As part of a chain of responses to a recent Indybay article, Alex Steinberg, the current Chair of the Board of the Pacifica Radio Foundation, rebutted arguments put forward by Akio Tanaka, self-appointed proposed Secretary of the New Day Pacifica board and past Pacifica National Board Director. The full article and numerous responses can be viewed here:
https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2021/04/03/18841369.php
Here are some excerpts from this interesting back and forth:
Akio Tanaka: The Pacifica National Board meets too often.
Alex Steinberg: Mr. Tanaka is being disingenuous. He knows perfectly that the main reason the PNB has been meeting so often in the past 3 years is due to a series of assaults against Pacifica that were supported by him and some of his colleagues. Some of these assaults include:
- The illegal shutdown of WBAI in 2019 which Mr. Tanka enthusiastically supported.
- The frivolous lawsuits against Pacifica initiated by Bill Campisi which Mr. Tanaka enthusiastically supported.
- The attempt to corporatize Pacifica in 2020 through a referendum that was defeated by a whopping 2-1 majority. Mr. Tanaka also enthusiastically supported that.
- The attempt to throw Pacifica into receivership through a lawsuit initiated by some of Mr. Tanaka’s colleagues on the KPFA LSB. Mr. Tanaka has not said what he thinks of that but neither has he gone on record against it.
- The new attempt to corporatize Pacifica and overthrow its democratic governance structure, otherwise known as New Day Pacifica.
Mr. Tanaka is not only an enthusiastic supporter of this abomination, he is also one of the named officers that will be shoved down the throats of Pacifica if the referendum should somehow prevail. Mr. Tanaka claims to support democracy but he is more than happy to be named an Officer of Pacifica without going through the exercise of actually running against someone else in an election.
The various assaults against Pacifica that Mr. Tanaka has supported have so far cost Pacifica somewhere between $500K and $1 million. This is what the legal bills, costs of financing referendums, and lost fund drives and other dislocations as a result of the shutdown of WBAI have cost Pacifica. I hope Mr. Tanaka is proud of his accomplishments.
Akio Tanaka: Pacifica has failed every audit since 2015.
Pacifica’s Board had forfeited nearly $7 million dollars in CPB grants since 2013.
Pacifica has no financial reserves and no money to pay a $3.2 million loan.
So, PNB has not been able to ensure the financial health of the Foundation.
Alex Steinberg: And as far as the financial health of Pacifica, it is true that Pacifica does face financial challenges, as do virtually all other radio broadcast organizations, regardless of whether they are small community radio stations, large NPR stations or even commercial stations.
I should add that Pacifica problems in losing its Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB) funding began when some of his colleagues from KPFA were running Pacifica. They badly neglected to monitor some elementary business practices and this resulted in Pacifica falling behind in our audits. That was the main reason for the loss of CPB funding. In those years the New York station, WBAI, was also saddled with a predatory lease for its tower at the Empire State Building which was clearly not sustainable.
Starting with a new PNB that came into office in 2018 there has been a concerted effort to fix the problems that caused Pacifica to lose its CPB funding and fall into debt. One of our best accomplishments was getting WBAI out of the predatory lease with Empire State. We saved $1.9 million dollars by getting out of the lease and reduced the monthly payments on the WBAI tower by 3/4, getting the rent down to a sustainable level. But in order to do that we had to take out a loan.
Mr. Tanaka and other proponents of the New Day bylaws rewrite never stop condemning the PNB for taking out that loan. But what was their alternative? It was the bankruptcy of Pacifica and the sale of the WBAI signal.
You decide which was worse, the breakup of Pacifica as a network and the loss of our voice in the most important media market in the country, or a loan that buys us time to get our affairs in order and maintain Pacifica.
Mr. Tanaka and the other New Day proponents have tried to panic Pacifica listeners by claiming that we are about to default on the loan and have no plans to pay it back! Well guess what, not only have we not defaulted on the loan, we just renegotiated the terms of the loan for another 18 months. We also received a very positive review from our Auditor who was impressed at the improvements that Pacifica has made in getting its financial house into order in the past 2 years. And we have very concrete plans to pay back the loan.
In contrast what do Mr. Tanaka and the other New Day people propose as their plan to pay back the loan? If they have any plan, we haven’t heard it. We are somehow supposed to trust this group of inexperienced, hand-picked group of Officers to fix things. Some of the New Day proponents are on the PNB. Yet I have never heard any of them present any alternative financial plans either on the PNB or any of its committees. If you think that trusting Mr. Tanaka and his friends to fix Pacifica’s financial problems is not an example of magical thinking, I don’t know what is.
If you agree or just want to learn more, please visit the Pacifica Democracy Project Alex Steinberg, Chair, Pacifica National Board, Writing in a personal capacity.
Go to https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2021/04/03/18841369.php to read the original article and all the pro and con arguments.
