hate radio.

On a late-night cab ride home from the airport the other week, the cab driver kept flipping back between different right-wing talk radio shows. I was vaguely aware of some of what is said on these kind of shows, but I have to say that listening to it first hand was pretty appalling.

The cabbie settled on the Laura Ingram show, where her guests were a pair of Berkeley dropouts who had founded some Greenpeace-style organization to protest the war in Iraq. Now, don’t get me wrong – these two guys sounded like a couple of goofballs. They both had a big beef with the University of California, which they claimed developed and maintained the nation’s entire nuclear arsenal. One of them even claimed he had dropped out so that he wouldn’t be funding the nuclear efforts of an imperialist government (presumably he doesn’t pay taxes). So, right off the bat you know these guys aren’t keeping up with current events – the three Department of Energy labs that develop and maintain the US nuclear stockpile (Lawrence Livermore, Los Alamos, and Sandia) are now all managed by private companies (“government owned, contractor operated”), and while LLNL and LANL were indeed managed by the UC system for many years, it’s not like anyone was building bomb parts on campus. And, more to the point, it’s a pretty safe bet that UC was running the labs via funding from the government, not from student’s tuition. (Incidentally, Livermore, CA, home to Lawrence Livermore and the smaller Sandia site, has the highest density of PhDs anywhere in the country. Look it up.)

Anyway, you can pretty much predict how the interview went: well-meaning but misguided liberal dweebs walk into a buzzsaw ambush of self-righteous scolding from a condescending bitch in a way that made Sherman’s invasion of the South seem tame. Basically, it was a freak show, like Jerry Springer without the video. Most of the conversation revolved around their stuttering responses to Ingram’s attacks, like her shocked and uncomprehending charge, “You mean you really believe war is bad?” She clearly invited these guys on the show solely to mock and pillory them. Though the conversation never strayed anywhere near women’s rights, she ended with this brilliant zinger: “You know, if you guys cared as much about the rights of the unborn as you do about islamo-fascist towel-head terrorists, we could have a meaningful conversation.” Or words to that effect.

Wow.

I know the phenomenon is not new; there has always been yellow, jingoist journalism, and journalism is a business. Newspaper and other media entities provide whatever product will maximize their profits. Still, it seems like there was more idealism in the media when I was growing up, like there was still belief that a reporter was supposed to present the facts as accurately as possible without coloring the story with their personal opinions. Indeed, many mainstream journalists do still seem to strive to achieve that ideal. But the Fox News phenomenon has changed the equation, making it acceptable to offer up opinionated commentary masquerading as unbiased opinion. Fair and balanced, my ass.

The worst of it is how it has leaked into the mainstream media. I mean, Glenn Beck and Nancy Grace on CNN Headline news? Where’s the balance? These are both clearly right-leaning opinion-driven shows, and CNN doesn’t run any left-leaning shows to balance it out. What’s worse is this seems to tacitly concede the flawed Fox News accusation that the mainstream media is biased to the left – "We’ll give conservatives some token right-wing nut jobs to balance our supposed socialist-leaning headline news coverage and call it even."

All of which makes me think Keith Olberman’s show should be on twenty-four hours a day.  On every channel.

screeds & diatribes

home