Left Wing Radio

I don't know how anyone could say that National Public Radio is unbiased journalism.

I listened to NPR for an hour or more while driving back up here from the Bay Area yesterday. The entire subject matter discussed during that time was hard core lefty stuff. I've heard it's like that all the time, but my experience is limited so I suppose I shouldn't make a judgement on just a few hours listening time.

Hey, I might even have agreed with some of what was being said, although it's hard to remember just what all the subjects covered were. Of course, they did have an interview with Cindy "ate up" Sheehan, who I detest, but other than that it was an interesting listen.

I just get a little fed up hearing from lefties who claim NPR "tells it the way it is...". Well, they may tell you what you want to hear, but please don't tell me they're non- biased.

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Along the same line, I happened to be listening to KMUD while driving up through the Avenue of the Giants yesterday. Isn't KMUD an NPR station, or maybe that was the same channel? Hard for me to tell since, as reception came and went, I kept hitting the Seek button and just listened to whatever came along that I could receive well enough to understand.

Anyway, what grabbed my attention was an announcement that, coming up, was coverage of the Measure T issue, among other things. I had to listen to that.

I was surprised to hear them give some pretty good time to the NO side of Measure T. Most of that was just recorded segments of Chris Crawford's speech before the Republican Central Committee a few days ago. Not bad.

Next came, what seemed to be, a pre- recorded interview with Kaitlin Sopoci- Belknap of Democracy Unlimited and thus YES on T fame.

Nothing much from her we haven't heard before. She was just plugging her position. I did take exception to her complaining about not being invited to present her side of the Measure T issue to the Republican Central Committee. She made some comment about how the presentation was so one sided.

Well, it might have been, Kaitlin, but to call the various YES on T meetings your side has had, with a number of YES on T folks as speakers, forums, doesn't give you much credibility on the issue of promoting even handed presentations. But, to Kaitlin's credit, I was surprised when her interview came to a close.

She urged listeners to educate themselves on the issue (I hate it when either side of an issue uses the word educate, although I'm not completely sure she used that term). She suggested listeners visit both the YES On T web site, then much to my surprise, suggested they also visit the NO On T web site.

Not bad. All in all I thought it was a fairly even handed presentation of both sides.

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Next, on KMUD, was coverage of a candidate forum between District Attorney Candidates, Paul Gallegos and Worth Dikeman. I didn't catch exactly when this forum took place. Pretty fair coverage of each candidate, I suppose. The problem I found was they spent a substantial amount of time interviewing audience members.

The question they asked of whether the forum changed their views on the candidates, or their decision of who they'd be voting for is a very legitimate one. In fact, the question of whether candidate forums actually change anyone's mind is an interesting one, indeed. They rarely change mine.

What concerned me was that the only audience members who gave their preference of whom they'd be voting for, said they had planned on voting for Gallegos and still felt that way. I found that rather odd. Nope, sorry Gallegos supporters. Everyone you know might well be voting for Gallegos, but I personally don't know anyone that's voting for him.

So, the D.A. forums seemed a bit tweaked, but I'll be fair and say that might have been more by accident than by design. The Measure T segment seemed ok to me. Still, overall I don't see how anyone can call NPR unbiased.