Jazz or Political Propaganda?
Press Action
Wednesday, February 04, 2004
http://www.pressaction.com/news/weblog/full_article/hand02042004/
‘Extremists’ Want to ‘Hijack’ Pacifica’s D.C. Affiliate, Postie Says
Marc Fisher, the Washington Post columnist who about year ago referred to author Norman Finkelstein as a Holocaust revisionist, is now describing the local Pacifica affiliate in Washington as a radio station that could turn into “an outlet for political whining and grousing of the most one-sided and ill-informed sort.”
It shouldn’t come as a shock that a columnist for the house organ of the Washington establishment would complain about the public affairs programming of a radio station, whose regular fare includes the airing of “Democracy Now!” during the morning and evening rush hours, along with weekly servings of Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting’s “CounterSpin” and Russell Mokhiber’s “Challenging Corporate Power.”
In a Feb. 3 column titled “At WPFW, A Choice of Jazz or Jabber,” Fisher described this week’s election of a new WPFW station management board as a vote that “will determine whether a generation of young people in this region will grow up hearing America’s most important musical heritage or a steady diet of political propaganda.”
Fisher said most of the candidates to serve on the station’s board are determined to “hijack” the station in order to silence its jazz programming. “The station’s listeners have their last chance to assert themselves this week,” he warned. “They can defend the station against a takeover by political extremists, or they can sing goodbye to the music.”
What’s odd about Fisher’s column is that while he describes WPFW’s public affairs programming as “one-sided,” “ill-informed,” and “propaganda,” he also honors the Pacifica network for providing “a voice of political dissent and intellectual rigor, where Allen Ginsberg and Bob Dylan, among other writers, developed their work.” Which is it, Marc? If one is going to honor a radio network that provided an outlet for dissent 40 or 50 years ago, it would seem that one would also welcome a station that carries on that tradition today by broadcasting perspectives that may fall outside the narrow confines of acceptable Washington discourse but are valued by millions of Americans. Given how the U.S. political establishment (the right-wingers that dominate cable television and radio talk shows certainly are now part of that establishment) has a monopoly on the programming at virtually every television and radio station in America, you’d think an open-minded person, especially a former reporter, would welcome the tiny bit of ideological diversity that Pacifica and WPFW struggle to offer.
But Fisher apparently would prefer that WPFW go to an all-jazz format rather than continue to offer a nice blend of music and non-establishment public affairs programming. As WPFW officials have stated on the air this week, none of the station board candidates is campaigning to rid the station of its jazz shows. What Fisher is attempting to do through his misrepresentation of the candidates’ positions, according to WPFW officials, is turn those listeners who tune into WPFW for its jazz music against listeners who may appreciate the station’s public affairs programming.
According to station officials, Fisher didn’t contact the radio station for a comment before making his claim that jazz faces extinction at WPFW. In December 2002, Fisher also failed to make a phone call for a comment when he was writing a column in which he described Norman Finkelstein as a Holocaust revisionist. Finkelstein, who had recently spoken at a Georgetown University event sponsored by the university’s Young Arab Leadership Association and Arab studies center, is a writer “celebrated by neo-Nazi groups for his Holocaust revisionism and comparison of Israel to Nazi Germany,” Fisher said in the column.
Finkelstein, whose entire family except his parents was murdered at the hands of the Nazis, told Press Action in December 2002 that he had asked Fisher both in writing and over the telephone to supply the evidence to support the “disgusting” and “libelous” claim that he is a Holocaust revisionist. “If he cannot provide any evidence, and I’m certain he can’t, either he must print a retraction or I will take legal action,” Finkelstein said at the time.
Fisher conceded a few days later in print that he was wrong in his original piece to associate Finkelstein’s writings with Holocaust revisionism. Offset at the bottom of his column was a mea culpa that said Fisher “did not intend to suggest that.”
Given his job as a Metro columnist, Fisher’s editors at the Post probably welcome pieces in which he offers his opinions of local radio station’s public affairs programming. But, with respect to this piece, his editors might want to inform Fisher that he should have phoned WPFW to get station officials’ opinion on whether most of the candidates for the station board really do want to “hijack the station” and “silence the jazz.” — Mark Hand