Transcript
BROOKE GLADSTONE: And now for a few of your letters. C. Anderson of Chapel Hill, North Carolina writes: "I have listened to your program through the course of the current presidential campaign and find your evaluation to be amazingly slanted toward the Democrat party candidates. Most of the media tend to give Mr. Kerry and his wife a free pass on a variety of issues. Most recently, those issues include his newly-found faith, his just-before-election love of guns and hunting, and his party's determination to call out lesbian members of his opponents' families. I don't hear you calling the media on their light coverage of these strange directional changes."
BOB GARFIELD: Listener Michael Pettengill of Merrimack, New Hampshire said OTM followed the media pack last week by insulting undecided voters. Here's how he sees the situation, quote: "I have the choice of burger joints that sell either beef or chicken, but I'm a vegan. Do I go down the tracks behind the burger joints and collect some collard greens, pick either the chicken or beef burger based on the amount of lettuce and tomato, or just skip eating. I think half the voters decide to skip eating."
BROOKE GLADSTONE: And we have a couple of corrections. The first is from NPR's religion reporter Barbara Bradley Hagerty. She writes: "Your interview with Bob Case of the evangelical World Journalism Institute implied that I am associated with WJI. That is wrong. I had agreed to teach a one-day class on radio reporting, but when I realized WJI is affiliated with the conservative World Magazine, I immediately pulled out. Unfortunately, WJI had already posted my name on its website as a 'faculty member.' The blog world had a field day with that, but NPR's news managers stood behind me every step of the way."
BOB GARFIELD: The second error: On last week's show, in an interview about newspaper endorsements, our guest Joe Strupp described an endorsement dispute between an editorial board and a publisher. The dispute took place at the Oregonian, not at the Seattle Times as was said in our interview. Our apologies to the Times.
BROOKE GLADSTONE: Thanks for keeping us honest, if not balanced. Keep your comments coming to onthemedia@wnyc.org, and don't forget to tell us where you live and how to pronounce your name. [MUSIC]