<!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.0 Transitional//EN">
<HTML><HEAD>
<META http-equiv=Content-Type content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
<META content="MSHTML 6.00.2716.2200" name=GENERATOR>
<STYLE></STYLE>
</HEAD>
<BODY bgColor=#ffffff>
<DIV><FONT color=#000080><FONT color=#000000>Friday, June 7, 2002<BR><BR>AROUND
THE DIAL<BR><FONT class=cHeadline1><B>A KPFK Pledge to Listen to
Listeners</B></FONT></FONT></FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT color=#000080><FONT color=#000000><STRONG></STRONG><BR><FONT
class=content>The liberal station's new general manager, who got her start in
South Africa, knows a thing or two about activism and community
involvement.</FONT><!--Test123--><BR><BR>By STEVE CARNEY, Special to The
Times<BR><BR><!--STORY BEGINS--><BR> As bitter as
it got, it must seem like a mere playground spat--the infighting and turmoil
that beset the left-leaning Pacifica radio network and its Los Angeles outlet
over the past several years. The station's new general manager is used to
dealing with more than pickets, angry phone calls and spam.
<BR> Eva Georgia was a pioneer in community radio
in South Africa during the apartheid era, when she was harassed, threatened at
gunpoint, and had colleagues killed and kidnapped while they all sought to
expose police corruption, the AIDS epidemic and violence against women and
children. On Monday, she takes over KPFK-FM (90.7), and pledges to re-connect
the community-supported station with alienated listeners.
<BR> "I'm extremely excited about the prospect.
There's a lot to do," said Georgia, 34. "It will take time, and I hope that
people will allow us the time. It's important that the process of democracy and
transparency continue. <BR> "We have to keep
chiseling away at this big iceberg," she said. "Pacifica has a rich history and
it has so much potential. It's electrifying."
<BR> The Pacifica Foundation, started by pacifists
in Berkeley after World War II, originated listener-supported radio and evolved
into a five-station network devoted to progressive politics and social-justice
issues. But the foundation has been embroiled in conflict for several years,
with disaffected listeners and even foundation board members suing the
organization. They alleged that a majority of the board was steering the network
to the political center, ignoring the listener-supporters, firing longtime staff
without cause, and even moving to sell the valuable broadcast licenses. The
sides settled the lawsuits in December, and since then the new regime of former
dissidents has overhauled the organization.
<BR> Georgia replaces a pair of interim general
managers, who themselves replaced general manager Mark Schubb, fired in January
after clashes with the new Pacifica board. <BR> "We
thought her selection sends an important signal. We're serious about building a
democratic organization," said Dan Coughlin, the Pacifica Foundation's interim
executive director. He noted that Georgia played no part in the fight against
previous management. "We're not engaged in cronyism or purges. We're really
trying to select the person who is best for the network. Just because you were a
reform activist doesn't mean you're going to get a job now."
<BR> A 13-member search committee consisting of
staff, listeners and Pacifica board member David Fertig sifted through nearly 50
applicants and chose three finalists, Georgia and the managers of a community
station in Moab, Utah, and a college station in San Jose. Coughlin made the
final selection. <BR> "She stood out, both with her
experience in community radio and her commitment to Pacifica and KPFK. She
really shined," Coughlin said. He also cited her background in "managing a
station in a highly charged environment."
<BR> Ironically, Georgia had been trying to get a
job at KPFK since she moved to Long Beach from South Africa in 1999, but could
never get an interview with previous management for openings as news director
and program director. Now she'll be the one hiring for those jobs, which she
said still haven't been filled permanently.
<BR> Programming disputes and the lawsuits
estranged KPFK from many supporters, with the station refusing even to air
meeting notices for its listener advisory board. So, in addition to improving
staff morale, Georgia said she wants to embrace and enlarge KPFK's audience, and
get more active in the community. <BR> The
community station she started in South Africa, Radio Atlantis, not only aired
programs about sexual abuse, but also worked with government, labor and social
organizations to create safe houses for battered women, and sponsored education
programs for schoolgirls. <BR> "How else do you
define community radio? It has to have the community participation, not just on
the air, but in community outreach," she said. "That is just so important, that
we don't just talk the talk, but find solutions to the problems in the
community." <BR> Georgia's Commitment Convinced the
Committee <BR> Fertig, an Altadena-based employment
discrimination attorney, said that commitment is part of what swayed the
selection committee. <BR> "She not only spread the
news, but helped address the problem," he said, whether it was mediating between
factions involved in gang violence, or opening a forum to discuss community
problems in Atlantis, the black township where she lived, which at one time had
the world's highest murder rate and 47% unemployment.
<BR> As a teenager, Georgia started writing for
newspapers in her hometown, Cape Town, until she noticed her articles were being
censored. At 21 she started her own community paper in Atlantis, north of Cape
Town. Then she decided to fulfill a lifelong dream: "Since the age of 10, I said
I'd be in radio. I'd run home from school and listen to radio serials."
<BR> Gathering support from community groups and
the area's powerful South African Clothing and Textile Workers Union, she
finally received a government license and went on the air in 1995. The station
became so integral to the community, factories played it nonstop during the
workday, and workers went on strike when employers shut it off.
<BR> Radio Atlantis hosted numerous party
candidates before an election, and investigated the background of the
politicians they were going to be interviewing--standard practice in American
journalism, but risky behavior at that time in South Africa. The research led to
drug and prostitution ties, and threats and intimidation from those being
scrutinized. <BR> When 8- to 12-year-old black
children began disappearing, their bodies later turning up dismembered, Georgia
called the police racist for not pursuing the cases more diligently. That
brought 200 officers swarming the radio station. Then, when police arrested a
suspect on what Georgia thought was flimsy evidence, she put the accused on the
air to give his side--angering the citizens of Atlantis.
<BR> "Even if you don't agree with somebody," she
said, the sides ought to have a forum to air their views, and discuss their
differences peacefully. Then "the listeners should decide for themselves."
<BR> But the dangers persisted. A police
commissioner investigating corruption died in a mysterious car crash, while a
journalist subpoenaed to testify about what he had uncovered was murdered the
day before the hearing, she said. Georgia herself was accosted at a stoplight by
an assailant who put a gun to her head, and her home was ransacked. And a friend
working with her to uncover corruption disappeared without a trace.
<BR> It was 1999 and Georgia finally reached a
breaking point. Fearing the violence would reach her family if she kept
muckraking in South Africa, she fled to the United States and was granted asylum
by the Immigration and Naturalization Service. She moved to Long Beach, where
she had friends, and managed an HIV-prevention program for youth at the Gay
& Lesbian Community Center of Long Beach.
<BR> "I never wanted to leave, to let them get the
upper hand, but I also had my family to think of," she said, adding that she
hasn't seen them in three years. "It was, to me, worth it to risk everything to
give a voice to the community. And I'd do it again in a heartbeat."
<BR> Fertig said Georgia is committed to broadening
KPFK's audience, to appeal not only to "lefty liberals west of La Cienega," as
he said, but to Latinos and blacks and Asians. "We've got a really diverse
audience, and need to get that on the air more."
<BR> Under new management, the station has held
consecutive record-breaking fund drives, raising $719,000 in February and
$618,000 last month, Coughlin said. Fertig said those figures prove that
once-disgruntled listeners are returning to the station, and that new ones are
responding to programming changes. Much of that money has gone to repair
transmitter and antenna problems that have kept the station broadcasting at
reduced power for more than a year. <BR> But over
the next two weeks the station's new transmitter will get up and running,
boosting the signal from 8,000 watts to 28,000 and finally back to its original
112,000 watts--what station officials have long boasted is the strongest signal
west of the Mississippi. <BR> As with almost all
matters at Pacifica, Georgia's selection was not without controversy. The
manager of Bush Radio, another community broadcast outlet in Cape Town, wrote
Pacifica officials saying that his station was the first on the air, not Radio
Atlantis as a Pacifica news release about Georgia had said. And he criticized
her move in 1997 from Radio Atlantis to Cape Talk, a commercial talk-radio
station in Cape Town. But Georgia said she made the choice simply because the
commercial station gave her a more powerful outlet for her advocacy and
investigations. <BR> "I grew up in a highly
politicized community with a lot of activists," she said. "We were willing to
put our lives on the line to tell the truth." <!--STORY ENDS--><BR><BR></FONT><!-- Vignette V/5 Fri Jun 07 03:33:57 2002 --><!-- Vignette V/5 Fri Jun 07 03:33:57 2002 --><!-- Vignette V/5 Fri Jun 07 03:33:57 2002 --><BR><BR><SPAN
class=cImagetext>Copyright 2002 Los Angeles Times</SPAN>
</FONT><BR></DIV></FONT></BODY></HTML>