So Baton Rouge’s National Public Radio affiliate WRKF got rid of three news/talk shows. Not living there, I must admit I’ve never heard the three programs in question, “Here and Now,” “The Connection,” and “News and Notes with Ed Gordon,” so this change to me at first seemed unremarkable.
But being that NPR also goes by the moniker of “National Peoples’ Radio” because of its relentless left-wing programming bias, I wondered if this was consequence of the long-term trend of an American public, being given options in their media consumption through talk shows, increasing cable and satellite radio capacity, and the Internet, to throw off the yoke of liberal media and to consume material more in tune what their education and experiences have confirmed to them in how the world really is and works. So I did a little digging and, sure enough, my suspicions were confirmed.
I listened through archives of “Here and Now” and discovered the show’s leftist tilt. Scrolling through its listings, for example, one finds a number of stories about the war in Iraq, which usually involve interviews with people against the war, or who don’t like the idea their relatives or friends are over there, or interviews with Iraqis themselves expressing dismay over the situation. Rarely does one hear anything close to a positive affirmation of the war from any source.
The same goes with “The Connection” which if anything is even more relentlessly trendy lefty. To get an even better sense of the show’s offerings, one also can peruse the message forum postings addressing the show’s demise, which in part gets hijacked by posts regarding the, at worst, anti-Semitic nature of the program or, at best, its relentlessly pro-Palestinian tilt.
These two shows were outright cancelled by their host producer Boston’s (it figures) WBUR and thus WRKF had no choice here. That the other program which continues on elsewhere does so is telling because it’s the only one where there seemed to be any balance and is produced nationally by NPR. Ed Gordon, the host, who is perhaps most famous for being the guy whose interview helped fan the flames of the controversy that cost Sen. Trent Lott his majority leader’s position, tries to bring in all sides of controversies. This, of course, angers the loony left who believes it’s their right to colonize NPR (on the taxpayer’s dole).
Gordon’s show is out at WRKF (although it may be brought back if underwriters – that is, it can’t pull its own weight in advertising so must be subsidized – step up to prop it up) because of the telling admission that classical music outdraws all three programs and news/talk competition was too tough. Classical hardly draws any listeners, and Moon Griffon and other local talk shows draw much better. And, of course, Rush Limbaugh steamrolls the competition, particularly (intellectually as well as by the numbers) the left’s puny offerings on other stations.
These decisions illustrate the continuing decline of a media controlled by elites in everything except their ability to understand political ideas and human beings in a valid way. A very few listeners around Baton Rouge may be upset because their talking points about certain things will not make it to them over the air on weekdays, but they’ll have other sources. Or, without these programs to lean on, maybe they’ll open their eyes and minds a little wider and discover their views evolve in a direction away from what they used to swallow uncritically.
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