As has been the sad reality for some time now, the trouble comes not for breaking any news, not for investigative journalism, but for having wasted too much money -- and wasted it on bad radio.
The two of us have donated frequently to Pacifica over the years. We stopped in 2008 when Pacifica Radio lied to its audience, abused its audience and betrayed the trust and ethics public radio is supposed to operate under.
We're referring to the debate between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton that Pacifica announced they'd air -- only they couldn't.
So instead, they aired 'analysis' of it that would feature your questions left on their message board.
The 'analysis' -- we reported on this in "Radio: Panhandle Media" -- was as fake as anything Fox News could ever be accused of doing.
For those who missed it, Hillary would carry California in the primary. But, for some reason, the California-based broadcast featured only Barack supporters. They'd all endorsed him before the broadcast. A fact that Pacifica failed to tell you and presented multiple 'analysts' as objective observers.
Our report angered KPFA and we heard about it.
We "lied" about the message board, we were told.
We asked where?
And they insisted that we "lied" and that, sadly, there was a malfunction that wiped out the listener comments.
When? After the debate?
No.
It disappeared after we called the crap out.
How strange.
But what's stranger is that KPFA can't read.
If they could, they'd have realized pulling down the comments wouldn't disappear them.
That's because we copied them the night of the debate.
And we'd published them in the same edition calling out the 'analysis' of the debate (see "KPFA Blog from their debate coverage").
Prior to learning that (a) we had a copy and (b) that we had already published them, KPFA higher ups were using terms like "libel."
Confronted with the reality that they were cheap whores and liars, "libel" was never uttered again.
Barack Obama revealed the worst of KPFA, the worst of Pacifica.
You had the dreadful Aimee Allison defending Barack's use of drones to kill civilians in Pakistan. Which followed her KPFA crimes which included, but were not limited to, calling for book burning on air (The New Yorker was the 'book' in question).
When an, at best, centrist War Hawk occupied the White House, Pacifica Radio should have been in overdrive setting a left agenda for the country.
Instead they ran interference for Barack.
Over and over, they offered excuses, over and over they were unethical.
And that's true of no one as much as Amy Goodman who ended last week proving just how far she'd go to lie.
Ten leading Republican presidential candidates faced off in the first debate of the 2016 presidential election Thursday night. Fox News invited 10 candidates to take part: Jeb Bush, Ben Carson, Chris Christie, Ted Cruz, Mike Huckabee, John Kasich, Rand Paul, Marco Rubio, Donald Trump and Scott Walker. Some analysts described the debate as the Roger Ailes primary, since the head of Fox News had so much say in who participated in the prime-time event. Seven other Republican presidential candidates who didn’t make the cut participated in another debate earlier in the evening. Fox News said it calculated its top 10 list by averaging five national polls, a process which came under fire from polling agencies earlier this week.
That is how she ended Friday's show.
While it is true that liars like Rachel Maddow on MSNBC and Jon Stewart on Comedy Central had offered those critiques, they were baseless critiques.
As Alex Griswold (Mediate) noted on Wednesday:
Maddow pointed out that Fox News promised to use the five most recent nationally-recognized polls. However, Fox News omitted an NBC/WSJ poll, despite being the fifth-most-recent respected national poll. Instead, the network included an earlier poll from Quinnipiac. The result was that former Texas Gov. Rick Perry was not tied for tenth place with John Kasich, and instead finished eleventh, relegating himself to the earlier non-primetime debate. Maddow claimed that “it appears that what they did is just kick out the poll results that would make it look too close,” and accused the network of moving the goal-post.
But Maddow is wrong on at least one point: It’s actually not true that Fox News “arbitrarily” ignored a poll they should have included, as the network itself announced hours before Maddow went on the air.
One of the standards that Fox used was that polls had to “[mirror] the ballot by reading all candidate names in random order and without honorifics.” The NBC/WSJ poll did not. As Fox News wrote (again, hours before Maddow went on the air):
We did not include the highly-respected NBC/WSJ poll, which is the fifth most recent poll, only because it did not meet our criterion that the poll read the names of each Republican candidate in the vote question. We would note, however, even though their ballot question included Perry but did not name Kasich, the unaided “Kasich” response tied the aided “Perry” response. In short, their results are consistent with the results of the other polls in our review, and consistent with the resulting placement in the Fox News debate.This isn’t some arbitrary selection criteria Fox conjured out of thin air. By listing Perry and not Kasich, the NBC/WSJ poll put Kasich at a distinct disadvantage in the polling, and he still tied. If Perry had actually won in that poll, Kasich would have rightfully howled that Fox went with a poll that discriminated against another candidate.
Furthermore, a political scientist wrote for The Hill on Tuesday that Maddow’s and Jon Stewart‘s criticisms of the “arbitrary” Fox decisions were based on a “totally mistaken” understanding of margin of error. On Monday, the stat-heads at FiveThirtyEight defended Fox’s polling decisions by writing that “There’s no perfect way to sort the candidates for a debate primary.”
Yet two days later, on Friday, Goodman was offering "some" criticism by "some" without noting the realities or the facts.
She's just a cheap liar.
And she who criticizes Fox News for who they put on the air as a GOP candidate is the same lying bitch who pimps Jill Stein as the Green Party's 2016 presidential candidate when the primary hasn't been held and Jill is far from the only candidate.
She has a lot of nerve.
And she drains Pacifica Radio.
$650,000 a year she demands from Pacifica to air her program.
Her program that was Pacifica Radio's program until she demanded control of it and a board member being paid by Goodman's attorney signed off on the deal which gave Goodman control of the show and all of its archives.
Every few months, another liar comes forward insisting Pacifica must be saved via money.
Earlier this year, it was the liar Ernesto Aguilar (writing at Truth-Out).
Who?
The program director for KPFT.
Program director?
What is that?
Someone who goes through the Columbia Records and Tapes catalogue picking out albums to order?
We're aware, aren't we, that outside of music, all KPFT can really claim is a once a week LGBT show. In fairness, Queer Voices is one of the best LGBT programs airing over the airwaves in the United States.
But what else does program director Ernesto offer?
A lot of syndicated programs that can be heard elsewhere including online.
That's the real story of Pacifica Radio.
There's another story to it: The rise of Pacifica.
Forgotten now but from 2003 through 2006, Pacifica actually mattered.
It was calling out the Iraq War, it was featuring coverage of war resisters, it was calling out government spying, it actually mattered.
And as a result, it actually had listeners.
And, surprise, surprise, when programming that actually mattered was airing, listeners were happy to donate.
It's the story the Pacifica Radio defenders never tell.
Because it indicts the current crap that they air, alleged public affairs programming that exist to churn out the vote for the Democratic Party.
For those who've forgotten, Goodman and others insisted in the 90s that this was what Mary Frances Berry, Chair of Pacifica, was trying to do.
And Goodman and others insisted they were opposed to that. They launched a long and public battle that only ended in November 2001.
They said they were saving Pacifica from becoming a mouth piece for the Democratic Party.
But that's all it is now.
Yes, ridiculous Ralph Nader has a program.
It's one that treats the ongoing Iraq War as a past issue that ended long ago.
Ridiculous Ralph Nader also uses his program to promote Senator Bernie Sanders' campaign for the Democratic Party's 2016 presidential nomination.
Where's Cindy Sheehan's Pacifica Radio program?
They can give programs to hairy-backed Dave Zirin, Ralph Nader and assorted other men.
But not to Cindy who also refuses to sing from The Cult of St Barack hymnal.
Amy Goodman's a fake and a fraud.
If Pacifica going under means the death of her bad program, Pacifica can't go under soon enough.
