I mean:
From my perspective, pror to 1999, the station's focus had a limited geographic and political basis. I live on the peninsula (San Mateo and Santa Clara Counties -aka Silicon Valley and San Jose, the region's largest City) and there was virtually no coverage of anything happening in those places or elsewhere outside of Berkeley or the Oakland hills {The interest in the "How Berkeley Can you Be?" parade outside of Berkeley itself is limited at best)] The scope of political coverage also seemed to me to be limited. Although the San Francisco Bay Area progressive community is very diverse politically, the coverage seemed to be coming from the perspective of the Progressive wing of the Alameda County Democratic Party,which is fine as far it goes but what of the various Democrats in San Francisco or the North Bay? ITo say nothing of the anarchists, the various socialists, independents and other sundry tendencies within the larger Bay Area political community.
For instance, in 1999 a Green Party candidate got elected to the State Assembly out of Oakland. I recall no coverage of that on the KPFA news or morning show before it happened. Clearly taken by surprise, the Morning Show scrambled the day after the election but had no contacts within the campaign to get a comment from the victorious candidate. By contrast, extensive coverage was given to the campaign of DP hack Elihu Harris..
From my perspective, things got better after the station came back on the air in 1999. I remember that Ralph Nader's candidacy was given fair coverage on various programs -some pro and some cnn- in 2000.
After the lawsuit was settled, the old guard seemed to return to the old ways in its coverage. The news coverage was biased horribly against Nader and/or the Greens in 2004. In 2004, almost on a daily basis, the news department seemed to lead with a story that there were worries by progressives that Ralph Nader would get Bush elected - while there was sometimes balance in the body of the news cast itself, there was virtually always none when the headlines were read before Democracy Now! in the morning or at 4:00 pm before Hard Knock Radio.
Almost on a weekly basis, during the election seasons in 2003 and 2004, someone (usually Norman Solomon) was given 15-20 minutes to attack Nader or the Greens - with only rarely any balance provided (I recall never hearing any pro-Nader or Pro Green spokesperson being given a full segment to state their views nor did the Morning Show have Solomon on to talk about the piece he had written (this was in the summer of 2004) announcing the fact that he had joined the Green Party and was going to vote for Cobb). Were it not for Democracy Now and Flashpoints, I doubt very much Ralph Nader's voice would have been heard over KPFA air at all in the fall of 2004. I agree that Nader's run in 2004 was controversial and that the strong criticisms of his campaign that were made should have received a lot of air time. The point is that entrenched staffers had a bias against the Nader campaign and the Greens in general, and that bias shows.
(The bias isn't only toward Greens. I note the current drumbeat propaganda for "Run Ron Run" calling former Congress person Ron Dellums out of retirement to run for Mayor of Oakland next year while not covering at all the announced candidacy of Progressive Oakland City Council member Nancy Nadel).
As a long time support of Pacifica and KPFA, I feel it is importnat that KPFA be professinoally and democratically run, and not controlled by any particular clique or political tenedency. That is my motivation. {By way of comparison I do not know the history of WBAI, but I know that in KPFK, Pacifica's Los Angeles outlet, there was for decades, until Mark Schubb came into power as GM- in 1995- a very wide diversity of political viewpoints from right of the ADA to cultural nationalists, communists, socialists, libertarians, anarchists etc etc. KPFA even today does not approach that level of political diversity on its air). Steve -------------- Original message --------------
> Steven L. Robinson wrote:
>
> >programing that in the main did not adequately serve the diverse Bay
> >Area progressive community.
>
> What does that mean?
>
> Doug
> ___________________________________
> http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
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