Open letter to Diane Rehm of NPR:

[AndyA]

Dear Diane:

I listen to your show most mornings during my drive to work. While your show is often entertaining and informative, lately I've begun to notice things seem a bit one sided. To the right.

When you have three guests on, and two of them are conservatives, that's not balanced reporting. For some reason, you seem to think that having one conservative, one progressive, and someone from a conservative foundation or think tank is fair. It's not.

Earlier today, I read an article that stated the media in this country overwhelmingly favors Republican/conservative guests over Democratic/progressive guests. Why is that? According to the article, this has been going on for years. It doesn't matter which party is in charge of Congress, or who's in the White House, Republicans outnumber the Democrats by a wide margin?

Is this because there are more registered Republicans in the United States? (Sources say Democrats hold a 48% to 40% lead among registered voters, and a modest lead of 47%-43% among likely voters.)

Is this because Republicans talk more? Are more readily available for appearances?

Diane, I'd really like to know the answer to this question. You seem to try to distance yourself from being partisan, but actions indicate you favor giving Republicans the final word on your show.

Why is it that you and your peers favor Republicans so much more over Democrats? Especially when the Republican Party has largely created the current mess we're in with its failed policies, its hypocritical emphasis on what The Bible says is right and wrong, and with the numerous lies GOP officials have told the American people, Congress, and the rest of the World.

Why do you feel Republicans deserve higher visibility?

[navarth]

1. I'll never forget her comment about Al Gore in 2000.

I used to listen to her show. Not any more.

She had a caller saying she was sure Diane would support Al Gore. Diane said: "Well, I don't know about that."

Not "Oh, I'm not supposed to take sides."

I doubt my typing this can accurately portray her tone of voice, but the message I got was clear. I was more than disappointed. Every time I hear her show, I remember that moment.

I don't forget. And I have yet to forgive.

[deutsey]

3. Whenever I think of Diane I remember this one show where she

had on an elderly woman journalist who apparently was very well known (I can't remember her name now...this was back in the mid-'90s, I guess).

The journalist was a crochety kind of personality and Diane kept fawning over her as "the grand dame" of DC journalists, or something like that. Diane couldn't say enough good things about her and laughed at all the cantankerous things she had to say.

Then the journalist said she knew that certain powerful people in DC have hitmen who kill their political opponents. There was this stunned silence from Diane before she said she found that hard to believe. Diane had spent most of the broadcast saying what a great, groundbreaking journalist this lady was (and she still had about half a show to fill), so it was hard for her to cut the journalist off like she does listeners she doesn't agree with. I just remember the journalist insisting what she said was true and Diane saying "I find that hard to believe." LOL

[deutsey]

2. I used to love Diane's show when it was a local broadast in DC

I found it difficult to listen to her show after it went national. More and more it seemed to reflect that genteel "inside-the-beltway/pundit cocktail party circuit" chumminess that ignores truly progressive viewpoints while bending over backward to make sure rightwing conservatives "have a fair say."

After 2000, I stopped listening (and donating) to NPR altogether and started listening to a Pacifica affiliate online instead (KPFA.org).

[Tangerine LaBamba]

4. Long, long ago,

the Diane Rehm show, when it was a local DC thing, was enjoyable and enlightening.

Then she got some good publicity.

Wrote a book about how great her marriage was and then there was nothing but gossip about her husband's infidelity (this is local DC).

Lost her voice for a while, but came back to hurrahs.

Went national and became insanely full of herself.

Abrupt, condescending, intolerant.

I had pretty much stopped listening to her in the early nineties, even before she went national, but I gave her show a few more listens, just to see if maybe I'd been wrong.

I wasn't.

She's just a slow-speaking, genteel, uninteresting has-been with absolutely nothing to say and who uses her guests for her own aggrandizement.

[Kalyke]

5. Do you have a link to the article you were reading regarding

the favoring of Republican guests?

I need to send that to a few people who simply will NOT believe the media isn't liberal.

[AndyA]

6. I'll see if I can find it.

A similar discussion on coverage of Republicans vs. Dems on the stimulus bill is here:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=389&topic_id=4935689&mesg_id=4935689

Once again, the Repugs outnumber the Dems by a wide margin. :(