Free Republic

The Pacifica Foundation, a Berkeley-based community radio network that includes the progressive radio station KPFA, is in financial crisis because of mounting debt — and is now teetering on the edge of bankruptcy. Pacifica, a nonprofit founded in 1946 by conscientious objectors from World War II, is the mother of America’s alternative radio, pioneering decades of left-leaning public affairs programs and community-based music.

Veteran broadcasters accuse the board of promoting bizarre conspiracy theories as network puts pressure on staff to reduce their hours and pay Feuding and ideological extremism have driven some of the US’s flagship leftwing radio stations to the brink of collapse, according to two veteran broadcasters. ...the country’s oldest public radio network, ... Masters said a station that once competed with National Public Radio affiliates had frittered away its credibility with ultra-leftwing rants – “discount versions of Radio Havana” – plus marketing of quack medical remedies such as curing cancer with baking soda and dietary supplements which supposedly cure Aids;...

Democracy Now “As long as justice is postponed we always stand on the verge of these darker nights of social disruption.” So said Martin Luther King Jr. in a speech on March 14, 1968, just three weeks before he was assassinated. Michael Brown’s killing in August continues to send shockwaves through Ferguson, Missouri, and beyond. Last Monday night, Saint Louis County prosecuting attorney Robert McCulloch unleashed a night of social disruption when he announced that no criminal charges would be filed against Darren Wilson, the police officer who killed Brown. McCulloch inexplicably delayed release of the grand jury findings until...

Just a few dozen stations now carry liberal talkers, as key affiliates in cities with active left-wing politics are falling like dominoes, going dark or switching formats. Detroit’s progressive outlet shut down in January, along with Seattle’s liberal talk station, which changed to sports. And after last year’s election, Portland’s progressive talk station ended its political programming. With the political battlegrounds of 2014 and 2016 on the horizon, reducing the whopping imbalance between conservative radio, with its huge fan base, and the left has become more important than ever, according to those in the progressive media world. POLITICO spoke with...

In its first report on press freedom in the United States, the Committee to Protect Journalists warns Obama has ushered in a paralyzing climate of fear for both reporters and their government sources. Among the case it details: six government employees - plus two contractors, including Edward Snowden - have faced felony criminal prosecutions since 2009 under the 1917 Espionage Act for leaking classified information to the press, compared with three such prosecutions in ALL previous U.S. administrations. ...

In a warren of offices at a former bank building near Madison Square Garden, dozens of journalists are at work on gleaming new electronic equipment, ready to turn their test runs of Al-Jazeera America into the real thing. The Qatar-based news organization will finally establish a firm foothold on American television Tuesday after a decade of trying. At 3 p.m. EDT, Al Gore's former Current TV will turn out the lights in more than 45 million TV homes, replaced by the new U.S. affiliate of Al-Jazeera. In Houston, the network will launch on 4DTV (Channel W5261), AT&T U-verse (Channel 189),...

For a guy known to hold some pretty strange views, this might be the most bizarre perspective on welfare policy I have ever seen. Here is Jerry Brown from his Pacifica Radio show in 1995 (full transcript here): The conventional viewpoint says we need a jobs program and we need to cut welfare. Just the opposite! We need more welfare and fewer jobs. Jobs for every American is doomed to failure because of modern automation and production. We ought to recognize it and create an income-maintenance system so every single American has the dignity and the wherewithal for shelter, basic...

We all know about NPR tote bags given as rewards during pledge week. The tax funded "public radio" station KPFA in Berkeley gives away "Marijuana Growers Guide" by Rosenthal for a $150 pledge. KPFA is part of "Pacifica", the ultra liberal, wackadoo radio network. And yes they are partially tax supported.

...note on their website tells the story: The power line to the KPFT transmitter tower was cut during the night, most likely by copper bandits. Harris County sheriffs are conducting an investigation at this time. The building housing our transmitter was damaged and must be repaired before the electrical service can be restored. It is possible we may be off-line for the remainder of the day, maybe longer. We are, however, still on in Galveston (yay 89.5!) and available thru our stream at www.kpt.org...

In an effort to gauge the overall condition of blacks in contemporary America, Democracy Now! host Amy Goodman turned yesterday to a pair of longtime haters of the United States: (a) Carl Dix, a founding member of the Revolutionary Communist Party, a Maoist vanguard dedicated to promoting civil unrest in the United States; and (b) Princeton University professor Cornel West, an avowed Marxist with close personal and ideological ties to the racial arsonist Al Sharpton and the Jew-hating leader of the Nation of Islam, Louis Farrakhan.

My guess is that she really doesn't know what she wants, or who she really is. It's probably dangerous to admit to a moment of empathy. I'll either get disqualified from ever becoming being a Supreme Court justice or asked to turn in my press card. But after watching reruns of Gov. Sarah Palin's resignation from the governorship, after hearing every grammatically challenged sentence and inconsistent paragraph dissected by some talk show host, I started to (blush) feel her pain. There was the frozen smile, the vulnerability, the odd grab bag of unfiltered, unedited, unintelligible un-reasons scattered across the lawn....

BANGOR, Maine — Folk singers Larry and Leslie Latour, along with Judd Esty-Kendall, will open a “Join Hands to End the War. Build the Peace. Rebuild the Economy” rally at 1 p.m. Saturday, Sept. 13, at Paul Bunyan Park on Main Street. [snip] Among the featured speakers will be Mary Trotochaud who with her husband, Rick McDowell, moved to Baghdad in 2003 to work with emerging Iraqi civil society organizations and coordinate relief and development projects for the American Friends Service Committee. Other speakers include labor activist Katrina Bisheimer; Iranian-American history student Hosain Aghamoosa; social worker Doug Crate; Veterans for...

The left blogosphere is outraged! Amy Goodman, whose "Democracy now!" website/radio/TV empire inhabits the far reaches of left wing activism, got herself arrested in St. Paul, and the arrest (which you can see on YouTube is being denounced as some for of violent atrocity. Watch the brief video for yourself and see:

If you were a former president of the United States of America, would you be doing an interview on a liberal, independent news program that airs on, amongst other things, public access and college radio stations? Should be able to get a better gig having once occupied the White House, dontcha think?Well, if your name is Jimmy Carter, and you had already sold your soul by giving an interview to the terrorist television network Al-Jazeera back in January, how much lower could you go? (Update: Please see Charles Johnson's answer!)Such must have been the presidential thinking on September 10th when...

Staffers look for clues in drive-by at KPFT No one was injured and there have been no arrests in the incident at Houston radio station Staffers look for clues in drive-by at KPFT No one was injured and there have been no arrests in the incident at Houston radio station A bullet hole in a window, an odd-caliber shell casing found in the street and the shadowy sighting of a slow-moving white car — that was all KPFT-FM staffers had to go on Monday as they searched for clues that might explain the early-morning drive-by shooting at their Montrose studio....

A bullet blasted through a Plexiglas window at KPFT radio early this morning, missing a woman's head by about 18 inches, said general manager Duane Bradley. The bullet was fired while another staff member was talking to three people at the station's front door, about 12 feet from the smashed window, Bradley said. The station is located in the 400 block of Lovett. No one was injured in the shooting, Bradley said. Bradley said the sometimes-controversial station airs blues, folk and other types of music as well as "alternative" programming about gay and lesbian issues and a program geared toward...

9/11 SKEPTICS' LUNATIC FRINGE TARGETS VICTIM'S WIDOW by Andrea Peyser July 16, 2007 -- THIS time, they've gone too far. A group of 9/11 conspiracy theorists - whackos who deny that jumbo jets brought down the World Trade Center - is on the attack. But their latest target isn't the government, which they claim destroyed the buildings with explosives. They're using a vicious Internet assault to pick on an elderly widow. "They're dirty sons of bastards! They are not real men," feisty Ellen Mariani, 69, told me. Ellen lost her husband aboard United 175 on Sept. 11, 2001. "They have...

When she was hired as general manager of KPFK (90.7 FM), Eva Georgia appeared to be a walking trophy of progressive brownie points: a black lesbian with an almost cinematic personal story of facing persecution as a leftist radio activist in South Africa. In the summer of 2002, after highly charged internal struggles at KPFK’s parent network, Pacifica — firings, lawsuits, listener rebellions — Georgia told the Los Angeles Times she would run the station by respecting the “process of democracy and transparency.” But by the fall of 2002, Georgia’s staffers were in open revolt, claiming that democracy and transparency...

AMY GOODMAN: Jim Gilchrist, who was the speaker at the event, joins us now from Irvine, California. He is the founder of the Minuteman Project and the co-author of "Minutemen: The Battle to Secure America's Borders". Here in studio in New York, I’m joined by Karina Garcia. She is the political chair of the Chicano Caucus at Columbia University. Her group organized the protest outside the Minuteman event. We asked a representative from Columbia University to join us as well, but they declined our invitation. Let's start with Jim Gilchrist. Can you talk about why you came to Columbia and...

In the performance of my daily work duties, I was watching some of Wednesday’s edition of Democracy Now! Now while this is one of my more painful duties, I often find myself stopping and watching out of sheer disgust and this was another of those instances. This Sunday night, HBO will be premiering the documentary "Baghdad ER" and DN hostess Amy Goodman’s demeanor during her interviews with the filmmakers and an Army doctor showed her contempt for our sons and daughters who were passing through the Baghdad hospital.