Only in America - financing for Pacifica network radio stations through the Corporation for Public Broadcasting - Editorial

National Review, March 1, 1993

FOR YEARS conservatives have been criticizing National Public Radio for its political bias and complaining of the use of taxpayers' funds to support its undeviating liberal line. Yet NPR is scientifically balanced in comparison with the Pacifica stations, such as WBAI in New York, KPFK in Los Angeles, and WPFW in Washington. Their political content ranges from Fantasy Left (the Jonestown episode in Guyana was all a CIA plot) to Poisonous Left (straight anti-Semitism), yet conservatives have said virtually nothing about them.

Why? Presumably because conservatives believe in free speech, and, unlike NPR, the Pacifica stations get no taxpayer money. Right?

Wrong. In 1992, the last year for which figures are available, the Pacifica network received $912,408 from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB). KPFK, for example, gets an annual grant of $134,126. The money buys, inter alia, an annual "Afrikan Mental Liberation Weekend," which combines Louis Farrakhan speeches, talks by the infamous anti-Semitic crank Leonard Jeffries of the City College of New York, and yet more anti-Semitic drivel from the broadcast's host and organizer, Dr. Kwaku Person-Lynn, the essence of whose Weltanschauung is as follows, taken from his 1992 broadcasts: "The Hebrew Jewish scholars set the philosophical direction for the Ku Klux Klan."

Those filled with nostalgia for the old days at Radio Moscow may tune in and get their fix. The Pacifica view of Central America is that of the Sandinistas and the FMLN. The reporting on the U.S. economy is Marxist in approach. The reporting on nuclear power is ... well, you know what it is.

Now comes Pacifica to CPB once again, asking for an additional $350,000 to set up a "news center" in Washington, D.C. Inasmuch as federal law requires any station receiving such grants to present "balanced" programming, Pacifica is not entitled to one wooden nickel. Indeed, it is the continuation of past grants, year after year, that should be a matter of scandal in view of Pacifica's manifest bias. Those who wish to express a view about the use of their money to support Pacifica might give Richard Carlson, president of CPB, a ring at 202-879-9600.