KPFK and another anti-LAT view

Things sure are complicated around KPFK. I listened for a few minutes in the car Sunday to Ian Masters's program Background Briefing, and he recounted how the show got bumped to Sunday because station activists griped he was a CIA agent and wanted him off weekdays. The subject of his call-in Sunday was upcoming elections to fill the Local Station Board, a heated arena for which candidates are filing now (they have until Friday).

Then I get home and find a story today on The American Reporter website by Robert Gelfand of San Pedro that puts KPFK in some perspective. It's based on an interview with Robert Farrell, the former L.A. city councilman who recently stepped down as board chairman of KPFK's parent Pacifica Radio.

It is a group who feel a sense of belonging and ownership where it comes to Pacifica. It is also, as Farrell pointed out, a group that contains many people who are fundamentally antiauthoritarian. They almost reflexively support rebellions and insurgencies, so when a group of insurgents went after the management of Pacifica, there were many joiners.

The result was a family fight among the Left. It was nasty and expensive as only such fights can be. In a group with at least the usual amount of paranoia and paranoiacs (if not seriously more), charges and accusations were tossed around wholesale.

Also at The American Reporter: Steven Travers, author and former San Francisco Examiner sports columnist, restates the conservative case against the L.A. Times.