I've been too busy with the Hillary book to blog, but I've been really wanting to agree with Radio Equalizer and others that the Center for American Progress/Free Press talk-radio study has huge holes in it. The biggest one is excluding public radio talk shows. It’s simply inaccurate to argue there’s little or no progressive talk in major markets with NPR affiliates broadcasting the Diane Rehm show, or Fresh Air with Terry Gross, or the new Michel Martin vehicle Tell Me More, or the Tavis Smiley radio show, or the other national and local left-leaning talk programs. A right-winger could even count Garrison Keillor's Prairie Home Companion sometimes!
For CAP and Free Press to argue that commercial broadcasters should pay fees to public broadcasting for a lack of balance – and then raising no question whatsoever about the tilt or the need for balance within public broadcasting -- shows amazing liberal hypocrisy. In fact, Free Press has vociferously opposed any congressional attempt to question the balance of public broadcasting as ‘partisan meddling.’ So what do they call their lobbying?
Hillary Clinton has long believed that what he call the liberal media is no match for Limbaugh and Hannity and Ingraham and Levin and Hugh Hewitt and so on. She would love a bill just like the one that's being pushed for here, which would meddle with all the government-ownership rules to try and cobble together a more "diverse" radio system -- regardless of profitability.
