9. Schubb. "Myth: Pacifica and KPFK have committed various acts of censorship. Reality: This is a lie." [He claims involves only "a handful of incidents in which individual programmers have irresponsibly diverted air time from programming air [sic] their personal grievances..."]

REAL REALITY: Schubb normalizes a gag rule as a reasonable, non-censorship policy. We have noted under #6 (above) that the gag rule has been applied to disciplining outsiders, and does not restrict pro-management commentaries on Pacifica issues. We should also point out that as any believer in free speech and/or opponent of the ongoing mainstreaming of Pacifica will tend to violate the gag rule, it has been a useful vehicle for weeding out both leftists and other merely principled people from KPFK and Pacifica.

But even on his definition of censorship that excludes the gag rule, Schubb misstates the facts. An attempt was made to censor Amy Goodman with Schubb's help in Washington on September 14, 2000, as we have noted, and all the attacks on her, and threats of discipline, have been a form of censorship.

Pacifica News Director Dan Coughlin, whose removal in 1999 for covering a Pacifica story prompted Pacifica News stringers to strike against censorship, reported constant pressures regarding content:

I was also told by the [Pacifica] executive director to tone down the news coverage. CPB [the Corporation for Public Broadcasting] wanted me to tone down the news coverage, to be more "balanced" as they put it. Especially this was at the time of the war against Yugoslavia, and they didn't want to hear...about 'our boys' dropping bombs and killing babies in Iraq. We don't want to hear about that on our airwaves. We don't want to hear about the police brutality.

Programmers at KPFK have also been given directives about political content: in February 1998, a memo was issued that forbade hosts to encourage listeners to demonstrate against the resumption of bombing in Iraq; a few months later, 30 programmers were briefed by Schubb and instructed to aim their political message to the "center" in the name of increasing audience size. Those attending Schubb's presentation were told that Pacifica was aiming for "balance" and "objectivity." "If you're gonna do a program on Jews, "Schubb reportedly said, "you better include a Nazi."

At a deeper level, the struggle at Pacifica is fundamentally about censorship: about who will be allowed to speak on Pacifica's airwaves, what they will be allowed to say, who will decide this and by what process. The Pacifica that Schubb speaks for is not only censoring directly and on a daily basis, it is imposing a new system that will cause Pacifica, as Utrice Leid says, to no longer be "a station of the left."

10. Schubb. "Myth: The current 'dissident campaign' is aimed at making the programming and management of Pacifica and KPFK more progressive." Reality: [In a nutshell: It was to help the lawsuits and ongoing boycott, which can only hurt Pacifica.]

REAL REALITY: Why those thousands should be spending money and time on lawyers and boycotts is incomprehensible to a man who cannot admit decent intentions on the part of people with whom he disagrees and who are challenging the vested interests he represents. He mentions that the Pacific board serves as "unpaid volunteers," implying decent motives, but the thousands spending time and money to get rid of the controlling Pacifica management bewilders Schubb and must be "irresponsible" like those programmers who insist on talking about Pacifica issues.

In fact, the goal of the protesters is to remove a management at Pacifica that has abandoned the traditional Pacifica aims and attempted to impose a new mission by attacking local control, community participation, worker democracy and freedom of speech and association. An authoritarian hierarchy has been established with no mechanisms of accountability to the communities that have built and sustained Pacifica for over fifty years. Instead, in the words of a Pacifica spokesperson, Pacifica is now to be accountable only to "the IRS, the CPB, [and] the FCC." [San Francisco Bay Guardian, March 3, 1999].

Former Pacifica CEO Pat Scott, a prime mover of the Pacifica takeover, declared at a 1996 "Media and Democracy Congress" that the goal of the reconfiguration was to make Pacifica a "leader of the progressive movement," while she simultaneously advocated corporate-style management. Neither Scott nor Schubb understands that if Pacifica wants to lead a pro-democracy movement, it must embody its aspirations.

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