The Legend of Amy Goodman
By Paul DeRienzo

The name that would not be spoken at the last meeting of the Interim
Pacifica National Board in New York City was arguably the central
figure of the five station Pacifica Foundation network and the host
of Democracy Now! (DN) its most expensive, if not most popular
program. Amy Goodman has been receiving an officially stated stipend
from Pacifica of $440,000 a year, but according to Pacifica's
Treasurer Jabari Zakiya Goodman is in fact receiving $1 million
dollars a year for a minimum period of 5 years according to the fine
print of her generous contract with Pacifica. Although the overall
terms of Goodman's contract remain a secret, the actual document has
not been released; we only have an unofficial summary of its terms,
its generally believed that Goodman has been given ownership of her
program, despite the fact that DN had been started through the
donated nickels and dimes of the Foundation's thousands of mostly
working class and poor contributors.

During the 2001 "Pacifica civil war" the dissident board members and
their supporters claimed that the Foundation had been subject to
a "theft" by the former Board majority. The dissidents claimed that
there was a plot to "sell a station," they claimed that Board
members were tied to corporations and wanted to deny the free speech
of Pacifica's programmers, particularly Amy Goodman, they said the
former Board had sanctioned producers being "fired and banned" to
silence their political activism and they claimed the Board wanted
to turn Pacifica into a clone of National Public Radio. Since the
court enforced settlement that ended the civil war in January 2002
we've observed this dissident faction in action and it's now
possible to assert that in fact it was the dissidents themselves who
have used the Pacifica Foundation to further their own personal and
selfish agendas.

In fact the only "theft" that has occurred at Pacifica is the
transfer of DN to Amy Goodman without debate or discussion. In the
50-year history of Pacifica the loss of DN is the only time a major
asset has been sold, in the case of DN as asset was given away
without any recompense to the Foundation. Despite unproven and
vehemently denied allegations made during the "civil war" that there
were plans afoot to "sell" a Pacifica station by the former Board.
The hypocrisy of the dissident faction is that in fact the only
transfer was the ownership of DN to Amy Goodman. This occurred
without debate, discussion or even the formality of a vote by the
interim Board.

During 2001 the mantra was invoked that producers had been "fired
and banned," yet as with the so-called "stringers strike" against
the Pacifica Network News the allegations were like the geyser Old
Faithful, a lot steam and not much substance, delivered on a regular
schedule. Hypocritically the new Pacifica has seen the massive
firing and banning of producers. More than 50 Pacifica employees
have been fired, even more driven away from the network by a new
crop of vindictive, self-important managers who have taken to ruling
Pacifica with a self-aggrandizing attitude of papal-like
infallibility. Just a few weeks ago I entered the studios of WBAI to
assist Gary Null with his show Program Director Bernard White
confronted me saying straight out that I was forbidden to go on the
air. When asked if his order meant I couldn't call in WBAI talk
shows as a listener White replied "I'm not saying anything." White
made it clear to the engineer on duty that he would lose his job if
I were allowed on air.

The Pacifica Network News (PNN) was swept away within weeks of the
interim Board's assumption of power eliminating Pacifica's place on
the stage of national politics in Washington DC. The anemic
replacement for PNN, Free Speech Radio News (FSRN) has failed to
grow into the slot vacated by PNN. One of the criticisms leveled by
the dissidents was that PNN had been using outside contractors to
provide some news stories, the hypocrisy is the current FSRN role as
permanent outside contractors with Pacifica now buying all of its
network news from an outside source.

Repeatedly the dissidents claimed that the former Board was
attempting to "Corporatize" Pacifica yet the only sign of corporate
underwriting anywhere near the Foundation is the support DN gets
through its associates at Downtown Community Television and
Indymedia from billionaire financier George Soros. As far as the
allegation that there was a plan to make Pacifica sound like NPR,
looking at Pacifica's Arbitron ratings it's easy to see that many
Pacifica programs have little or no audience. If adopting an NPR
sound is necessary to get an audience Pacifica should look into
adopting some professional standards of broadcasting and news
casting. When I hear Amy Goodman repeatedly ensnare guests she
doesn't agree with into a situation best described as "ambush
journalism," as she did recently on DN with Alan Dershowitz, I ask
myself is this news of Goodman's own version of infotainment?

Amy Goodman writes in the introduction to the Project Censored
publication "Censored 2004, The Top 25 Censored Stories,"
that "Pacifica is a network run by journalists and artists." yet in
reality Pacifica is run by one journalist, Ms Goodman herself who
hoards all the Foundation's resources, with not an artist to be
found among the Foundation's current crop of leaders. Nowhere in
any founding principles of Pacifica does it say that the network
should represent the political line of one producer or any single
group of producers.

The overwhelming reaction that I get from everyone who has dealt
with Amy Goodman, including her union reps, the NLRB reps, her co-
workers at every level and personal experience is that she has a
slash and burn approach coupled with a ravenous ego. Pacifica is
primarily a radio network and not a political organization.
Continuing to represent Pacifica, as a political group will only
succeed in keeping Pacifica as irrelevant as most of the leftist
alphabet soup groups that support her are today.