Goat Rodeo Cowboy said:
I like to think that peple of all political persuasions would favor making Talk Radio intelligent, meeting the test of integrity, and using the words of a Supreme Court ruling on another topic: Talk Radio should have socially redeeming value.
I would like to think so also. Though I'm an unapologetic liberal I don't maintain that I can learn nothing from the other side, my own side or an NPR type of information programming; indeed it seems bizarre for anyone to resent the suggestion that they might learn something.
People on this thread have talked about truth and lies; what nobody has mentioned is
trust, which is something that's earned. Regardless of your viewpoint, you should find it easy enough to sniff out whether a talk host is trustworthy or not. To me John Batchelor seems trustworthy and if he presents facts on which he bases his arguments, I tend to accept those facts at face value. Many of his fellow conservatives with talk shows have track records that make me disinclined to accept anything they say on trust, unless I can verify it from more reliable sources. On the liberal side, I trust Rachel Maddow's knowledge of the facts enough that they can be taken to the bank - and if she finds that she was wrong, she goes out of her way to correct herself. I have actually learned something from Batchelor and Maddow and (not by coincidence) they have obviously themselves benefited from much lifetime learning. Others on both sides, but mostly on the right (if only because there are many more of them) think they already know everything and therefore can't learn anything - that should be enough to destroy anyone's trust.
When someone like Hannity, suggesting that President Obama ought to resign, needs to wonder aloud whether any previous President has ever resigned, why should he be trusted as any kind of opinion leader? Maybe he got a sneak peek at the newly revised history gospel according to the Texas State Board of education.
Do I think the government should shut such people down? Of course not. I just think that station owners can do a better job of representing their potential audiences and use their freedom of ownership to open their microphones to more than the same old snake oil.
Is there a scheme, as Hedgecock claims, to shut down talk radio? Absolutely not - maybe just a few people here and there who talk about individual cases, which Hedecock immediately translates to some grand "scheme" to shut down the whole industry; and such people are to be found on the right, maybe more so than the left. As I said, it's a matter of trust, and when Hedgecock comes out with this stuff, why should he be trusted?
