World-Class Anti-War Show Gone From 9a.m. Slot

by Ed Murray

The veil of “Shadow Censorship”, like that of Twitter, has even taken hold in the premier Pacifica Radio line up at Anti-War station KPFK in Los Angeles.  The station’s premier program on both foreign policy and progressive national issues has been removed from its 9 a.m. weekly spot.  It can only be heard if you get up really early, at 6 a.m.

Amy Goodman has been the main framework of the KPFK line-up for many years.  It could be argued that her  show, “Democracy Now”, has gone a long way to keep KPFK afloat. Her show is one of most popular progressive shows in the country.  Not only does this weaken the prime 9 a.m. broadcast hour, but it will hit KPFK’s bottom line, as Amy Goodman is one of the best “pitch” persons at KPFK, bringing in untold thousands of dollars to support the station over the years.  In addition, Goodman makes appearances in Los Angeles as KPFK sponsored events, bringing the station even more publicity and funding.

What is strange about this is that no notice was given to the listeners.  No vote was taken as far as can be determined.  Evidently the Program Director made the decision by himself.

Shadow Banning.  This is a method used by the large social media platforms to remove programs and individuals from the platforms without anybody knowing what is really going on.  The person or program is still there, it just can’t be seen by anybody else.  Twitter just admitted to “hiding” over 600,000 individual accounts.  This is pure and simple corporate censorship.  By “hiding” Goodman’s program at 6 a.m., before most folks are even awake in the morning, they are exercising a form of “shadow censorship”.  Her former 9a.m. time slot was in the key morning time that folks flip on their radios.

Anti-War activist Frank Dorrel has put out a statement on this sudden removal of Democracy Now:

I am totally against this change. If Democracy Now underperforms during a fund drive at the 9:00 AM time-slot, I would think it is because more often than not, you cut away from the show to have Christine offering some other product not associated with Amy Goodman. In my humble opinion, Democracy Now is by far the most important show on KPFK. Tom Hartman is no Amy Goodman, not at all. Not even close. He’s OK and I think his program deserves being on the station. I can’t believe you are making this change. So now Democracy Now will only be on KPFK at 6:00 AM. I would think this move will end up with less people listening to KPFK then before. Just one man’s opinion. I have been listening to KPFK since 1980. This is the station where I learned all about U.S. foreign policy, hence my film: “What I’ve Learned About US Foreign Policy”- www.youtube.com/watch?v=NdMWOjYuYwk&t=183s – which Amy promoted along with the anti-war book I publish & distribute: ADDICTED To WAR – during a fund drive many years ago and received over 100 orders at $200 per order. She did this with Jerry Quickly. I still get many orders for ADDICTED To WAR. I have distributed close to 240,000 copies since 2002.his.

This move comes after Pacifica station in Berkeley KPFA has removed another popular program, Guns and Butter.  They also purged the 17 years of archives for the show at the same time without notice.  This show also dealt with controversial topics.  The question is why Pacifica stations are going down the censorship road, “shadow banning” and outright removal of controversial, but popular programs.  Is Pacifica turning into another corporate authoritarian platform, removing the most controversial programs?  YouTube hired 10,000 censors to “police” and remove controversial videos.  Facebook has been caught censoring, as well as google.  In the last few years, around a billion pages, platforms, and individuals have been removed from social media.  This is the worst attack on Free Speech in the history of mankind.  A shame that the so-called free speech radio stations at Pacifica are going down the same path.