News departments require the most resources, command the most air-time and in many ways become the signiture of the stations. News departments also recieve the most consistant critiques both at KPFA and at Pacifica when it ran its network news. The challenge is to produce daily shows covering the critical issues sometimes carried in the mainstream but without its pro-war bias. News staff try different approaches to meeting this challenge. In this seminar we will make space for news staff to share their strategies with each other and with the listener activists and for all of us to struggle to improve.

Friday night:
Introductions, Mary Jean Robertson and Neil MacLean
Status reports on Pacifica News Bureaus:
WPFW: Rhyme Kathourda
KPFK: MT Karthik
KPFA: Eileen Alfendary
FSRN: Josh Chaffin
Audience Q and A

Saturday morning:
How Do We Get News into the Newsroom
Don Foster, (previous News Director WPFW,) Randi Zimmerman (WMNF News Director,) Mitch Jezerich (Free Speach Radio News collective member)

Discussion: How progressive news organizations get news into the newsroom with an overview of Pacifica news work alongside Free Speech Radio News and the National Radio Project.

Saturday afternoon session one:
The two Saturday afternoon panels present frequent criticisms of Pacifica's news with the chance for producers to respond

Activism and the News
Dealing with the criticism that activists are excluded from Pacifica news. Patrick Reinsborough of Direct Action to Stop the War, Killuu Niasha a radio producer and Black Panther and Rhyme Kathouda of WPFW will discuss media outreach strategies for the mass protests that stopped business as usual the day the missiles initiated the war in Iraq. How did our news departments respond to the protests?
Issue intro:
Patrick Reinsborough,
Rhyme Kathourda,
Kiluu Niasha,
Response: ( FSRN,)Free Speech Radio News
John Hamilton, (Workers Independent News Service) MT Karthik,
Discussion

Saturday afternoon session two:
Breaking the Information Blockade:
This panel will air perspectives on the excluded issues of US covert operations in Africa and Latin America, necessary contexts too often excluded from the daily news.

Intro
Fernando Valesquez: Latin America off the map
Joe Wanzala: Africa still hidden
Motumbo: narrative structure and mental occupation
Discussion
Discussion continued

Saturday Night: Improve with Dennis Bernstein, Robert Knight and Caroline
Casey on Brecht?s ?Seven Tests of Truth?

Sunday Morning: Lessons learned round table:

Sunday Late Morning:
Who Narrates the News?
The final panel will be on the question of news authorship. News, even more blatently than the novel, has come to be told by uncharactorized narrators, the all seeing eyes of God. Now that the fetish modernist novelists had for "seeing" has been deconstructed, "news" has become the last bastion of neutrality. Can this God survive post-modernity? Robert Knight, Davie D and Ishmael Reed will address this question.
Robert Knight,
Davey D,
Ishmael Reed