This space first encountered journalist Marc Cooper fifteen years ago, shortly after writing a story about the
hitherto secret plans of former Alameda County DA Ed Meese (while serving under then-governor Ronald Reagan in the 1970s) to conduct mass roundups of political protesters. At the time Cooper was working for
Larry Flynt's short-lived political magazine Rebel, and called to inquire whether I would like to write an expanded version of my article for Rebel. Perhaps, I said, but it would require a couple of months
for further research. He needed it by next week, he said, and offered a generous amount of money. He went on to intimate that strict accordance with the facts was not Rebel's highest priority. Regretfully, I
declined. Cooper has since gone on to become a contributing editor with The Nation. He hosts that magazine's weekly talk show on Pacifica radio, the
nationally syndicated RadioNation, and hosts a daily talk show on KPFK, the Pacifica station in Los Angeles. In recent days, he's emerged as perhaps the leading apologist for Pacifica's management in the
progressive press. True, his account of the imbroglio published in the August 9/16 Nation faulted Pacifica management for "stumbling badly" when it closed the station and locked out the staff, and
for "becoming the caricature drawn by its worst enemies" by calling in the police to arrest peaceful protesters. But in the finest on-the- one-hand, on-the-other-hand tradition, Cooper blames the
locked- out staff as well ("a group of committed leftists ripping apart their own institution in a factional dispute"). "[T]hose critics who wish to 'save' Pacifica," he opines,
"should take care that they not burn it down in the process."By Cooper's account, "The handful of people who work in Pacifica's national office for low wages, and the dozen or so liberal
do-gooders who volunteer on its nonprofit board, may very well be ineffective managers. But one reason for their intransigence is the hounding they have suffered in this crisis." How bad has it been?
"Pacifica's critics have branded them criminals and 'Pinochetistas' and accused them of plotting to seize the network for their own gain." The Nation has adopted Cooper's handwringing take on the
crisis, lamenting in its editorials the shortcomings of both sides. Can't we all just get along? Meanwhile, Cooper labors on, undertaking to dispel various "myths" about the situation in Berkeley
in the August 13 LA Weekly. The "myth": "KPFA's Dennis Bernstein was yanked from the air and arrested for trespassing because he broadcast something management didn't like." The
"reality," according to Cooper: "After Bernstein aired a program on July 13 that management alleged had broadcast internal disputes, he was asked to come to the manager's office so he could be
placed on 'administrative leave.' Instead of using KPFA's ample union protections to protest what he thought was an unjust attack, Bernstein went running through the station claiming he was in physical peril
and lodged himself under an equipment console in the news studio. The Evening News was on the air, but it was being interrupted by a jostling of the tape machine under which Bernstein was nesting. The news
anchor then switched his own news broadcast off the air, and Bernstein was given a mike. A startled Berkeley audience then heard Bernstein literally scream that he feared he was going to be hurt by the
station rent-a-cops. "KPFA's acting manager [Garland Ganter, imported from station KPFT in Houston] then did what any responsible person would do in his place: He shut down Bernstein's histrionics by
shutting down the station signals. Perhaps the acting manager could have solved this without police. But to believe that Bernstein was anything more than a reckless provocateur is a delusion."
Bernstein takes exception to this report in a devastating riposte on Save Pacifica's Web site, www.savepacifica.net (also published in Online Journal). Calling Cooper "an intellectual terrorist and
sniper," he presents three eyewitness accounts that flatly contradict Cooper's account, as well as a statement from news codirector Mark Mericle, whom Cooper had interviewed about the incident.
"Cooper either got it totally wrong," says Mericle, "or he made it up all together. It was a total distortion of what I told him." For the record: the material that Bernstein aired was
within the parameters laid out by Ganter himself; he was reporting on a news conference attended by members of the mainstream press. Bernstein wasn't simply placed on administrative leave, he was ordered to
immediately leave the building. He was invited into the news department, where he was pursued by Ganter and three guards. His jostling of the tape machine -- he never "nested" beneath it -- was
because Ganter was trying to grab him. Bernstein was never handed a mike. Rather, Mericle began broadcasting a play-by-play of the drama unfolding in front of him, and Bernstein could be heard in the
background. "What listeners heard from Dennis was his spontaneous interaction with the guards, not any type of speech directed at the audience," writes reporter Kellia Ramares. "He was there,
along with Mericle, news codirector Aileen Alfandary, myself and several others, all reporting a story that should never have to be reported in America: that broadcasting a press conference can cost a
reporter his job." Cooper's services to Pacifica assure that his own paid job with the network is secure. |
