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Pacifica trying to remove left voices
Editor:
In your August ‘5 piece on Amy Goodman and the Pacifica board, you state that what activists are opposing is “what they see as the push to ‘dumb down’ Pacifica programming in order to attract a wider audience.” Actually, what we activists oppose is a consistent policy that the board has been implementing to remove significant left political opinions from Pacifica. Goodman’s Democracy Now! is just one of numerous examples. It is the Pacifica board that claims that it is trying to reach a wider audience. In Houston, e.g., where the board has been successful, they reach a different audience by playing music instead of public affairs.
What is important to understand is that, small as the Pacifica audience was, nothing on radio or TV with a larger audience was truly critical of U.S. foreign and domestic policies.
Richard Wiebe
Berkeley
