Media Activists Call for Ken Ford's resignati

October 25, 2001
For Immediate Release:


Contact:
Andrea Buffa (510) 839-8911
Dan Coughlin (917) 647-9339

Bomb Threat at KPFA Radio after Pacifica Radio Network Vice Chair Associates the Station and Its Listeners with Terrorists

Media Activist Organizations Call for Board Member Ken Ford's Immediate Resignation

Berkeley, CA--A bomb threat at KPFA radio Wednesday night forced staff to evacuate the station and go off the air for 45 minutes. Police searched the building and found no bomb as listeners rushed to the station fearing that it had been closed down by the station's parent organization, which has been locked in a prolonged dispute with the station. The bomb threat came the day after Pacifica vice chair Ken Ford was quoted in a San Francisco Examiner story describing Pacifica radio activists in the following terms: "They're zealots. ... I see parallels between this group and Al-Qaeda, the terrorists who bombed New York. They have an innate anger towards society as a whole."

"It is outrageous that Ken Ford would equate community radio activists who have criticized the fiscal mismanagement, censorship, and union-busting at the Pacifica Radio Network with the September 11 terrorists," said Berkeley Vice Mayor Maudelle Shirek. "Clearly Ken Ford has no appreciation for the First Amendment or civil liberties," said Bernard White of the Pacifica Campaign. "Ford has repeatedly sought to slander our movement as violent, but not one shred of evidence has ever been offered to substantitate these allegations."

Given the current national and international climate, many civil libertarians are concerned that such reckless "terrorist baiting" could make peace and social justice activists subject to police surveillance and investigation or even worse. In fact, although there is no direct connection that can be made between Vice Chair Ford's comments in the Examiner and the bomb threat at KPFA, the following can be said: despite its sometimes controversial broadcasts, KPFA has not received a bomb threat in more than ten years (when the station read Salman Rushdie's Satanic Verses over the airwaves). Additionally, KPFA is the station that has been most closely aligned with the free speech activists who disagree with the agenda of the current Pacifica board majority and management.

In the same Examiner article, Ford also suggested that Pacifica sell KPFA, its flagship station, or WBAI in New York. "KPFA in Berkeley and WBAI in New York are in the broadcast band reserved for commercial stations," Ford was quoted as saying. "I've been told non-commercial licenses sell for $30 to $40 million and commercial licenses sell for $150 to $250 million each. Think of what we could do with the difference! Let's parley these commercial licenses into more stations around the country. To me that's just common sense." Pacifica Campaign, Media Alliance, and Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR) are calling for Ford's immediate resignation.

The last time a Pacifica board member went public about the possible sale of a Pacifica station was during the KPFA lockout in 1999, when Pacifica national management locked the journalists out of the station for three weeks. That lockout, and the threat of a sale of one of Pacifica's stations, led to the largest protests in Berkeley since the Vietnam War. The Pacifica Network is the only independent radio network in the United States; it was founded to promote peace and social justice and to broadcast views that are rarely heard on commercial radio. KPFA, Pacifica's flagship station, is the oldest listener-sponsored radio station in the United States.

For more information, see http://www.pacificacampaign.org, http://www.savepacifica.net.



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