To the Editor: 3/16/96
In Allies of the Airwaves in your last issue, responding to requests by the Ithaca Progressive Media Alliance and countless other WSKG listeners for progressive programming, WSKG Programming Director Donna Hill suggested that her reluctance to regularly air progressive programming like Alternative Radio stems from the fact that "[were] WSKG to add programs that are considered politically left, it would be obligated to add programs from the right" which are hard to find.
Given that WSKG's mission is to serve the Public, Hill's logic is puzzling. The purported unavailability of hard-core Right-wing programming might mean that WSKG should look harder, or it might mean there is no significant demand for it by WSKG listeners, but it surely does not mean that WSKG is excused from fulfilling its Public Mission towards that substantial part of its listenership (and membership) which progressive programs like Alternative Radio would serve. For Hill to offer the "unavailability" of certain other programming as the reason WSKG has refused to air any progressive programming regularly, is disturbing.
Quite aside from this strange logic, and more disturbing, is that Hill's use of the terms "left" and "right" is misleading, and regrettably deceptive.
There are two sets of meanings for these terms -- one having to do with their use by the two-Party Establishment in Washington, and one having to do with the real world.
In WashingtonSpeak, the Democrats and Republicans are supposed to represent the "left" and the "right" respectively, so that progressive programming, to the left of "New Democrat" Clinton, would need to be "balanced" by something, say, to the right of Newt Gingrich.
In the real world, however, both the Democratic and Republican Parties -- and hence the regular political diet offered by WSKG -- are to the right of that most underrepresented segment: the American public.
If you doubt this, consider where the Democratic-Republican political spectrum is, as compared with public opinion. In the interest of space, let us confine ourselves to what are arguably the two most crucial decisions which the American public has faced in the last several years: the Health Care debate, and the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).
On health care, public surveys have repeatedly shown that an outright majority of Americans (60-70+ %) support the institution of something every other industrialized nation in the world has, besides South Africa, and that is a (so-called "Canadian-style" or "Single Payer") national health insurance program. On this crucial issue, the official "left" and "right" political Parties both agree that the national health insurance option and the public's preference must be excluded, in favor of other options which keep for-profit, Corporate-run health insurers in business.
On NAFTA, in the months before the Congressional vote, a majority of those Americans having an opinion opposed its passage, while both Parties in Washington, official "left" and "right" alike, overwhelmingly supported it.
Question: What was the coverage in the media, say on WSKG's "liberal" NPR news?
On NAFTA, NPR's sole "commentator" was pro-NAFTA. Following calls to NPR by myself and others, to complain about this lack of balance, NPR did add a second commentator to their coverage -- who was also pro-NAFTA.
On health care, NPR steadfastly ignores national health insurance as an option, and on the handful of occasions it is mentioned, NPR's commentators and even news "reporters" repeatedly mislead the public by referring to the "higher costs" of such a program -- despite the fact that study after study [which NPR is surely aware of] by everyone from the General Accounting Office to the Congressional Budget Office report that while providing all needed health care to all Americans, national health insurance would save money, to the tune of billions of dollars a year, when we balance the savings in health insurance premiums, deductibles, co-payments, etc, against the taxes which would fund such a program, realizing overall a substancial savings. (Could it be that the "conservatives" who preach "cut bureaucracy" to gut needed social programs, support the more expensive private health bureaucracy over the more efficient Single Payer, because that they really support is the profits of those who bankroll their political campaigns?)
As if this wasn't bad enough, just as with NPR's two pro-NAFTA commentators, the media watchdog group FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, whose weekly program CounterSpin airs on WICB but not on WSKG) has documented that the two All Things Considered commentators on health care were not only both anti-Single Payer (against national health insurance), but were also both paid lobbyists for private health insurance corporations. Their status as paid corporate hacks was not revealed to NPR listeners who were led to believe that these former congressmen were commenting without bias. Only after intense activist pressure did NPR agree to notify listeners of their roles -- but still refused to replace these paid-off "experts", or even to add another voice, perhaps one more in tune with the feelings of the majority of Americans, or at least not a paid spokeperson of the corporate health-for-profit industry. That their mission is to serve the public, not Corporate America, is evidently "too radical" a notion for today's public radio.
The Conclusion? The political spectrum WSKG offers reflects the Establishment, Tweedledum-versus-Tweedledee balance of official "left" and official "right" -- consequently presenting a "balance" consisting of cheerleading for NAFTA, and the exclusion of any serious consideration of national health insurance, regardless of what the public thinks, what the facts are, or even minimal standards of actual balance.
In other words, NPR's "balance" is in fact to the right of the public's views on these central issues (and others), a matter which is apparently of little more consequence at WSKG than it unfortunately is for the "Best Congress Big Money Can Buy" in Washington. We arrive finally at Hill's prescription for "balance":
It is the notion that, were WSKG to augment its NPR "balance" of "left" versus "right" Washington support for Corporatized Health Care with, say, Alternative Radio speakers voicing support for the national health insurance program the majority of Americans support, then that would have to be "balanced" with programming to the Right of NPR -- that is, with a THIRD voice, besides the two NPR represents, ALSO opposing national health insurance (perhaps labeling Clinton's Managed Competition plan, which was designed by representatives of the largest Corporate for-profit insurance Goliaths in their own financial interest, as "Socialist", to add "balance" to the spectrum of intelligent political discourse?)
So much for reasons of "balance" to exclude progressive programming.
It is precisely progressive programs like Alternative Radio which give voice to American dissidents outside the official mainstream -- activists, working Americans, intellectuals, and others -- which do represent significant sentiments of the American people which are regularly and systematically excluded from the official Washington left-right spectrum. The same is true of the local progressive call-in talk show, The Nobody Show, aired on WEOS but not on WSKG.
Perhaps what Hill was really trying to say is: Look, if WSKG were to present a political balance representing the real world, rather than Washington's definition of "balance", Washington (or Corporate underwriters) might move to cut our funding. Perhaps. But at least in that case there would be a community base of listeners ready to support a true alternative to commercial radio, while WSKG's present course still means cuts, less drastic, but with an increasingly alienated listenership (less likely to support the station) which finds it harder and harder to distinguish "public" from "commercial" news and public affairs programming, vis a vis the crucial issues which most affect their lives.
Harel Barzilai