PACIFICA JOURNALISTS STRIKE AGAINST CENSORSHIP
Pacifica Radio's top free-lance reporters and
contributors, backed by several nationally-recognized, free speech
organizations have struck Pacifica's national-news program to protest
on-going censorship at the 50-year-old community-radio network.
"Management has not only failed to stop censoring the
news," said PNN contributor Aaron Glantz from his base in Berkeley,
"management has not even bothered to contact us to respond to our
concerns. So we have no choice but to strike," Glantz added.
Since the strikers demands were delivered to management
last Monday, additional stringers have joined the action, and several
affiliate stations are considering a boycott of Pacifica Network News as
an act of solidarity with the striking reporters.
Dozens of journalists from across the Americas, Europe and Asia, many of
whom have won the industry's top awards, will strike for the next three
months unless Mary Frances Berry, who chairs both the U.S. Civil Rights
Commission and the Pacifica Foundation, publicly renounces censorship
throughout the network, and reasserts the editorial independence of
Pacifica's local and national-news divisions. The striking journalists
comprise a majority of active contributors and reporters to Pacifica
Network News, PNN, a daily, half-hour news program that airs on some 70
radio stations nationally. In a recent two-month period, nearly 70% of
Pacifica's stories came from its stringers.
The strike is supported by the media watchdog group
Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, Project Censored, and the National
Association for Freedom of Expression. "The survival of PNN as a
reliable source of information is very much in doubt," said
syndicated media critic Norman Solomon, "this strike may be the last
chance to make PNN something trustworthy."
"The type of direct censorship of news personnel and programming
which Pacifica management has been engaging in throughout the network's
recent crisis would be reprehensible at any U.S. media outlet, not just
one which claims to present an alternative viewpoint," added former
Pacifica Network News director JoAnn Kawell.
Kawell, who is on the steering committee of the National Writers Union,
San Francisco Bay Area local, appeared at a press conference yesterday
with the striking journalists. The conference took place in front of
Pacifica's vacant national office in Berkeley, which it abandoned in a
recent move to Washington DC. Other speakers included Peter Phillips,
director of Project Censored; Aileen Alfandary, co-director of the KPFA
News and member of CWA Local 9415; Matthew Lasar, author of "Pacifica
Radio: the Rise of an Alternative Network"; and Larry Bensky, who was
Pacifica's national affairs correspondent until he was fired for speaking
out on the Pacifica crisis.
YOUR HELP IS NEEDED -- PLEASE SUPPORT THE STRIKERS!
Go to the strikers' web site at http://www.savepacifica.net/strike.
There, you can sign the online petition and/or send a letter to the
Pacifica Board supporting the strikers' demands.
Strike endorsements are also being sought from unions,
academics, community groups, journalists, and free speech organizations. A
strike fund has been set up to help support the workers who are putting
their livelihoods on the line to fight censorship.
Pacifica Reporters Against Censorship, which is coordinating the strike,
can also be reached at pnnstrikers@igc.org
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