures at WBAI, which have been the source of recent national rumbling, were lain at the doorstep of several people, including Edwards-Tiekert. Such castigation is happening as part of what some have termed board-wide finger-pointing over Pacifica’s latest crisis. This is an election year, and one may expect to hear more about who among board members is to blame for WBAI’s struggles. Pacifica’s stations are preparing to elect new board members. Many signal areas must elect at least 50 percent new boards, since many members have reached their term limits, per the Pacifica Bylaws.

Calling some of the opinions “delusional,” Edwards-Tiekert writes, in response to a commentary by Phelps:

The truth is the “Concerned Listeners” coalition, that I have endorsed in past elections and will happily endorse again in this one, has the best track record on financial accountability of any group on KPFA’s Local Station Board. Together we have repeatedly called for stricter financial controls in Pacifica, responsible budgeting, more restraints on national spending, and we have repeatedly stood against financial deals crafted to benefit members of the Pacifica National Board and their friends. To its credit, the faction Mr. Phelps is more supportive of (the name changes every year) has supported some of those positions. However, since its allies installed a new regime at the Pacifica National Office, the members of that faction have changed their tune—or at least muted their criticism—even though many of the same problems persist. Most recently, they have withheld their support from a resolution seeking to end the practice of handing out jobs to board members…

The attack-dog style of politics in Phelps’ commentary is already too prevalent throughout Pacifica, and too often directed inward. We stand for something better at KPFA and Pacifica: rejeuvenated programming, an expanding listener base, and an end to petty sectarianism

Less making the rounds is the matter of the Berkeley Daily Planet‘s ongoing campaign against KPFA, by way of providing regular space for all manner of attacks without apparent efforts to determine the veracity of claims.

Though the Planet is no San Francisco BayView (which has published personalized critiques a of KPFA’s general manager), small alternative weeklies like it often fail to make a real effort to confirm what they print — if they make any effort at all. Houston’s Free Press did a similar job in 2007. Other Pacifica stations and staff have taken a flogging because the journalism dispatched was ineffective and lazy. Worse still, opinions about relatively private individuals who serve on boards or as employees are offered with the thinnest defense of fair comment. In fact, whether such comments are either fair or legal has yet to stand up to a court challenge.

However, this isn’t so much about legal challenges or even the words, but journalistic integrity.

Last year, nearly a year to the day the Edwards-Tiekert letter was offered, Matthew Lasar penned a scathing piece, “The Berkeley Daily Planet‘s war on KPFA.” In it, Lasar slams the Planet’s reliance on internal battles at KPFA over journalism. He writes:

Is there any rant about KPFA too distorted or incendiary for the Berkeley Daily Planet to turn away? I doubt it. My guess is that a critical mass of East Bay folk, for whom snarling at KPFA has become a fetish, enjoy reading them. KPFA staff are forced to spend time writing responses. Then the Planet can publish additional nasty replies to the staff statements, attracting more readers, ads, and Google ad clicks.

I think it’s cheap. The Planet’s editors aren’t dumb. They must know that there have been and will always be factions on the KPFA local station board who want more power and who will pander to disgruntled programmers and listeners (at least that’s what I think they’re doing). So KPFA’s troubles will provide the paper with an endless stream of muck to rake, especially during listener marathon time. And Planet staff don’t even have to write it themselves; just farm it out to the latest pontificator.

At this moment, there do not seem to be any Bay Area journalists willing to speak in defense of KPFA, to defend the station’s hard working reporters, producers, programmers, and, yes, managers. They were all quite outspoken during the crisis of 1999; now they are silent, except when they want air time from the station.

Matthew Lasar raises provocative points about local journalism happening in KPFA’s hometown. Though Edwards-Tiekert’s letter is getting attention now, one can only hope it reminds people of the larger conversation Lasar sought to begin.

EDIT: It has been suggested related to issues of journalistic integrity is one of disclosure. In the BayView case above, the publication in question consistently supports one of its staff with long-held and open grievances against KPFA and staff members personally to report on the station. The Planet‘s spin is less clear to me, but I may be soon enlightened about its KPFA beefs that are not put to the page, but color coverage. Maybe those beefs do not exist, and are, as Lasar writes, solely about moving papers. However, I am skeptical, since there are far bigger fish than Pacifica to fry. We shall see.