KPFA Election My Views, Virginia Browning
This essay is also at SONOMA COUNTY PEACE PRESS
KPFA Board Election: My Views
by Virginia Browning
I happen to listen to KPFA radio 94.1 FM, KPFA.org. Why in the name of Jah or Jinglebells -- radio? Even more, why KPFA?
Breakfast, lunch, & dinner-fixing -- radio --relevant, quick, can be so good. With some background in community radio, I helped enable dialog in conservative Utah. Connective, informative, fun.
But KPFA, PLO radio? Sure I've heard that. Despite that for years KPFA mostly walked a careful two-state line on Israel, some felt any perceived critique of Israel was treason, so switched off the whole KPFA kaleidoscope. Even other media now report that Israeli leaders torching fields and homes are way out of bounds. Aside from that issue, KPFA is encyclopedic and extremely rich in riveting personal histories that open far beyond the personal. Also some music is to melt arthritic implacables. Stream and archives are online. Listen to some alternative views. Skip six minutes of semicorporate news or listen with a grain of salt (and vote for "Rescue Pacifica" calling for improvement**).
KPFA's 2023 Local Station Board Election
KPFA, one of five Pacifica Network stations and some 220 affiliated stations, is holding an election for its local station board (LSB), from which are elected directors of the larger network. If you've given $25 to KPFA between July 1, 2022 and June 30, 2023 or completed three hours of eligible volunteer work to the station (not likely since COVID), you're eligible to vote this year. You should receive instructions by email in August.
If not, you can write to NES@pacifica.org or see elections.pacifica.org. More information about the KPFA Local Station Election and candidates, here. Some question this elected board structure. I think the structure needs improvement.
BUT right now, if we leave it to KPFA's board majority, I fear we will get more shows such as the new nine hours a week of slickly preened "Background Briefing" -- a proudly CIA/FBI and Washington-consensus infested show promoting weapons transfers worldwide (like the world needs more of that?). You can get that on a whole range of other stations, including several you probably think of as "public." We need something with an alternative viewpoint (which I grant you might find a tad of around here if you don't blink). Increasingly, KPFA offers this style, placing "progressive" crumbs strewn among the poison seeds. Effective propaganda generally mixes truth, half-truth, distortion, omission, and removal of some context and perspective.
Pacifica Network, you might have heard, is in dire financial health. Yes, as usual, but more than usual. Radio everywhere is holding on by a thread -- except right-wing radio, waiting in the wings to snap up near corpses. Disaster Capitalism.
Issues: Programming informed by community needs, strengthened by community participation. KPFA airs stunning programs and too few know it. Moving to digital. Greener? Cheaper? Hackable?
Community involvement and dialog can only increase the good.
True community radio says "It's possible." Training and coordination by all workers there, paid and not, should move KPFA into the more lucrative, in fact, progressive era. KPFA has an outsized role in the larger direction of Pacifica, which is partly why it's so dishonest to hear locals bashing their "parent" (Pacifica) when they have for the most part caused the problems.
Some KPFA Treasures
Hard Knock Radio, Anita Johnson: segments of Mumia, Davey D's lyrically profound insight -- Letters and Politics, Mitch Jeserich's calm deep eye-contact questions: California, A Slave State, several wonderfully offered Daniel Ellsberg tributes, Education Today with incisive interviewer and longtime activist intellect Kitty Kelly Epstein, Project Censored, curated by experienced hosts and media students all over. These and many others, music from rare treasure Art Sato: In Your Ear, or deep honorable Avotcja: Bebop, Cubop and the Musical Truth. A gorgeous variety of music.
Mostly. I don't want the whole network to be run by dishonest people out to canibalize it.
I've heard "Rebel News" volunteers have re-grouped to air a masterful mix of news now on KPFK despite the slasherating. Go volunteers. Many of us at KPFA, including some of us quite experienced in news gathering, volunteered to help only to be turned away in favor of a cadre of select paid staff controllers. We should be working together (and it's cheaper!).
Shedding Some Light on KPFA
How the Seizure of a Radio Station Led to the Seizure of $305,000 from KPFA, dissidentvoice.org
Why didn't KPFA defend its journalist? Daniel Borgström
Proposal for mediated network-wide involvement to improve the bylaws by listeners, staff, community members, in an inclusive manner. Go to Daniel's Free Speech Zone.
Virginia Browning has recorded, condensed, and aired news -- about the environment and the military economy at a community radio station in Utah, understanding the enormous power of open media, she has listened closely to, and watched politics, at KPFA for 20 years.
VIRGINIA BROWNING
This article is reposted from the SONOMA COUNTY PEACE PRESS of Aug/Sept 2023
LINKS
How the Seizure of a Radio Station Led to the Seizure of $305,000 from KPFA by Daniel Borgström / December 18th, 2022 here
Why didn't KPFA defend its journalist?" by Daniel Borgström, September 2022 here
Bylaws improvement undermining by Virginia Browning
KPFA Board Election: My Views
by Virginia Browning
I happen to listen to KPFA radio 94.1 FM, KPFA.org. Why in the name of Jah or Jinglebells -- radio? Even more, why KPFA?
Breakfast, lunch, & dinner-fixing -- radio --relevant, quick, can be so good. With some background in community radio, I helped enable dialog in conservative Utah. Connective, informative, fun.
But KPFA, PLO radio? Sure I've heard that. Despite that for years KPFA mostly walked a careful two-state line on Israel, some felt any perceived critique of Israel was treason, so switched off the whole KPFA kaleidoscope. Even other media now report that Israeli leaders torching fields and homes are way out of bounds. Aside from that issue, KPFA is encyclopedic and extremely rich in riveting personal histories that open far beyond the personal. Also some music is to melt arthritic implacables. Stream and archives are online. Listen to some alternative views. Skip six minutes of semicorporate news or listen with a grain of salt (and vote for "Rescue Pacifica" calling for improvement**).
KPFA's 2023 Local Station Board Election
KPFA, one of five Pacifica Network stations and some 220 affiliated stations, is holding an election for its local station board (LSB), from which are elected directors of the larger network. If you've given $25 to KPFA between July 1, 2022 and June 30, 2023 or completed three hours of eligible volunteer work to the station (not likely since COVID), you're eligible to vote this year. You should receive instructions by email in August.
If not, you can write to NES@pacifica.org or see elections.pacifica.org. More information about the KPFA Local Station Election and candidates, here. Some question this elected board structure. I think the structure needs improvement.
BUT right now, if we leave it to KPFA's board majority, I fear we will get more shows such as the new nine hours a week of slickly preened "Background Briefing" -- a proudly CIA/FBI and Washington-consensus infested show promoting weapons transfers worldwide (like the world needs more of that?). You can get that on a whole range of other stations, including several you probably think of as "public." We need something with an alternative viewpoint (which I grant you might find a tad of around here if you don't blink). Increasingly, KPFA offers this style, placing "progressive" crumbs strewn among the poison seeds. Effective propaganda generally mixes truth, half-truth, distortion, omission, and removal of some context and perspective.
Pacifica Network, you might have heard, is in dire financial health. Yes, as usual, but more than usual. Radio everywhere is holding on by a thread -- except right-wing radio, waiting in the wings to snap up near corpses. Disaster Capitalism.
Issues: Programming informed by community needs, strengthened by community participation. KPFA airs stunning programs and too few know it. Moving to digital. Greener? Cheaper? Hackable?
Community involvement and dialog can only increase the good.
True community radio says "It's possible." Training and coordination by all workers there, paid and not, should move KPFA into the more lucrative, in fact, progressive era. KPFA has an outsized role in the larger direction of Pacifica, which is partly why it's so dishonest to hear locals bashing their "parent" (Pacifica) when they have for the most part caused the problems.
Some KPFA Treasures
Hard Knock Radio, Anita Johnson: segments of Mumia, Davey D's lyrically profound insight -- Letters and Politics, Mitch Jeserich's calm deep eye-contact questions: California, A Slave State, several wonderfully offered Daniel Ellsberg tributes, Education Today with incisive interviewer and longtime activist intellect Kitty Kelly Epstein, Project Censored, curated by experienced hosts and media students all over. These and many others, music from rare treasure Art Sato: In Your Ear, or deep honorable Avotcja: Bebop, Cubop and the Musical Truth. A gorgeous variety of music.
Mostly. I don't want the whole network to be run by dishonest people out to canibalize it.
I've heard "Rebel News" volunteers have re-grouped to air a masterful mix of news now on KPFK despite the slasherating. Go volunteers. Many of us at KPFA, including some of us quite experienced in news gathering, volunteered to help only to be turned away in favor of a cadre of select paid staff controllers. We should be working together (and it's cheaper!).
Shedding Some Light on KPFA
How the Seizure of a Radio Station Led to the Seizure of $305,000 from KPFA, dissidentvoice.org
Why didn't KPFA defend its journalist? Daniel Borgström
Proposal for mediated network-wide involvement to improve the bylaws by listeners, staff, community members, in an inclusive manner. Go to Daniel's Free Speech Zone.
Virginia Browning has recorded, condensed, and aired news -- about the environment and the military economy at a community radio station in Utah, understanding the enormous power of open media, she has listened closely to, and watched politics, at KPFA for 20 years.
VIRGINIA BROWNING
This article is reposted from the SONOMA COUNTY PEACE PRESS of Aug/Sept 2023
LINKS
How the Seizure of a Radio Station Led to the Seizure of $305,000 from KPFA by Daniel Borgström / December 18th, 2022 here
Why didn't KPFA defend its journalist?" by Daniel Borgström, September 2022 here
Bylaws improvement undermining by Virginia Browning
