Larry Bensky, host of the weekly "Sunday Salon" program on Pacifica, has been fired by Pacifica Executive director Lynn Chadwick, and his program cancelled. In a letter to Bensky, Chadwick states that the firing is because of Bensky's "repeated" violation of Pacifica's policy of not discussing internal matters on the air.
Bensky devoted seventeen minutes of his two-hour program last week to Pacifica's firing of KPFA's popular station manager, Nicole Sawaya, and the controversy, which has resulted. He read a statement by the KPFA staff criticizing the firing, refuted statements by Chadwick about him and his situation (he was previously "terminated" by Pacifica in December, and re-hired after hundreds of protest calls and letters to Chadwick and board chair Mary Frances Berry), and also read a statement he had prepared for delivery to the Pacifica national board at its Berkeley meeting in February.
Meanwhile, six KPFA staff members, paid and unpaid, have received disciplinary warnings after reading a statement of solidarity with Sawaya on the air. The six include KPFA morning show co-host Philip Maldari, "Flashpoints" producer/host Dennis Bernstein, and Labor commentator David Bacon. Many KPFA program hosts continue to read the statement on the air, and KPFA program director Andrea Kissack, who delivered the warnings at Chadwick's orders, says she will no longer cooperate in the "disciplinary" process, which may lead to further dismissals. Protests about Bensky's dismissal and the actions against others at KPFA protesting Nicole Sawaya's dismissal and the arbitrary and dangerous actions of a clearly out-of-control Pacifica management may be made to Chadwick and Berry.
In the eve of its 50th birthday, the staff of Berkeley' s KPFA radio is in open revolt, engulfed in a struggle over free speech, the very issue that has defined its existence. The immediate enemy this time is not the government, which is lurking in the background, but its corporate owner, the Pacifica Foundation, whose Executive director Lynn Chadwick, shocked station staff and listeners by firing KPFA's popular general manager Nicole Sawaya on March 31, the last day of her probationary contract.. (Counterpunch April 1-15)
After witnessing through her cloudy glass window a demonstration of more than 150 staff and listeners on April 2, demanding Sawaya's reinstatement ,and listening to a week of on-air comments and news reports all critical of the firing, and all in violation of her direct orders, Chadwick struck back, but as your typical corporate functionary, she didn't do it herself.
After installing herself general manager, she ordered program director, Andrea Kissack, to give a "first warning" to six staff members including Flashpoints host Dennis Bernstein and long-time Morning Show co-host Philip Maldari for reading a staff statement protesting the firing on the air. Their crime: breaking Pacifica's notorious gag rule which prohibits staff at the bastion of free- speech radio from mentioning station business on the air.
In liberal Pacifica, a programmer has four strikes before he or she is out. The second is a written warning; the third, suspension without pay, and finally the coup de grace, termination, a word that more rolls more easily off the bureaucratic tongue than "firing." (On April 8, Maldari, close to tears, read the staff's statement on the air again, thereby opening himself up to receiving a written warning.)
According to the KPFA news, Kissack had pleaded with Chadwick not to be asked to give warning notices to the numerous programmers, who went on the air after the firing and through the weekend, denouncing Chadwick's action, "because of the high emotions running through the station." On April 7, however, with emotions still high in the station , she capitulated. According to the KPFA news, she said she was "only following orders." Undeterred, KPFA programmers have continued to repeat the announcement that had been agreed upon at a packed staff meeting the day before:
"After relating how Sawaya was fired because, allegedly, "she wasn't a good fit for the organization., the statement read, " KPFA's paid and unpaid staff unanimously demands the return of Nicole as well as independent mediation of the dispute. We also appeal to our listeners for their support and assistance in this difficult time. This statement was prepared after KPFA's staff met and decided to take unified action even though reading this statement violates Pacifica's order not to mention the ongoing dispute on the air. " Listeners were asked to e-mail staff at <savepacifica@hotmail.com> or phone the station at 510-848-6767."
Larry Bensky has announced openly that he will neither meet with Chadwick nor obey the gag rule and has promised, as the KPFA news reported on April 8, that he will devote his national Pacifica show. Sunday Salon, airing on April 10, to the firing and its aftermath. Chadwick will be hard pressed to threaten penalties against others while leaving him alone. Not only did Bensky make a fiery speech at the staff and listener rally, on his April 4th show he dissected a statement that Chadwick had carefully prepared for the press, which said, among other things, that the firing of Sawaya was "not news.".
Moreover, he read the Pacifica staff statement followed by the presentation he was prevented from completing at the Pacifica Board meeting in Berkeley on February 28, which graphically detailed the expansion of Pacifica's power at the expense of its five stations over the past two decades. Not stopping there, he gave out the phone, fax and e-mail addresses for Chadwick and Pacifica Board Chair Mary Frances Berry, and announced that the staff had set up an e-mail list with a web site to provide information and to elicit comments from the listeners. As of Thursday, March 8, Berry had apparently received so many faxes that she disconnected the line.
This was Pacifica's second major controversy in a little more than a month. Counterpunch readers will recall the battle over a by-law change which allowed the Pacifica Board to become a totally self- selecting, self-perpetuating entity, accountable only to the FCC, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and the IRS, according to the network's "communications director," Elan Fabri.
The firing of Sawaya was too much, as well, for the station's 50th anniversary committee which was ready to initiate a major fund drive on April 15, KPFA's 50th birthday. The committee, composed of both major donors and old friends of the station, announced, April 5, that it had "decided unanimously to temporarily suspend our activities due to the ongoing crisis within Pacifica triggered but not limited to the precipitous termination of General Manager Nicole Sawaya."
"To have provoked predictable turmoil within the KPFA community on the eve of launching the 50th anniversary capital campaign has made it impossible for us to carry on." the statement continued. "This action can only have a concomitant ripple effect on the larger Pacifica community and alienate our base of support."
Instead of a celebration on April 15, the staff is calling for a major rally by listeners and staff in front of the station at noon. For information: e-mail: savepacifica@hotmail.com; see: http://www.radio4all.org/freepacifica and call the station at 510-848- 6767.CP
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