Return to Houston Radio Report homepage
A show that KPFT won’t carry
Free Speech Radio News: “The World” You Don’t Hear on KPFT
By Eileen Sutton & Chug Jones
In January 2000, the Pacifica Network News (PNN) was rocked by a strike from
their free-lance reporters across the Americas, Europe and Asia. The impetus
for this action was Pacifica management's implicit censorship of then-PNN News
Director Dan Coughlin by reassigning him after he broadcast a story about political
turmoil at the network. PNN reporters struck within months of the Berkeley crisis
because management altered and censored news stories and public affairs programming.
Pacifica had repeatedly silenced programs in mid-broadcast and ousted signature
voices such as Polk award-winner Larry Bensky.
The strike has met with widespread support from numerous progressives and unions.
Striking reporters say that the censorship now engulfing WBAI in New York is
but the latest attempt by Pacifica to keep listeners in the dark about the ongoing
corporate reorganization. Before the strike, many reporters received a substantial
portion of their income from PNN. The striking journalists were compelled to
withhold their labor in order to try to prevent the destruction of Pacifica
as an independent news source. The striking reporters are calling on management
to publicly renounce censorship throughout the network and to reinstate the
editorial independence of each station's news and programming divisions. Other
demands include the rehiring of former News Director Dan Coughlin.
But the strikers haven't stopped reporting the news. Starting in February 2000
with a weekly half-hour newscast, "Free Speech Radio News" then went to a daily
program in late May of this year, anchored by former veteran PNN host Verna
Avery-Brown. In its first month of daily broadcasting, FSRN featured stories
from twenty countries, nineteen US states, and Puerto Rico. Stories that FSRN
has reported (and which PNN has not) include coverage of offshore oil concessions
being proposed by Chevron, Texaco, and Mobil in Nigeria and a piece on Mexican
anti-logging activists. Building on its overwhelming success, daily FSRN reports
have now continued through the summer and are available on-line at www.fsrn.org
and on more than 35 community radio stations. Most of these are Pacifica affiliate
stations that have cancelled PNN to run FSRN.
Producing a national newscast is expensive, but FSRN -- in both its weekly and
daily incarnations -- has been produced on a shoe-string budget, with enthusiastic
financial support from listeners and community stations, including KBCS in Belleview,
WA and WMNF in Tampa, FL. FSRN developed during a time of immense technological
change. The internet, sophisticated audio applications, and other digital advances
offer exciting possibilities for transforming progressive media. Not only do
such means make a truly grassroots collection of news from around the world
possible, they mean instant, widespread, convenient access to sources of information
that were previously unavailable for many people. Progressives are highly critical
of the current corporate media monopoly and its inability to bring critical
news and analysis to a wide audience. With Free Speech Radio News, we believe
that here, now, is our chance.
Eileen Sutton was an unpaid news reporter at Pacifica station WBAI for three
years when she was banned following the recent Christmas Coup. She was
a stringer and helped organize the strike against Pacifica Network News.
She also files for Free Speech Radio News. KPFT station manager, Garland
Ganter, who has resisted running the FSRN broadcast (despite being free
and of better quality than PNN) can be reached at gganter@kpft.org.
Return to Houston Radio Report homepage
Visit the dissenters' kpftradio webpages
Email Houston Radio Report