Political Winds

Jim Ascendio, the news director, sent me this e-mail in response to my criticism of WAMU’s story:

We tried presenting the story in two parts with pro gun control voices in one and anti gun control voices in the other as a different way of presenting the subject.

Unfortunately …it was not made clear that we were doing that.

We also followed those reports with another about how Capitol Hill lawmakers are reluctant to tackle the gun control issue which they have labelled “one of the third rails of politics” and ” like kryptonite”.

Your points, however,  are very well taken and are well appreciated.

We do need to be mindful of presenting all sides in each report.

BTW: The Chris Buckley interview was fun but I filled in at the last minute for Kojo and would have appreciated more time to prepare to be the straight man to his funny one.

Thanks for listening and pardon the delay in getting back to you. There were quite a lot of emails.

Jim Asendio
News Director
WAMU 88 5

I appreciated that Jim took the time to respond and that WAMU’s intent was not to present only one side of the issue.  However, I do think that this episode points out the dangers of “objective” journalism in getting to the truth.  Are both sides in this instance equivalent?  Is it enough just to report that one side says this and the other says that?  Isn’t it the journalist’s job to determine which claims are based on evidence and which aren’t?  Doesn’t presenting both sides in this way by definition suggest that they deserve equal weight?  I believe in the non-Fox version of “fair and balanced.”  But “balance” doesn’t mean that both - or many - sides of an issue all weigh the same.  The reporter’s job is to make his or her best effort to determine the truth.

Recently, in the wake of the tragedy at Virginia Tech, Washington’s NPR station, WAMU, aired a report that prompted me to write the following letter to the news director:

Dear Mr. Asendio,

I’ve just heard what I consider to be perhaps the worst news report I’ve ever heard on WAMU.  Speaking as a long-time listener and admirer of WAMU, and as a former broadcast journalist at CNN and elsewhere, including PRI’s Marketplace, I was appalled at Jeff Kamen’s report about the failures of gun control laws.  It was superficial, totally unbalanced and unfair, with sound bite after sound bite from pro-gun advocates who repeatedly made assertions that are controversial to say the least and often contradicted by data and other factual evidence.  I find it hard to believe that WAMU would put a story on the air in which there were no opposing views to those of gun rights advocates who seek legalization of concealed firearms at Virginia Tech and other college campuses.  In many quarters of American society, this is considered an extreme view, and indeed, I challenge Mr. Kamen to find university police chiefs who think having students pack weapons would make everyone safer.  In fact, in the wake of the VT shootings I heard an interview on NPR with the police chief at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who rightly suggested that introducing weapons on campuses and allowing volatile post-adolescents who not infrequently have too much to drink to pack handguns is clearly not a good idea.  Some, me included, think it’s a pretty crazy idea.  And yet WAMU’s report did not even feature a comment challenging it.

I’m extremely disappointed and indeed angry at WAMU.

On a completely separate note (and certainly with a different tone), I’d like to compliment you on the interview you did with Christopher Buckley.

Sincerely,

Grant Perry

Here are some photos I took in Philadelphia on Sunday, April 29th at the Global Days for Darfur rally. It was sponsored by the Darfur Alert Coalition, the Jewish Community Relations Council of Philadelphia, and the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee. Actually I wasn’t there to attend the rally but was in town on a Sunday School field trip with my son. We were waiting to go into the National Constitution Center on Independence Mall when we happened on the rally.

PhillyNews.com reported that hundreds of people participated, although my guess would be that about 150 attended. In any case, rallies like this were held all over the United States and the world. News coverage, however, was light. One of my grad students at American University works for Amnesty International, and as he said,

The millions-strong immigrants rights rallies last year completely raised the bar and now it’s next to impossible for us to win any coverage of our demonstrations. There was a CNN camera man at the DC rally and a handful of other news outlets, but that was because we were able to get Mia Farrow to speak.

Never assume that Rush Limbaugh couldn’t possibly sink to lower depths. And never assume he’ll pay a price for his destructive verbosity. The latest example:

LIMBAUGH: If this Virginia Tech shooter had an ideology, what do you think it was? This guy had to be a liberal. You start railing against the rich and all this other — this guy’s a liberal. He was turned into a liberal somewhere along the line. So it’s a liberal that committed this act.

The pundits will tell you that Imus crossed the line because he went after innocent and admirable young women rather than the usual big shots. True enough. But hasn’t Rush Limbaugh crossed a line - some kind of line - countless times? Yet Limbaugh’s poisonous rants don’t earn him anywhere near the outrage that was provoked by Imus. Far from it - just days after Limbaugh’s repugnant mimicry of Michael J. Fox, the president of the United States went on his program to exchange some friendly banter. And Vice President Cheney frequently appears on Limbaugh’s show.

At a speaking engagement once, I referred to Limbaugh as a modern-day Father Coughlin. The dittoheads in the audience jumped all over me, saying Limbaugh isn’t an anti-Semite, etc. That wasn’t my point, and I acknowledge that the comparison may not be apt in some ways. But like Father Coughlin, Limbaugh is a political propagandist who plays to people’s anger, fear and anxiety. No matter how many listeners he may have, political figures should stay away.

Like everyone I’m horrified and saddened by the shootings at Virginia Tech. I’m also profoundly depressed because nothing ever changes when it comes to guns in America. Last night I looked at some conservative sites to see what they were saying about the tragedy. I quickly discovered that among many right-wingers, there is a consensus that had Virginia Tech students been allowed to carry concealed weapons on campus, there wouldn’t be so much blood on the ground. “Virginia Tech. is a ‘gun free’ zone guaranteeing that the psychotic killer had the only gun,” said one handgun proponent. Another site bemoaned the defeat in the Virginia legislature of a bill it to allow students to pack a gun.

Isn’t that a fine idea? Let’s allow high-spirited post-adolescent young people who often are under the influence to carry deadly weapons at institutions of higher learning. Oh yeah, that will make campuses safer for everyone. What are these “gun rights advocates,” i.e. gun nuts, thinking? Are they thinking at all? This is what is so depressing - that millions of Americans’ distorted interpretation of the Second Amendment trumps every other societal value along with common sense.