[Sosfbay-discuss] Flashpoints Crisis at KPFA! URGENT!

[Andrea Dorey]

Notification from Elected Pacifica Board Member Akio Tanaka:

  FLASHPOINTS TEETERING ON THE BRINK: A PLEA FOR COMMUNITY SUPPORT

KPFA management is hell-bent on destroying Flashpoints. They  
terminated the Knight report, cut Nora's hours in half, and wiped out  
our tech director position all together, in less than week.  
(Flashpoints has lost 50% of its budget under current management.   
Please! compare this to the Morning show and the KPFA news!! under  
the same management.) Meanwhile, the expanded budgets of the Morning  
show and the KPFA news, remain largely in tact, and management has  
created a new show, Letters to Washington, that features one of their  
strongest supporters, Mitch Jesserich. Jesserich, along with several  
other pro-management members of the KPFA's ruling cabal, verbally  
attacked Nora at a recent union meeting to tell her that Flashpoints  
is the most unpopular show in drive time. MJ’s kind words came right  
after the Flashpoints teams were given Lifetime Achievement Awards by  
Project Censored and the Media Freedom Foundation, and right before  
Nora, and I, and Flashpoints, were chosen  by Pulse Media’s to be  
honored and listed among the
20 Top Global Media Figures of 2009:
http://pulsemedia.org/2009/12/31/pulse-20-top-global-media-figures- 
of-2009

One of the verbal attackers, Sasha Lilley had just moved back into  
the union, after three years of working hand and hand with the  
current GM, censoring, preempting and disrupting Flashpoints, as  
Interim Program Director. She was the KPFA/CWA shop steward, before  
she took the IPD position, and now she's happily back in the union,  
verbally attacking Nora with her union cap back in place. Lilley  
attempted to give Nora a tongue-lashing because Nora enlisted the  
support of Noam Chomsky, Howard Zinn, Chris Hedges and many others,  
who have now singed onto a petition to not allow KPFA to use their  
voice or their great works to raise money until the program is  
restored to some semblance of working order. The third tongue-lasher,  
who went after Nora, was Aileen Alfindary, co-director of the greatly  
expanded KPFA evening news. According to a copy of the official  
2005/2006 budget, In the first year under current manager, Lemlem  
Rijio(gm at kpfa.org) the News budget received a $51,000 increase, while  
Flashpoints took ten thousand dollars in cuts. KPFA news now has 220  
staff hours on the books, compared to Flashpoints 80 staff hours. The  
KPFA news has not been cut. Fast forward to last night, when  
management failed to even supply a Board-Operator for a complicated  
drive time show the show like Flashpoints. So Nora, who came to work  
sick, because Flashpoints, unlike the KPFA news, does not have sick- 
day fill-in, was expected to run the board and make all the calls,  
plus cover Palestine. Guess what?  Palestine was neglected last night!!


Due to severe and greatly disproportionate cutbacks, Flashpoints is  
teetering on the brink. What happens next month when Nora(with a nine  
year old child) plans to put her life on the line again to report  
from Palestine. ( I assure you Nora's trip will not be funded by  
management, the way it RECENTLY Funded(even as Nora was being cut in  
two, the FP tec position wiped out, and Robert Knight Terminated)its  
strongest supporter in the news department, Brian Edward Tierket's  
trip to the Global Climate summit. BET once referred to us as  
"enemies" who need to be made to pay for our politics, in a now  
infamous letter sent to Lemlem Rijio, Sasha Lilley, and others.)  No,  
as usual, Nora will be forced to take a vacation in order to go and  
report on one of the most dangerous and important stories of our  
time, the lynch-pin for peace in the world. This time, however, based  
on the severe cutbacks, when Nora leaves for Palestine, the program  
will not be able to continue. So either she gives up the story or we  
give up the show: Not a pretty picture!!  Management knows this, and  
is hovering to put the final screws to Flashpoints.

  It has been made abundantly clear to the Flashpoints team, through  
word and deed, that we are not welcome at KPFA under current  
management, and they want to get rid of us. They despise our politics  
and our bold radical message.  Please, do not stand idly by and let  
them finish the job.  Stand up for Flashpoints Now.  If you have  
technical skills, as in editing on sound forge, or can think of any  
other way to support us in our battle to restore Flashpoints and keep  
the show going, please e-mail me at dbernstein at igc.org

  Dennis Bernstein, Executive Producer, Flashpoints


On Tue, Jan 5, 2010 at 4:45 PM, <dbernstein at igc.org> wrote: KPFA IAGM  
Amelia Gonzales(iagm at kpfa.org), former CWA shop steward, now interim  
assistant manager of KPFA

.

On Tue, Jan 5, 2010 at 4:45 PM, <dbernstein at igc.org> wrote:
Hi Amelia, We have just spoken. Nora confirmed with me that  you told  
her there is no board op scheduled for 5:00 today. I appreciate your  
last minute offer to board-op, but we can't work catch as catch can  
with a complicated live show, with as many as 12 add fifteen guest  
some time. At the very least we need a tec producer to be with us  
three hours a day from three to six. I am  now informing you, and GM  
Lemlem Rijio, that the  deep and disproportionate cuts current  
management has made to the Flashpoints show, along with a general  
refusal to even supply the show with a part time tech producer/board  
op, have effectively crippled it: To be clear, Management's cutting  
of three postions in a single week from the show, just before  
christmas, has made it impossible to do the work necessary.  It is  
very clear, that the Flashpoints show is unwelcome at KPFA by the  
current management.  And after sveral overt acts of censorship, and  
five years of intimidation and other hurtful tactics to hobble the  
show, management is using the budget it busted as an excuse to  
cripple the Flashpoints show. Consider this an open letter to the  
concerned Pacifica Community from around the world that deeply cares  
what happens to this show. I hope management will immediately  
consider at least amending its cuts to help us fufill the bare mimium  
need of the Flashpoints show.  Dennis Bernstein
::::

P U L S E "Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own  
one." PULSE: 20 Top Global Media Figures of 2009 with 5 comments  
After we published our list of 20 Top Global Thinkers, we thought we  
would be remiss if we did not also honor those media figures and  
institutions who bring these voices to us in the first place. With  
the goal of recognizing those individuals and institutions  
responsible for exemplary reportage and awareness-raising in 2009, we  
asked our editors and writers to name their choices for the top 20  
media figures, be they journalists, publications or publishers. We  
aggregated these nominations into the following list. Like our 20 Top  
Global Thinkers, our criteria for choosing media figures included  
people/publications/publishers who have shown a commitment to  
challenging power, holding it accountable, highlighting issues  
pertaining to peace and social justice and producing output that  
encourages critical thinking and questions conventional wisdom.

Nora
  Barrows-Friedman / Dennis Bernstein (Flashpoints)

Run by executive producer Dennis Bernstein and senior producer Nora  
Barrows-Friedman, the award-winning Flashpoints radio is an  
indispensable daily source for hard-hitting and incisive  
investigative and public affairs commentary.  Bernstein and Barrows- 
Friedman (a recent recipient of a Lifetime Achievement Media Freedom  
Award from Media Freedom Foundation/Project Censored) continue to  
tackle those issues which even some progressive media outlets shy  
away from, with a particular emphasis on Israel/Palestine, and on- 
location reporting from various international hotspots. Their  
uncensored and independent reportage provides a needed counter to the  
biased and corporate-influenced productions of mainstream journalism.

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