On Sun, 30 Mar 2008, Jonathan Markowitz wrote: <snip> >Since he's 'plugged' in (a la The Matrix) to Pacifica's behind the >scenes channels, Maybe Terry Goodman can explain to us what >the stated and underlying political reasons were for Herrera's removal. I have no inside information on this case. As reported by Dennis Bernstein, the stated reason for the ban was an incident connected with a different program that occurred a week earlier, and the ban was characterized as temporary, pending additional investigation. Dennis did not provide any specific details of the incident that management claimed to be responding to. Jonathan is quick to suspect primacy of a macropolitical dynamic around a presumed divergence in political views between the Flashpoints team and KPFA's interim management, but the micropolitics of Flashpoints producers and station management as two distinct KPFA power centers is alone adequate to contextualize the apparent ongoing feud. iPD Sasha Lilly is apparently attempting to bring all of KPFA's programming under general management policy control after a lengthy period in which the Program Director position at KPFA was left vacant. Naturally, she is attempting to recapture that position's authority from wherever it has migrated to over the past few years. In response, members of the Flashpoints team have complained of incompetent non-consultative interference and members of the Program Council have claimed that it has been improperly and maliciously disempowered. Upon examination, it appears that previous power-sharing arrangements at KPFA other than a standard union agreement, if that, were never formalized into written agreements or published policies, leaving them largely vulnerable to arbitrary and unilateral management amendment at any time. There is no general policy identifying clear limits to management authority in changing disciplinary policies around on-air access, as there would be if a policy governance approach had been implemented, either through management agreement or through empowered governance directive. If Herrera is paid staff for his work with Flashpoints, he is protected by labor law and his union agreement. If Flashpoints does not have a written agreement with KPFA management regarding its production independence, then it is not well-protected against any sort of management interference. To the best of my knowledge and belief, neither KPFA paid staff nor the KPFA Unpaid Staff Organization have ever negotiated a written agreement with KPFA or Pacifica management that formalizes a Pacifica producer's "Bill of Rights," though the perception of certain producer privileges and the utilization of certain grievance procedures regarding revocation may have informally evolved over time at this station and others. Specific policies regarding producer independence were very likely fully codified within Pacifica decades ago, but these documents may have since been mislaid and instead persisted only approximately on the basis of memory and tradition alone. Uncertainty on this point would have been resolved by now if there had been PNB adoption and management implementation of the resolution that I brought to the KPFK Local Station Board on October 15, 2005, which passed unanimously: "RESOLVED: "1. That a compilation of Pacifica policies and procedures shall be assembled under the guidance of the Foundation's Executive Director. "2. That a compilation of unit-specific policies and procedures shall be assembled under the guidance of each unit's management, as local addenda to the Foundation compilation. "3. That printed copies of these compilations shall be made available to interested Delegates, Directors, and staff at no charge or at cost on or before March 1, 2006 with a copy available at each unit for public inspection at that time. "4. That online copies of these compilations shall be made available to the public via Pacifica web sites on or before January 1, 2007." Ref: http://wbai.net/pnb/pnb_pacifica_priorities2-20-06.html If Pacifica governance is prevented from knowing what policies exist, it cannot hold management responsible for policy violation and cannot identify policies that require revision. It will instead craft new and potentially contradictory policies in emergency and knee-jerk response to specific events absent a management awareness of potential unintended consequences in alternate application. Untrained governance is not competent to draft an entire set of organizational policies from scratch, and a 50-year old institution should already have a comprehensive and well-amended set of organizational policies in place. Nicole Sawaya presumably knows whether or not Pacifica had a policy manual when she was General Manager of KPFA. If so, perhaps she can uncover and provide to Pacifica's governing bodies what Greg Guma apparently could not. In fairness, I should mention that I've been told that Directors were given a thick blue binder at least one year that may have been a Pacifica Policy Manual. If so, I find it surprising that its contents is never cited during board meetings. As an LSB Member for four years and never a Director, I didn't get one of whatever that was. --Terry Goodman