The recent offer by Pacifica Foundation to lift its lockout of community radio station KPFA has only fueled suspicions among many staffers and their supporters that the Foundation is secretly plotting the station's sale. PNS contributing editor David Bacon, who hosts a show on labor issues at KPFA, explores the reasons behind their suspicions.

BERKELEY -- Pacifica Foundation's growing practice of saying one thing in public, while doing the complete opposite behind closed doors, reached a remarkable new height this week. For months board chair Mary Francis Berry, now-fired publicity flak Elan Fabbri, and even the Fineman public relations firm hired by Pacifica to replace her (specialists in corporate damage control in the wake of food poisonings and similar disasters), have denied that there were any plans for the sale of Berkeley radio station KPFA. But that was precisely the subject of two day-long telephone conference-call board meetings early this week. Members were warned not to divulge the explosive contents of the discussions.

On Tuesday, Berry first held a meeting of the board's executive committee, in which various scenarios were floated regarding the sale of the license of the station in Berkeley, or possibly of New York's WBAI. The following day, the full board debated the proposals. At the call's conclusion, board members decided they would eventually choose between various options for transferring ownership of the license(s).

Three board members dissented, and according to Pete Bramson, who represents the Bay Area, they were berated by Berry and her allies. Bramson was even accused of being a "fascist," he says. The whole discussion, coming on the heels of repeated denials that the move was even being contemplated, was too much for him, and he blew the lid at a press conference in front of the Berkeley station that afternoon.

KPFA is the U.S.'s oldest community broadcaster, a non-commercial station started in 1949 by pacifists. Historically, its staff has espoused a philosophy of using radio to promote free speech, providing a media voice for unrepresented communities, and broadcasting a political alternative to the corporate-dominated media. The Pacifica Foundation was established to hold the station's broadcast license. It now runs four others as well in New York, Los Angeles, Washington DC and Houston.

Conflict has been growing for years between the foundation and local stations. Programmers, especially in the large, unionized stations in Berkeley, New York and Los Angeles have wanted more democracy and local control over content. The foundation has hired unionbusters to develop its strategy for fighting station staff during contract negotiations. Its budget has expanded at the expense of local stations, from less than 4% twenty years ago to its current 17% of all revenue raised. Finally, Pacifica and its defenders have sought to make programming more "mainstream" and less overtly leftwing and progressive.

In this week's board meetings, however, while members discussed the sale of its flagship station in Berkeley in private, Berry began a media blitz publicizing a completely different proposal. She called the secretary-treasurer of the union representing KPFA paid employees, CWA Local 9415, and offered to end the immediate dispute which has paralyzed operations for weeks. Staff, both paid and unpaid, have been locked out of the station since July 13, when programmer Dennis Bernstein was hauled away from a microphone at the conclusion of his "Flashpoints" radio magazine show. Bernstein and 53 others were arrested for refusing to leave the station.

Berry's proposal seems crafted more for the media than for a resolution of the deep disagreements which lie at the root of the crisis. She was on the phone to newspapers from the Washington Post to the local Bay Area dailies before the afternoon was out, in a major PR offensive. Saying nothing about any possible sale, she announced she would open the station doors on Friday, let the staff run it until an interim station manager was appointed, and review the situation in nine months to determine whether KPFA had increased the number and diversity of its listeners (measured by the infamous Arbitron ratings service.)

The proposal, however, was not made at the table where a steering committee formed by the union, unpaid staff and community supporters has been in mediation with Pacifica for the last week. The plan avoids the key issues which lie at the heart of the dispute, including the firing of past station manager Nicole Sawaya and programmer Larry Bensky, and the democratization of control over staff and programming.

Furthermore, Berry told CWA secretary-treasurer Bill Harvey that the foundation only had enough money to pay the staff for another 2-3 weeks. Not only has the foundation squandered millions of dollars since the dispute began on expensive public relations campaigns and strong-arm guards, but it has sabotaged collection of the funds actually raised by station staff. In KPFA's last fundraising marathon, an outpouring of listener support raised pledges for over $600,000, way over the drive's target. But most listeners checked a box on the pledge form devised by staff, stating they were pledging under protest. Pacifica then wrote them back a letter saying the foundation couldn't accept money pledged under those conditions.

Meanwhile, board member David Acosta from Houston has proposed getting a loan for $5 million, using KPFA's broadcast license as collateral. That license is worth $65-75 million, if it is eventually sold to a commercial broadcaster.

Sale of the license is a complicated process. The foundation is a non-profit entity, and therefore a sale for profit, or to a for-profit corporation, would require state consent. Sixteen state legislators have cosigned a letter to Pacifica condemning its actions against KPFA, and it is questionable whether the foundation would get a sympathetic hearing from Attorney General Bill Lockyer, president pro-tem of the State Senate until his election last November.

Staff and community activists say that the nine-month grace period Berry is offering sounds suspiciously like the kind of time that would be necessary to negotiate the legal labyrinth a sale would entail.

Berry has continually criticized KPFA for having an audience of 200,000 people in a media market of over 4 million. She has accused the staff of lacking diversity and being unconcerned with reaching out to communities of color. Berry refers to the KPFA audience as white men over 50 in ponytails.

But outreach by staff members of color has produced crowds of listeners during demonstrations in front of KPFA, where a microtransmitter broadcasts programming to the surrounding neighborhood. Recent events featured an afternoon of music by reggae programmers, a full day Latino music celebration, and a labor speakout.

This outpouring of support from local communities has provided the political muscle which finally moved Pacifica to propose ending the lockout. In the recent labor rally, over 20 unions spoke in solidarity with the staff, along with an official representative of the state AFL-CIO.

The KPFA steering committee is set to return to mediation late this week, where it will probably receive a formal presentation of Berry's proposal to end the lockout. But even if the staff returns to the station, the new reality of a threatened sale means the struggle over community control of KPFA is far from over.