"Management has not only failed to stop censoring the news," said PNN contributor Aaron Glantz from his base in Berkeley, CA, "management has not
even bothered to contact us to respond to our concerns. So we have no choice but to strike," Glantz added.Since the strikers demands were delivered to management last Monday, additional stringers
have joined the action, and several affiliate stations are considering a boycott of Pacifica Network News as an act of solidarity with the striking reporters.
Dozens of journalists from across the
Americas, Europe and Asia, many of whom have won the industry's top awards, will strike for the next three months unless Mary Frances Berry, who chairs both the U.S. Civil Rights Commission and the Pacifica
Foundation, publicly renounces censorship throughout the network, and reasserts the editorial independence of Pacifica's local and national-news divisions. The striking journalists comprise a majority of
active contributors and reporters to Pacifica Network News, PNN, a daily, half-hour news program that airs on some 70 radio stations nationally. In a recent two-month period, nearly 70 percent of Pacifica's
stories came from its stringers.
The strike is supported by the media watchdog group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, Project Censored, and the National Association for Freedom of Expression.
"The survival of PNN as a reliable source of information is very much in doubt," said syndicated media critic Norman Solomon, "this strike may be the last chance to make PNN something
trustworthy."
"The type of direct censorship of news personnel and programming, which Pacifica management has been engaging in throughout the network's recent crisis, would be reprehensible at
any U.S. media outlet, not just one which claims to present an alternative viewpoint," added former Pacifica Network News director JoAnn Kawell.
Kawell, who is on the steering committee of the
National Writers Union, San Francisco Bay Area local, appeared at a press conference yesterday with the striking journalists. The conference took place in front of Pacifica's vacant national office in
Berkeley, which it abandoned in a recent move to Washington DC. Other speakers included Peter Phillips, director of Project Censored; Aileen Alfandary, co-director of the KPFA News and member of CWA Local
9415; Matthew Lasar, author of "Pacifica Radio: the Rise of an Alternative Network"; and Larry Bensky, who was Pacifica's national affairs correspondent until he was fired for speaking out on the
Pacifica crisis.
Strike endorsements are also being sought from unions, academics, community groups, journalists, and free speech organizations. A strike fund has been set up to help support the workers
who are putting their livelihoods on the line to fight censorship.
Pacifica Reporters Against Censorship, which is coordinating the strike, may be reached at pnnstrikers@igc.org.
The strikers have set up a web site at
