Editing Pacifica Foundation (section)

=== 1990s–2002 ===
For most of its history, Pacifica gave each of its stations independent control of programming. During the 1990s, a major controversy arose over rumors that the Pacifica National Board and national staff were attempting to centralize control of content, to increase audience. The rumors included accusations that the board proposed changing the network's funding model away from a reliance exclusively on listener donations and toward a mix of listener donations and corporate foundation funding similar to that of [[NPR]]. There were also accusations that the Board was considering selling both KPFA and WBAI in New York City, which operate on commercial-band FM frequencies (94.1 and 99.5, respectively) worth hundreds of millions of dollars.<ref>{{Cite web |title=Lasar (Matthew) Papers on KPFA and Pacifica Foundation |url=https://oac.cdlib.org/findaid/ark:/13030/c8rv0w0q/entire_text/ |access-date=September 26, 2023 |website=oac.cdlib.org}}</ref>

This led to years of conflict, including court cases, public demonstrations, firings and strikes of station staff, whose common plight inspired creation of [[Radio4all.net]] to preserve what they saw as the original spirit of Pacifica. Many listeners of the individual stations, especially KPFA and WBAI, objected to what they saw as an attempt to tone down the overtly left-leaning political content on Pacifica stations. The controversy included highly publicized ideologically charged disputes between grassroots listener organizations and [[Mary Frances Berry]], a former chairperson of the [[U.S. Commission on Civil Rights]], who chaired Pacifica's national board at the time.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.villagevoice.com/1999-07-20/news/free-speech-for-sale/|title=Free Speech for Sale?|work=[[The Village Voice]]|date=July 20, 1999|access-date=July 10, 2010}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|title=There's Something About Mary|url=https://www.salon.com/1999/10/12/berry/|date=October 12, 1999|access-date=July 10, 2010}}</ref>

The board eventually was embroiled in counter-lawsuits by board members and listener-sponsors and, after global settlement of the lawsuits in November 2001, an interim board was formed to craft new bylaws, which it did in two tumultuous years of national debates among thousands of listener-sponsors and activists, finally giving listener-sponsors the right and responsibility to elect new [[Local Station Board]]s at each of the five Pacifica stations. These local boards in turn elect the national board of directors. Aside from some minor changes, the same 2003 bylaws remain in effect today.{{citation needed|date=October 2024}}