From: "Stephen M Brown" <sbrown13 at nyc.rr.com> Date: Tue, 14 Jun 2005 21:13:41 -0400
You might be interested in this short excerpt from a 4-year-old news article about trouble at WBAI. Here we go all over again. (Full article at <http://www.johntarleton.net/wbai_funds.html>.)
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NEW YORK CITY--WBAI's efforts to fire its audience and bring in replacement listeners appears to have foundered during its recent spring fundraising drive. The station's 20-day spring fund drive netted $350,000-$400,000, or less than half of the $850,000 it normally takes in during its spring drive, according to organizers of the Campaign to Stop the Corporate Takeover of Pacifica (Pacifica Campaign) as well as a longtime WBAI (99.5-FM) producer who has been in contact with this reporter.
"They (WBAI management) are going to look at some serious changes after this debacle," said Dan Coughlin, former director of Pacifica Network News (1998-1999) who is now working as an organizer for the Pacifica Campaign. "If you're the general manager this can't continue."
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Back in those simpler times, there was at least an easily identifiable villain. The Pacifica National Board of Mary Frances Berry, Pat Scott, and John Murdock could be credibly identified as "hostile", and listeners could be powerfully mobilized against them -- by demonstrating in the streets, suing them in the courts, and (by refusing to pledge) whacking them in the pocketbook.
Today, the PNB is not recognizably "hostile." It is at best inert, and at worst blind and stupid.
The fact is, WBAI has been undergoing -- not just one debacle -- but many of them, one after another. But the PNB has done nothing to address them, and seems intent on continuing to do nothing. For the past three years our present and former national boards have been cowed and bamboozled by our former (but still lurking) Executive Director, Dan Coughlin, to whom the PNB foolishly ceded virtually all its authority, even as Coughlin ignored their directives and laughed in their faces.
As one listener put it -- pungently if inelegantly:
"Every morning Dan Coughlin used to get up and pee in the PNB coffee pot. And every morning the PNB would watch him do it -- then pour itself a big hot steaming cup and drink it down with a smile on its face."
It seems clearly evident -- from their otherwise inexplicable behavior -- that several years ago Pacifica Executive Director Dan Coughlin joined with WBAI Program Director Bernard White and General Manager Don Rojas in a secret pact to support each other in Pacifica politics, no matter what, even if it meant harming the health of Pacifica and WBAI. We can't know exactly why they formed this pact, or how they paid each other off for their mutually accommodating support. But the result is clear. These three have caused and presided over what seems to me (and I've only been watching for 40 years) the saddest and longest-lasting debacle in WBAI's history.
1-- The staff is in a fratricidal war with itself. WBAI producers and engineers have been physically beating each other up with their fists and (in one instance) chairs, cursing one another in the hallways with racial epithets, rifling the desks of their colleagues for evidence of "disloyalty," and fuming with anger at the cronyism of management, which brazenly rewards friends for their political support by either adding them to the payroll -- often secretly, but always without process or review -- or by awarding them prime air-time, after having first taken it away from less "friendly" programmers who made the mistake of forgetting to ask Bernard White "How high?" when he told them to jump.
2 -- Principles of free speech and transparency at WBAI are now honored only in the breach. For three years programmers have been terrified (I chose this word very carefully) by both veiled and open threats from Bernard White and former GM Don Rojas that they would be fired if they violated the gag-rule. Although officially denied (and certainly never enforced against Bernard White or Erroll Maitland or Dred Scot Keyes or John Riley or Cerene Richards or any other member of management's faithful Justice & Unity clique), the gag-rule forbade not only criticism of management on the air, or at public meetings, or on the list-servs, but also forbade even open discussions of station policies and programming decisions on the air -- unless pre-approved by management and, in many cases, actually hosted and delivered on the air by management or one of its acolytes.
I said programmers were terrorized by "threats." But they were more than threats. Numerous programmers were actually fired by management for violating the gag-rule -- i.e., for saying things management did not like, or for allowing people on their programs who said things that management did not like. The station was ruled like the court of the Borgias -- the sole difference being that Bernard White's enemies lived in fear, not of being eliminated by poison, but by a pink slip.
Mike Feder was physically harassed and threatened directly by Bernard White for months, after he privately criticized White for deliberately fostering an atmosphere of racial hostility among staff and listeners as a tactic for maintaining power. Finally, as Feder testified publicly and in a written statement, he felt he had no choice but to leave the station after 25 years of service. His angry listeners left with him, and have ceased to support the station.
Gary Null was regularly insulted and attacked on the air, in the crudest manner, for over three years by Bernard White, Erroll Maitland, Don Rojas, and other management supporters (to which attacks, incidentally, he never responded in kind). He was then spitefully pre-empted from 9 fund drives during 2003 and 2004, even though this cost the station nearly $3 million in lost pledges. Finally Null was fired last December, without notice, or process, or review, or even an explanation to his listeners, after 27 years at the station. His angry listeners have also deserted the station, which will cost it an additional $1.2 million in lost revenue -- every year going forward.
More recently, Robert Knight, WBAI's brilliant investigative reporter and winner of the prestigious Polk award, was abruptly fired -- without notice, or process, or review -- after allowing a discussion on his Earthwatch show of station policies and programming decisions. He had previously been fired once before, after Program Director Bernard White told him he had been "playing too much White man's music" on his show. Interestingly, just before his firing, Knight had caught one of management's "enforcers" rifling the contents of his desk (presumably for evidence of "disloyalty"). When confronted, she claimed it looked messy and that she had merely been tidying up. Knight's firing was ordered by ex-GM Rojas, literally while walking out the door on his last day on the job. The firing was executed in a particularly brutal and spiteful manner, with a personal "note" from Bernard White to Knight, canceling Knight's popular Earthwatch program and ordering Knight, a 25-year WBAI veteran, off station premises immediately under veiled threat of police intervention and enforcement.
3 -- Information about WBAI station affairs, most notably financial records, has been regularly hidden from the listeners, from LSB members, and even most recently from members of the Pacifica National Board, contrary to the foundation's bylaws and the laws of the State of California, in which Pacifica is chartered. Despite continuing avowals of "transparency," WBAI management, in collusion with ex-Pacifica Executive Director Dan Coughlin, has conspired to obscure the identities, the contractual terms, and the nature of services received from vendors and special "consultants" to whom WBAI has paid hundreds of thousands of dollars over the last several years. When protests were made, some of these "consultants" were suddenly transformed into salaried employees by order of the station manager -- without notice, or process, or review -- and without revealing who they are, what they will be paid, and what (if anything) they will be doing for the stat ion.
There was no legal basis for this refusal to turn these records over to directors of the national board. There is only what appears to be a desperate desire on the part of Dan Coughlin and WBAI management to keep the records secret -- for reasons about which we can only speculate at this time. (A lawsuit on this issue is under review, and may soon be brought in the California courts by Patty Heffley, Lavarn Williams, and other directors of the foundation, with WBAI management and Dan Coughlin very likely to be named as defendants.)
4 -- WBAI's programming, and hence its entire revenue from listener fundraising, is in a state of collapse. It has been getting progressively worse for the last three years, culminating in this last fund drive, which is arguably the worst in WBAI history. (A target of $1.1 million was projected for an 18-day drive, but even after extending the drive for almost a full month, only $700,000+ was raised, of which only ca. 70%, or $490,000 will actually be collected.)
Because of poor programming policies, inept management of the fund drives themselves, the firing of popular programmers, and the alienation of listeners, the station's average daily revenue from listeners has fallen sharply during the three years that current management has been in control. But management has always denied that there was even a problem. By spinning the numbers (with the collusion of ex-Executive Director Dan Coughlin and Pacifica CFO Lonnie Hicks), it repeatedly told listeners and the national board that WBAI member support was actually rising -- then quietly extended each failing fund drive until enough money was raised to allow the station to struggle along until the next fund drive, with each drive now coming at tighter and tighter intervals.
Currently WBAI fundraises on air for approximately 92-95 days a year (a number which will surely increase, and which is double the number of days that our other four stations need to raise similar amounts). This means WBAI must pre-empt regular programming for 2 whole days (40%) out of every business week of the year in order to fundraise. Yet such increases in on-air fundraising have been proven to alienate listeners of public radio, who become bored or angry and stop supporting the station. [See Annoyance with Fundraising: The Public Radio Tracking Study. Special Report: Summer 2004 at <http://www.walrusresearch.com/reports/doc-114.htm>] Publicly the program director (who is mainly responsible for the present sad state of affairs) is all smiles and reassurances, while behind the scenes he is desperately stretching each failing fund drive out for longer and more damaging periods of time.
This strategy will soon destroy WBAI's fundraising ability altogether, and bankrupt the station. Yet the program director offers no new or different programs or fundraising plans -- only more of the same. And the national board, incredibly, seems willing to accept more of this same kind management at WBAI. This is beyond blindness and stupidity. It approaches the suicidal.
So what will happen? Our only hope is that the new interim general manager, Indra Hardat, will prove strong enough to stand up to Program Director Bernard White -- and replace him "for cause." We need a program director with new ideas (and a better attitude) who can heal internal strife and point the station in a new direction. Indra's heart is certainly in the right place -- but will she listen to it?
Steve Brown
Stephen M Brown sbrown13 at nyc.rr.com