Press Statement
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
August 20, 2001
Houston
Committee for People's Radio (HCPR)
www.hal-pc.org/~edi/hcpr.html
Houston
Chapter of the Pacifica Listeners Union
(PLU-KPFT)
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/plu-kpft
Contact: Edwin
Johnston edi@hal-pc.org
Listeners Demand Return of Pacifica's Premier
Investigative News Show
The membership of the Houston Committee for
People's Radio (HCPR) and the Houston chapter of the Pacifica Listeners Union
(PLU) are gravely concerned about the censorship and removal from the Houston
airwaves of the award-winning news show Democracy Now! For the past 5 years, the
hour-long radio program DN! has served as a beacon of investigative reporting
under the direction of stellar journalist Amy Goodman and her cohost Juan
Gonzalez. DN!, which has aired in Houston for more than 5 years, is a unique,
high-quality resource that presents a wider range of stories and voices than any
other US news program. DN! routinely covers political, environmental and social
justice topics (e.g. native peoples rights, corporate surveillance of workers
and living wage campaigns) that are excluded from mainstream corporate
media.
Recently, DN! has been come under attack by the executive
management of the Pacifica Radio Network, which syndicates the show to its 5
stations and over 70 affiliates. This has included direct attempts to dictate
program topics and unrelenting personal attacks against Goodman, the network's
leading reporter. Houston's Pacifica station, KPFT, has also censored broadcasts
of DN! most recently by blocking airing of a segment of the July 16th DN! show
on the Pacifica listener lawsuits. Leading up to last week's events, Goodman and
the staff of Democracy Now! have faced an escalating campaign of harassment by a
small number of Pacifica administrators including the manager at host station
WBAI in New York City. These actions have included moving DN! to a substandard
studio that was ill-equipped for production, physically accosting her and
assaulting her daily with derogatory remarks.
On Tuesday August 14, to
protect the safety of her staff, Amy Goodman moved production of DN! to a safe
location and transmitted via specialized high-quality phone lines (a method used
by two other daily programmers at Pacifica in New York). Despite the excellence
of these broadcasts, several Pacifica stations including KPFT/Houston have
refused to pick up the feed and instead have played DN! reruns. On Friday August
17, KPFT began broadcast of the authentic DN! feed. However, 15 minutes into the
show, KPFT switched abruptly (and without explanation) to an alternate feed of
an archival DN! provided by Pacifica national management. Callers to the station
were given no explanation but referred instead to station manager Garland
Ganter, who would only repeat that "KPFT has a right to control what goes over
its airwaves".
HCPR and the Houston PLU are citizen groups founded in
the last several years by KPFT listeners who were concerned about the lack of
community input, loss of public affairs programming and heavy-handed management
of KPFT and Pacifica. We believe that this shameful censorship episode by KPFT
is further indication of the station's abandonment of its commitment to
community service and excellence in news programming. We the listener-supporters
of KPFT demand the return of the authentic uncensored broadcast of Democracy
Now! The loss of DN! would mean silencing the most important voice of
independent journalism available to Houston's citizens.
Democracy Now!
needs to be back on the air, immediately.
Houston Statement on KPFT/Pacifica Violence 3/28/01
Joint Houston statement on WBAI violence 6/10/01
Joint Houston Statement on KPFT's Censorship of Democracy Now! 8/20/01
KPFT Loses in Court! DoJ Charges Filed Against Pacifica 9/6/01
Arrest of KPFT Local Advisory Board Member at KPFT 10/6/01
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