Nora Barrows-Friedman in the remains of an Israeli attack on the Jebaliya Refugee Camp in the Gaza Strip, February 2005.
Flashpoints, a daily, national investigative news magazine based out of KPFA in Berkeley, California, is in danger of ending. Run by Dennis Bernstein, Miguel Molina and Nora Barrows-Friedman, the show has been an essential source for reporting on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Just recently we mentioned them as being the only national outlet to run Ali Abunimah’s speech from the Hampshire BDS conference. It seems the show is in danger due to cutbacks at KPFA, which may be politically motivated. Ironically, Flashpoints’s work is so valuable that it had just been awarded a lifetime achievement award from Project Censored and the Media Freedom Foundation.
In particular, the work of Nora Barrows-Friedman has stood out to me. As producer and co-host, as well as a correspondent for Inter Press Service, she has provided crucial on the ground reporting from the West Bank and Gaza. Barrows-Friedman has also helped share her skills with Palestinian children desperate to share their story with the world through the Freedom Radio Project based in Bethlehem’s Dheisheh refugee camp.
The Flashpoints team is asking for help from supporters to keep the show on the air. Here is part of a note from Barrows-Friedman after learning that she was getting her time cut in half at the station and the show’s technical producer had been eliminated all together:
In the nearly 7 years that I have been a part of the Flashpoints team, I have proudly put my blood, sweat and tears into this show. I am privileged to have been mentored by Dennis Bernstein, who has nearly killed himself for the last two decades to put this show on the air day after day after day, with nothing but contempt and disrespect from the KPFA power structure. Over the last six years, I have been honored to take on the brutal beat of Palestine, and have covered it for Pacifica listeners from the ground, oftentimes taking vacation hours to leave, and raising my own money (or putting it on a credit card) to get there and work for week s at a time, dodging bullets and risking my own safety.
This story especially is one that I carry a great amount of respect for, and I know that tens of thousands of listeners all across the world depend on our Palestine coverage because there is no parallel. Dennis and I have put our hearts and souls into this story, and all other stories we cover on Flashpoints, because we feel that we owe it to the people to make this show a platform for the voiceless and to act as a beacon of truth and dissent against the powers that be. We have survived death threats, verbal attacks, physical attacks, and literal bullets. But we cannot survive the evisceration of our production staff without a fight from the greater community.
So far this fight has included a petition signed by prominent guests that have appeared on the show including Howard Zinn, Dahr Jamail, Anthony Arnove, Dr. Richard Falk, and Peter Phillips (of Project Censored). The petition reads:
Dear KPFA and Pacifica Radio Management and Boards:
We, the undersigned, are very concerned about the recent cutbacks aimed at Flashpoints.
This show in particular has been an extremely important platform for our work as journalists, writers, scholars, activists and social critics. We value the level of truth-telling and depth of analysis that is unparalleled on the network. Flashpoints is a unique program that has done an exquisite job of bringing together a broad range of otherwise-silenced issues and voices to the public.
As frequent guests on Flashpoints and other shows on KPFA, we intend to refuse to be interviewed or to allow prior work to be aired, or to give permission for our books, CDs, DVDs and other work to be used as premiums during KPFA’s fund drives until Flashpoints is restored completely.
This means that Nora Barrows-Friedman must be reinstated to a full-time position, and that Flashpoints be provided with a permanent Technical Producer.
In a time of great despair, and as truth is crippled as wars expand, people have fewer sources of alternative information with which to act. Flashpoints has always been a beacon of media democracy and political courage, and we expect KPFA and Pacifica to do the right thing by supporting this essential program instead of destroying it.
Please write KPFA management at gm@kpfa.org to let them know how much you appreciate independent reporting on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and demand that they keep Flashpoints on the air.
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Dear Management, Please keep Flashpoints on the air. I understand that there are powerful forces that would like to stifle this important voice. I am a graduate of Berkeley High (class of 1960) and UC Berkeley 1968. I currently reside in Mexico where I listen online. I confess that I am not a regular contributor to the station (I live on $700 month) but if you keep this important program on the air I promise to contribute. I have played live a couple of times on your station as a gift to you. James Byers
Emailed them a letter expressing that I would cut donations to KPFA if they make any cuts to Flashpoints.
In any case I’ve seen Nora Barrows-Friedman in person and shes just as amazing as she is in real life as she is on the air.
thank you for posting this. there should be a link to signing on to the petition too, though, no? i’ve been writing to kpfa, but a petition online would be nice as well…flashpoints is essential. there is nothing else like it on the airwaves and we need to preserve it.
Is there anything else even worth listening to on KPFA besides Democracy Now and Flashpoints?
—– Original Message —–
From: DICKERSON1295
To: gm@kpfa.org
Sent: Monday, December 14, 2009 5:04 PM
Subject: Recent cutbacks aimed at Flashpoints
KPFA and Pacifica Radio Management and Boards:
I am very concerned about the recent cutbacks aimed at Flashpoints. This show in particular has been an extremely important platform for our work as journalists, writers, scholars, activists and social critics. I urge you to reinstate Nora Barrows-Friedman to a full-time position, and provide Flashpoints with a permanent Technical Producer.
Sent by John Lewis-Dickerson, Atlanta. (no reply necessary)
P.S. I listen to Democracy Now/Amy Goodman on WRFG 89.3 FM in Atanta and contribute to them in support of their carrying Democracy Now!
CORRECTION: This show in particular has been an extremely important platform for the work of journalists, writers, scholars, activists and social critics.
KPFA and Pacifica Radio have a sordid history when it comes to discussing the Israel-Palestine conflict. In the 80s, KPFA GM David Salniker (who later moved up to be the head of Pacifica) banned any mention or discussion of Zionism on its airwaves. He also stopped broadcasting critical reports on the Israeli political scene by an anti-Zionist Israeli, Amos Wollin, because of complaints from New Jewish Agenda (!), a precursor to J Street, that he was “anti-Israel.”
One look at the names on the wall in the entrance way to KPFA’s Berkeley headquarters honoring its big contributors will give the answer to those who wonder how a station claiming to be “the voice of the voiceless,” can move against a program as valuable as Flashpoints. I’ll just mention one that I recall, the Walter Haas Foundation, founded with profits from Levi’s jeans and a big supporter of Jewish and Zionist causes.
When I helped to expose the ADL spying operation in the Bay Area in 1993, Dennis’s Flashpoints was the only program on KPFA where I was allowed to talk about it, (and the only program that has allowed any discussion of “the lobby.) “. Both subjects were and remain too hot for the Zionist-lite news department and the morning show which elected to bring in an outsider who had once worked with the ADL , Chip Berlet, to talk about it. When I went on the Morning Show with Hatem Bazian, at the time a Palestinian student leader and now a UC professor, to promote an event in which we were both to speak against the Oslo agreement, when I entered the studio, the first thing I was told was not to say a word on the air about the ADL case . That was 1993 and the same news directors and morning show hosts are still there, although one now has a noon show.
That’s the milieu in which the Flashpoints crew, Dennis, Nora Barrows Friedman and Miguel Molina have had to courageously continue their commitment to the truth. They must be defended.
Jeffrey is there anything else we can do besides email KPFA?
Those who live in the Bay Area need to bombard the station’s GM with phone calls @ 510-848-6767 and those who don’t need to keep up a barrage of emails. In addition, pressure must be brought on other programmers, such as the hosts of the Mourning (sic) Show and the Public Affairs program at noon, when they open the phones to listeners calls @ 510-848-4425 and raise the Flashpoints issue no matter what subject is being discussed, maybe by asking the guest what they think about is happening to Flashpoints. Since KPFA is streamed live @ http://www.kpfa.org people can do that from out of town. Since the hosts of those programs have a long history of being management’s lickspittles, don’t be concerned about embarrassing them.
The reporting of both Nora Barrows-Friedman and Dennis Bernstein on Palestine on the Flashpoints program is done not in spite of the fact that they are Jews but because they are Jews.
no it is not because they are jews. this sort of jewish supremacist thinking is deeply offensive. i know and love nora as well as her work. she does this because she believes deeply in justice and in the rights of palestinians as well as others around the world fighting for their rights to return to their land, stay on their land, control their own land. her religion has nothing to do with it.
Knowing that she is Jewish does not make Nora Barrows-Friedman a Jewish supremacist, whatever that is supposed to be. I do sense that it does give her, and Dennis’, outrage at the treatment of Palestinians in the name of Judaism, a depth that is rare in the US media. We listeners admire both of them all the more for their special courage and determination to continue to report on the plight of the Palestinians.
i never said and i never would say nora is a jewish supremacist. i said that you are for thinking that what she does has something to do with the fact that she is jewish.
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