Rarely does a Wall Street Journal op-ed eschew snark, righteous indignation, sanctimony, and arrogance. It comes with the territory, but I would not expect writers to get away with mistruths and overstatements to make their assertions more credible and vivid.
Along comes today’s good riddance to government subsidized public media from a hectoring Andy Kessler: We Won’t Miss Government Media; available at: https://www.wsj.com/opinion/we-wont-miss-government-media-ce321e65 (may be firewall protected). While I agree with Mr. Kessler on the need for a robust First Amendment and quite limited government involvement in speech, the op-ed contains unnecessary hyperbole and worse added to prove his point.
Mr. Kessler refers to a surely unscientific, if not fictitious, survey of the political affiliation of NPR’s Washington, D.C. editorial staff, as reported by a senior editor there. Mr. Kessler, must have the damaging survey results right on his desk: 87 Democrats, presumably including Mr. Kessler’s source, and 0 Republicans.
Mr. Kessler assumes that such skewed results directly impact the substance of NPR’s reporting. Who can be “fair and balanced” if everyone has an affiliation with the Democrats? Mr. Kessler asserts that NPR is awash with politicization and “swamp support,” easily inferred as Democrats, who also are card carrying members of the scum that he so loathes.
Mr. Kessler sees no need for taxpayer funded public media, but I wonder whether he objects to other forms of financial support for conservative radio voices, including nonprofit status that reduces or eliminates tax liability. He also sees no need for radio, at least public media, given the cornucopia of podcasts.
This independent, far from liberal, rural resident listens to and supports public media, because I seek a fair, balanced, and journalistically superior product.
I know it when I hear it.
