For those of you following the censorship of Community Business on Flashpoints by KPFA and the finances of KPFA and Pacifica Foundation including their tax-exempt status, federal government funding, banking and endowment investments, I thought I would post recent developments.
The person who wrote a letter accusing me of of self-dealing has written a letter retracting his statement and apologizing for — among other things — not knowing my name. See his letter posted near the bottom of comments at Censored.
KPFA management has not returned my calls, so I have not spoken with them. However, I have been informed by Flashpoints staff that KPFA still will not let me return to the show.
My understanding is that Flashpoints may only have academics and not-for-profits to discuss economic issues. Small business people are not permitted to discuss economic matters on the show.
Stay tuned….
My censorship (see previous blog posts) is your financial opportunity.
KPFA was going to provide our 2-CD audio seminar Positioning Your Assets for Growth in Uncertain Times as a premium for donations of $120.
Solari sells it for $50 for mp3 and for $60 for CD. You can learn more and purchase at: http://www.solari.com/store/audio-seminars/positioning_your_assets/ .
The Positioning Your Assets audio seminar is an accumulation of our responses to thousands of questions we have received from our listeners and readers over many years.
Will we make money from this audio seminar? You bet! Are we proud to do so? You bet! We think sustainable small businesses are a terrific thing. We are proud to be a small business. We are proud to make money doing things that help you make money. We are proud to generate revenues that translate into income for employees, vendors and contractors and generate tax revenue for state and local government.
Our audio seminar pricing goal is to capture a portion of the value we create for our listeners and network. We believe that the price of this audio seminar is less than you will lose this month as a result of a falling dollar. If you listen to Positioning Your Assets with your neighbors and families, your purchase can help you save even more losses that are happening right now and impacting your quality of life and finances.
Thank you for your questions and your support. We appreciate your feedback and your business.
In abundance,
Catherine
What a hoot! Another example of KPFA/Pacifica’s inexperienced and unprofessional management shooting themselves and the station in the foot.
They wouldn’t know a “conflict of interest” if it bit them in the ass.
Just about every radio or other media commentator with any expertise at all would fit the bill, if you take the absurd standard being applied here. All the “health experts” on KPFA are certainly in the business of giving health advice for a living, all the authors on book tours who appear on The Morning Show and other programs … all the music groups, etc., etc. Just about every premium offered on KPFA is something that is offered for sale elsewhere by someone who is making money off it … the books, DVDs, CDs, etc., etc.
Catherine, this is too silly. But Bernstein is not popular with station management, so any complaint about his show results in immediate “investigations” and pulling people off the air, rather than cool and calm professional judgment.
The sad thing is that your perspective is extremely valuable to KPFA’s listening audience — and not something they’re likely to hear elsewhere. Also, I’m sure your seminars would have raised a lot of money for the station that is sorely needed. It is well known that the Pacifica Foundation is teetering on the edge of bankruptcy.
@Essie
You write: “Another example of KPFA/Pacifica’s inexperienced and unprofessional management shooting themselves and the station in the foot.”
We have a saying in Dutch: When smart people do stupid things, get suspicious!
Re: Essie’s comment.
Your second paragraph is part of my original point: I don’t like the idea of KPFA offering premiums at all. I think it does indeed compromise the station’s independence, and it moves the station closer and closer to sounding like just another KQED clone.
Also nobody on air ever mentions that your ‘tax deductible’ donation is only tax deductible after the ‘fair value’ of the premium is deducted from it. Which in some case means there’s no tax deduction at all.
It is duplicitous on the part of KPFA to engage in this kind of lying by not revealing all.
We’ve come to expect this kind of thing from everyone in recent years, but I might have hoped that KPFA would not descend to that level.
My message was not aimed at Catherine specifically. As I said, I found her comments enlightening.
It’s just that I had naively hoped that KPFA would remain the one place where people might provide enlightening information *without* making anything off of it.
Rex
Rex:
Here is the important question. Where should KPFA get its funding?
Currently, it gets money from:
1. Listener donations
2. Listener donations with premiums
3. Congressionally controlled appropriations through CBC, NEA
4. Foundations
5. Endowment earnings
If it does not use premiums, its dependency on the federal government will grow even more.
One alternative is that it switch to a for profit status and have advertising or it could make the archives available to subscribers only such as Coast-to-Coast does.
Whatever the model, there needs to be a sustainable financial model that supports editorial independence and integrity. Given the wealth available in the bay area, another possibility could be creating a serious endowment.
As someone who has been pushed out of a radio station, I can suggest that “There’s More To This Story”.
Probably someone didn’t like Catherine personally and the letter just provided the ammo.
And that person is high enough in the power tree that no-one else has the time, gumption, personal power and is already so distracted by their personal dramas to take on that upper management person that didn’t like Catherine.
For those of you who DO have the time and personal resources to take this on: This is my suggestion:
1) Go to the Board Meetings. Figure out who didn’t like Catherine.
2) Start sniffing “innocently” with the Socratic Method of questions to figure out WHY and WHO (one or more most likely) was out to get Catherine.
3) Then join the relevant subcommittees whose declarations in support of those who support Catherine would make it uncomfortable to be those upper managers that are out to get Catherine.
Be useful, become relevant to the functioning of that subcommittee.
(Note: This will all take quite a bit of time. Months)
Start getting policy developed and implemented that would make this more difficult in the future.
Also: “Board Development” and positive interaction with the volunteers is VITAL to keeping KPFA from sliding … it sounds boring, but pay LOTS of attention to it!
ALTERNATIVELY if you don’t have TIME for the positive approach above:
You could just write up a clearly defended and thought out position paper and send those to the funders of KPFA. Make sure you realize that this is a bit of potentially “nuclear option” as many funders may just pull back from drama and thus push the station further into the arms of remaining funders. This could actually INcrease concentration of power. That’s why I would prefer the slower but more positive approach.
To reduce the “nuclear effects” of this more destructive (but less time consuming) approach, make sure your letter ID’s the problem person on the Board and make sure the funder realizes this is one person (or clique) and not the many hundreds of people that make up KPFA.
Overall, I’d say this is an example of why we all must support a vibrant Low Power FM radio movement. If KPFA falls, but there’s a 100W pipsqueak that can take over the job of serving real community activity, then that backup, while weak, will at least provide SOME outlet for those frustrated by destructive ego BS. as it takes down a station.
This is an interesting debacle, as it calls a focus to the inconsistency of policy and also to the reaction by those duped by the very process that ‘Catherine’ discusses, specifically the tapeworm effect of shifting the commons to private pockets.
The idea of moving KPFA to a commercial station is exactly what the tapeworm effect would have happen, so I am surprised to see that suggestion from someone who understands the process.
Perhaps that was just a random suggestion, which also brings to bear that those in charge of KPFA should be vetted as highly experienced in managing NON-COMMERCIAL public radio. It seems Pacifica stations prefer to hire people who may have handled a megaphone well at some rally for some Cause Celebre. Those may be interesting people, but they may know nothing about running a non-profit business which is involved in media.
By the way, a radio station cannot become “more” dependent on the federal government, because one cannot simply ask for more money. From what I understand, KPFA is maxed out on fed grant funds (Community Service Grant from the Corp for Pub B’casting). So that is not a fear, nor can be used as a rally cry.
The most hypocritical aspect of this action by KPFA is exactly what has been talked about early on in this discussion: 99% of musicians and writers, poets and other artists, bloggers and politicians, are making a living from their appearance on KPFA. Even the hosts of the programs are getting paid in many cases. The stations sells commercial junk to raise money. The odd rationale for evicting Ms. Austin-Fitts just doesn’t make any sense, unless she was directly selling her discs on the air.