Pacifica network crisis spreads: Award-winning journalist is banned from KPFK for exercising free speech rights

LOS ANGELES, California, Sept. 2--The crisis at the Pacifica Radio network has spread to this city as the California Legislative Audit committee continues its investigation of the Pacifica Foundation.

Yesterday, award-winning journalist Robin Urevich was banned from local radio station KPFK for an article she wrote for another publication

KPFK has come under fire for previous incidents of censorship, which Urevich documented in an article for Random Lengths. KPFK is part of the Pacifica Foundation, the nonprofit parent organization of five listener-sponsored radio stations nationwide.

In her article for Random Lengths, Urevich described KPFK management¹s censorship of two national radio shows, CounterSpin and Democracy Now, when those shows covered the crisis at KPFA in Berkeley. "In Southern California, KPFK listeners could read about the crisis on the front page of the Los Angeles Times, and in other major newspapers. But, they found little information on their own station. Management clumsily tried to keep it under wraps," Urevich wrote.

Yesterday KPFK Station Manager Mark Schubb told Urevich that because of the article, she would have to leave the station and would no longer be welcome there.

Urevich was a freelancer and volunteer news producer at KPFK for seven years. She also works as a journalist for Latino USA and the California Report of KQED-FM. Urevich won the Golden Mic award for best reporting by a network for a story she produced for Pacifica Network News.

"Any decent news outlet will respect the first amendment rights of its journalists. With this action, KPFK management has brought enormous shame to itself and to the Pacifica Foundation," said Norman Solomon, a nationally-syndicated media columnist and media critic.

In an interview with KPFA's Aileen Alfandary, Solomon said,  "Here is a reporter who stuck her neck out by writing an article for a newspaper criticizing the top management of KPFK and Pacifica, and here we are a few weeks down the line and that reporter gets fired. You don't have to be a rocket-scientist or social scientist to know that there are a lot of disincentives for journalists to be critical of the top management bosses, and it appears that if you lay these two events side by side, this journalist speaking out in a print venue on her own time in another media outlet and then weeks later being kicked out of the newsroom by the management that was criticized in the article, as I say, the odor is quite pronounced."

"I¹m appalled. Robin Urevich is know for her high quality journalism in both the English and Spanish-speaking communities. In addition to the most critical issue here, which is that of freedom of expression, I am also, as a member of the Latino community, very concerned that at KPFK there has been a systematic expulsion of programmers who can communicate with the Latino/Latina community and represent community concerns at the station," said Lydia Brazon, executive director of the Humanitarian Law Project and a member of the KPFK local advisory board.

"Robin is one of the top journalists at KPFK, and it¹s stunning that they would choose to remove a person--not for violating the gag rule--but for publishing an article about matters vitally affecting the community. It appears that the gag rule extends beyond the walls of KPFK to any activity whatsoever," said Dave Adelson, acting chair of the KPFK local advisory board.

At KPFK¹s sister station, KPFA in Berkeley, journalists were fired for violating the station's "gag rule," and one journalist was pulled off the air by armed guards in July, which led to close to 100 arrests of outraged community members and a month-long lockout at the station. The California Legislative Audit Committee is investigating whether the Pacifica Foundation has misused listener funds; and a lawsuit filed against the organization by local station advisory board members is pending.

In an interview yesterday with Alfandary for KPFA's Evening News, Urevich said of the "offending" article, "Basically I wrote it because there was a lot of talk about what was going on at KPFA but nobody was really focusing on what was going on at KPFK. And there were a lot of incidents of censorship here, where the crisis, even though it was a national news story was not broadcast at all and really, management had tried to cover it up in a clumsy way."

Urevich maintained, "There were also a lot of incidents where workers at KPFK, who were in the union, had trouble talking about the union at work and were often retaliated against. I felt like things like this needed to come out, so I wrote this article which was an opinion piece."

She said, "Today I was working at the station doing a piece for Pacifica Network News, which is usually what I do here. and Mark Schubb came in and said that he hadn't really followed my work but now he knew that I was an unethical, ill-intentioned journalist and that I wasn't welcome here anymore."

Alfandary said KPFA called Schubb twice, reaching an assistant said he would not comment for the KPFA story. "Schubb later returned the call when we were unavailable. Urevich says that Schubb was upset because he was cited in her story. She says Schubb told her he was not to be quoted. Urevich says while she did not quote Schubb directly, she did paraphrase his remarks and thought she had had his agreement to do so," said Alfandary.

"Urevich's story cited several instances of censorship at KPFK. One example: in July when the KPFA staff, including the two news directors, were arrested, Pacifica's Democracy Now ran interviews which included executive director [of the Pacifica Foundation Board] Lynn Chadwick. KPFK ran the program at 6 am but did not rebroadcast it, as usual, at 9 am. Schubb told Urevich the decision to withhold the rebroadcast was not his but Chadwick's."