LEGENDARY BERKELEY RADIO STATION FIRES LEGENDARY
TALK SHOW HOST
BACK STORY: Berkeley, California's KPFA/Pacifica radio station, the only
radio station in America to have 10,000 of its listeners demonstrate against
it, finds itself in another controversy.
After
receiving what its program director said were hundreds of complaints from a
segment of its "progressive" audience, KPFA abruptly, capriciously,
and with no warning fired award-winning
author, journalist, and broadcaster Peter Laufer from his lively Sunday
morning radio talk show.
Program Director Sasha Lilley cited "negative audience feedback" and
said her reasons for canceling the popular show were "intangible"
but that Laufer was "just not right for Sunday." Lilley
offered to tell the public that Laufer was leaving "to go on to bigger
and better things." Laufer insisted that she better tell the public that
he was fired because that was what he was telling the public. Laufer
believes, based on letters and email, along with op-eds in the
"alternative press", that a group of malcontent KPFA
listener-activists orchestrated a smear campaign against him because he is, as
these critics wrote, "not a person of color" and because his
credentials (he's won virtually every prestigious broadcast journalism award)
are "too mainstream."
"The KPFA bumper sticker says 'Free Speech Radio' but apparently mob rule
is more accurate," Laufer mused from his Sonoma County coast side home,
enjoying his first Sunday morning off in the six months since he inaugurated
the KPFA show. "Ever since my undergraduate days,
Berkeley has symbolized diversity. But today's incarnation of KPFA wants
to march in a lockstep of so-called politically correct speech. I did the show
as a labor of love -- the salary about paid for my bridge tolls, gas, and a
Sunday dinner out. I am profoundly disappointed and concerned to see
that as commercial radio continues to homogenize, a longtime bastion of
innovation in the non-commercial radio world reacts with predictable narrow
mindedness. If you can't count on KPFA for tolerance of a diversity of
views, what can you count on? Of course I harbor no desire to return to
their airwaves after being treated in such a shabby fashion."
Peter Laufer is author of over a dozen well-received books of social and
political criticism; his most recent works probe the lives of soldiers opposed
to the Iraq War and promote open borders with Mexico. A former NBC news
correspondent -- where he produced and anchored the
first nationwide radio show on the HIV/AIDS crisis -- Laufer has reported the
news worldwide, and he won a Polk award for his documentary on Americans in
prison overseas. In his own backyard he shared a Peabody award as a
member of the KCBS news department when he
co-anchored the station's coverage of the 1989 earthquake that devastated the
Bay Area. He created the "National Geographic World Talk"
radio show, and is co-anchor with publisher Markos Kounalakis of the radio
program "Washington Monthly on the Radio." He guest
lectures at universities worldwide on media issues and his print journalism is
seen in a diverse array of publications from Penthouse to the London Sunday
Times magazine. Details of his work can be seen at www.peterlaufer.com.
Laufer sent the following open letter of protest to Nicole Sawaya, newly
installed as the Pacifica Foundation Executive Director, the network of
progressive radio stations that owns KPFA, and Dave Adelson, the Pacifica
National Board Chair.
Dear Nicole Sawaya and Dave Adelson:
I am profoundly disappointed that your Berkeley station KPFA has given in to
an orchestrated and hysterical campaign to remove me from my Sunday morning
talk show. Of course I was not doing the job for the meager amount of
money I received. I mistakenly believed that KPFA
had a commitment to a lively and diverse approach to free expression performed
in the context of creative and professionally produced radio theater. I
took on the show when it was offered to me for the opportunity to practice
live radio art, theater and journalism for my hometown audience.
My surprise firing was a tacky act and unworthy of the distinguished role
Pacifica has played in American media. Sasha Lilley, the KPFA program
director, reached me via telephone on my vacation in New York to inform me
that my role was terminated. Lilley said, and I quote from notes I took during
the phone call and from a follow-up email I received from her, "I really
like what you do on the air. You are certainly a team player and I have really
admired what you have brought to the airwaves." Nonetheless, with
no warning, I was given my verbal pink slip.
During the brief phone call, Lilley cited
correspondence she had received from listeners who, she said, did not like my
act. When I asked her why these letters were not brought to my attention
prior to this termination call, she hemmed and hawed an apology and allowed as
how that was probably a management mistake. In a subsequent call I
pointed out to her what any longtime
radio professional knows : were I to have known a cadre of listeners was
organizing an attack on my tenure, I could easily have mustered an equal or
greater response from my proactive audience of loyal Sunday morning listeners.
Instead, I serenely was cranking out excellent
programming, left unaware by Lilley and the rest of the KPFA management of my
vulnerability.
Radio aficionados may be amused to know that only once did Sasha Lilley
specifically chastise me for my performance. It came after I found an
old Viewmaster abandoned in the studio just before air time one day. I
clicked its shutter and was mesmerized by the familiar "ca-chunk"
sound of my youth. When the show started I offered the first person to
identify "the mystery sound" a prize: the book written by my first
guest that day, autographed by the author. "I hate the
mystery sound," Lilley told me later, and I cancelled plans for it to be
a running moment of frivolity on my otherwise serious show.
My firing came two days after I moderated a benefit for KPFA in Berkeley
featuring Naomi Wolf and Daniel Ellsberg -- an event that raised thousands of
dollars, and where the hundreds in the audience broke into hoots and hollers
of applause when I introduced myself from the stage as the anchor of the KPFA
Sunday show.
As an added bizarre twist, the firing came on the eve of a feature article in
the San Francisco Chronicle by Ben Fong-Torres about me and my talk radio
career. In it Fong-Torres cites my seminal book "Inside Talk Radio:
America's Voice or Just Hot Air?" and reports "Laufer
knows his stuff. He's qualified to offer an update on the state of talk
radio -- albeit from a decidedly left-of-center viewpoint." He
notes I founded talk stations in Berlin and Amsterdam, and that my talk radio
career dates back to the first-ever talk station. "Today," he
writes, "he hosts 'Sunday' a live program on KPFA." But
Chronicle readers who tuned in after reading the paean to my talk radio
expertise heard instead Sasha Lilley herself on the air, hosting my program,
with the halting explanation, "We've parted ways with Peter Laufer."
Firing is in her management toolbox, but apparently missing from her lexicon.
What gives in Berkeley? Is this the KPFA that I have known and loved?
This bodes sour for the future of radio in America. If you can't trust
Pacifica to protect avant-garde yet highly professional radio, what can you
believe in? Has the spirit of George Bush's intolerant regime reached
the trenches of Berkeley?
Sincerely and with regrets to report this news to you,
Peter Laufer
Contact: peterlaufer@peterlaufer.com
PETER LAUFER ON THE AIR IN D.C.
Esteemed
globe-trotting reporter Peter Laufer is now on the air in Washington D.C. San Francisco
and about a dozen other markets with a one-hour weekly talk show sponsored by Washington
Monthly magazine. Laufer's co-host is Markos Kounalakis, President and
Publisher of Washington Monthly, who, like Laufer, has an extensive
history of world-wide news reporting. The program covers politics, government
and culture and has become a dynamic forum for journalists, policy makers and
others to discuss the issues of the day.
Washington
Monthly on the Radio originates from the magazine's offices in San
Francisco and is broadcast in San Francisco, Sundays at 10pm on KABL. The
program can also be heard on XM'x POTUS '08 channel. Polipoint Press is publishing
an anthology of interviews from the first year in early 2008 titled
"Hope Is a Tattered Flag".
Laufer
has also taken a page from Jane Oliver's book of rare and distinctive
automobiles by acquiring a 1974 Austin FX 4 London taxi, which he brought back
to California after a stint working with Kelvin MacKenzie at talkSPORT, a
program heard throughout Great Britain. Laufer had his taxi restored in Sonoma
County. "See it sparkle!" he brags.
Moe
Armstrong and his Vets-to-Vets group in Connecticut are featured in the second
of a two-part article (Nov 11,12 07)by Los Angeles Times photographer, Luis
Sinco, who took
the picture of a soldier in Fallujah who became known as the "Marlboro
marine." The marine came home from the war with post-traumatic
stress disorder. After a very tough time, he reconnected with the
photographer, who gave him a lot of support, driving roundtrip from West
Virginia to West Haven, Connecticut, to contact Moe's organization several
times. Armstrong is quoted throughout the piece, which is both moving and
infuriating. He tells Jive95, "Vet to Vet is in forty sites across
America. I am starting to open up whole states now like Missouri and
Tennessee. Each One, Reach One, Teach One Gladly, Teach Gladly, Learn,
those are our mottos. 203 937 3850 is where you can order the video if
you are interested. Ask for Patricia Crann."
BEN
FONG TORRES IS BACK ON THE AIR with a weekend 2-hour show on KFRC
(itself just back on the air, playing 'classic hits' at 106.9 FM).
It's tighter than free-form; looser than Top 40 and KFRC's focus on 70's
rock/R&B, and fun to do, Ben says. Airs 7-9 a.m. Sundays, repeats at 7-9
p.m., and streams online at 
DJ & musicologist Miles Mellough has
written a tribute to KSAN on his most interesting website, 
The
40th Anniversary Celebration of the "Summer of Love" was
held in San Francisco's Golden Gate Park on Sunday, September 2, 2007.
Every age range was there, from some newborns out for
their first concert, to lots of young people checking out the scene, to
middle-agers ready to visit what they only heard about or saw from a distance
the first time around, and lots of tie-dyed older people who were clearly at
the original summer we were celebrating.
Most of the music throughout the day was very good.
Paul "The Lobster" Wells served as MC, and the feeling coming from
the stage was friendly and nostalgic without being overdone or sloppy. Among
the artists, there was a reunion of a few members of Moby Grape that I was
looking forward to hearing, along with Skip Spence's son. They tried awfully
hard but couldn't deliver much, which was an impossible task, really.
Country Joe was there and still sounded like good old Country Joe, as were
Barry Melton and The Fish doing their own separate set.
What's left of The Doors, who still tour, sounded great. Canned Heat made
their presence felt, a little too loud for me. Lester Chambers of the
Chambers Brothers was there doing some of the CB hits. Quicksilver Messenger
Service was represented, as were some Jefferson Starship members, Buddy Miles,
New Riders of the Purple Sage and the Charlatans were there too. A great
female lead singer whose name I missed belted out a great song. It could
have been Lydia Pence with Cold Blood because she was so good. I hope it
was her, but I'm not sure.
Scoop Nisker, the Buddhist KSAN newsman, spoke in between sets and said
"It's never too late for another Summer of Love," and Dr. Gene
Schoenfeld, (Dr. Hip Pocrates,) the columnist and KSAN commentator who
specialized in advice about sex and drugs, said how good it felt to be a part
of the day and that he was glad to see all of us. It was the largest
crowd I have ever been in, yet everything was free and easy. Remember that
feeling?
I had some good red wine from a bottle with a
"Summer of Love 40th Anniversary Celebration" label that I was happy
to take as a souvenir once it was empty. There was a tent near the wine
booth with a sign out front - "Video Production." I saw Paul Kantner
standing nearby as well as Merl Saunders sitting and laughing with someone.
With people going in and out of the tent, I assume somebody was doing
interviews and will, hopefully, document that day and give us the benefit of
many of the recollections of the stars from the original days. That should be
a treat.
Larry
Bensky, longtime newscaster, reporter, commentator, activist and teacher,
has retired after 38 years on the air, from KSAN in 1969 through KPFA, KBLX,
California Public Radio, NPR and Pacifica Radio.
BBC,
pirate radio and KSAN vet, Johnnie Walker has published his
autobiography. From pirate radio to Buckingham Palace and an MBE, Johnnie
tells the amazing story of how he came to be one of the best known and most
loved broadcasters in Britain with a voice recognized by millions. Obsessed
with music, the young Johnnie longed to move the crowd with the kind of beats
he found irresistible. Deejaying in local dance halls and pubs around his
childhood home in Solihull gave him a taste for playing his beloved music, and
his success showed he had real talent. A great future beckoned. With luck and
not a little front, he swung himself a slot on the newly launched pirate radio
station Radio England, and Johnnie Walker's incredible career began. Now his
book
tells the full and extraordinary story. Buy it 
Jane
Oliver, the Jive95's traffic czarina for many years, was always fond of '50s
cars, so when she received an inheritance from her late father, she went out
looking for one. In Tokerville, Utah, she found a car small enough to fit in her
garage. It was a rare 1938 Willys four-door sedan and Jane snapped it up. She
then researched car-restorers until she found a Willys specialist named Vinnie
in New York. She shipped the car to Vinnie and a year later got it back with
some custom changes, including a 350 engine and an Ooga ooga horn. Jane hired a
local upholsterer named Coker to trick out the interior with leather and finally
got it finished just as the inheritance ran out. Jane named her car "Nemo,"
not after our buddy at KSAN, but after the infamous captain. "This car
glides," says Jane. "It's just a rocket!" She takes it out for
Sunday morning cruises when the locals are at church and traffic is light. More
pictures of Nemo 
The
idea was conceived by Howie Klein, former "Outcastes" host on
KSAN, who now has a political blog called 
Roland
P. Young, former DJ and newsman at KSAN and later a multi-instrumentalist
composer and performer, has released his latest album, Isophonic Nation