Earlier this year, Governor Christie indicated his desire to transfer operation and ownership of NJN, the state's public broadcasting network, from the New Jersey Public Broadcasting Authority, a state agency, to a nonprofit organization derived from the NJN foundation. CWA, the union representing most NJN employees, has vehemently opposed this plan, which would see many of its members laid off. The legislature has created a task force to study the issues surrounding NJN and make its recommendations by October 15. Therefore it is timely that yesterday, New Jersey Policy Perspective released a report on the past, present and future of NJN and public media in New Jersey that I co-authored with Princeton Professor Paul Starr and Micah Joselow, a current Princeton student. This post will address the first part of that report, which examines the lack of a strong, New Jersey-based public radio news network and explores the possibilities for expanding public radio in New Jersey.
Blue Jersey readers: Do you listen to the radio on a regular basis? What about public radio? If so, which stations? If there was a public radio "foil" for New Jersey 101.5, would you listen to it?
As a frequent listener of NPR, I have grown to enjoy the objectivity and fairness they exhibit in their presentation of the news. Although I am certainly a proud liberal and progressive, this is not how I want my news reported to me. I want to hear well researched, straight forward reports, and I want to determine my own conclusion on whatever the issue may be. Too often, especially in the mainstream media, in an effort to increase ratings or sell newspapers, journalists shift away from objectivity and move towards a form of yellow journalism, which sacrifices objectivity to push an agenda. To be frank, there aren't many Walter Cronkites left.
With newspapers going out of business everyday, a new form of media is surely to emerge. As Rosi pointed out in an earlier diary, the Jersey City Independent is exactly the type of new media that will become more prevalent, and fill the vacuum left by newspaper going out of business. And in my opinion, this is a good thing. These media outlets weren't doing their job, they were trying to make a profit, and hopefully venture capitalists will start to realize that non-profit media outlets like the Jersey City Independent are the wave of the future.
I was listening to NPR on my way home from Dad's PI office, and heard one of the female anchors interviewing Dr. Peter Woolley of Farleigh Dickinson University about the NJ gubernatorial race. Woolley is a poli sci professor and the head of the FDU/Public Mind poll, so you'd figure he'd know what he was talking about.
Turns out, no.
The first thing that caught me up was he talked about Brian Levine as a "very popular mayor of a small town." Levine is from Franklin Twp. in Somerset, which has about 53,000 people in it and is growing all the time. Not exactly a small town like, say, Steve Lonegan who is the former Mayor of Bogota which has fewer than 9,000 residents.
Then Woolley started talking about Chris Christie, and he said something truly stupefying for a political science professor from Morris County: "Chris Christie's political experience is pretty much limited to the US Attorney's office." Ummmm, no.
Chris Christie was a Freeholder in Morris County, ran for Assembly in a primary in Morris County, then was defeated for reelection to the Freeholder board after slandering his opponents. He was also a Ranger for George Bush, which means he raised $100,000 or more for him in $2,000.
This is a lot of political experience outside of the US Attorney's office.
But even more shocking is what Woolley didn't say. On the day that it breaks in philly.com that one of the multi-million dollar no-bid contracts was given out to the US Attorney who declined to prosecute Christie's brother Todd for admitted insider trading Woolley had nothing to say. He mentioned Christie's crusade against corruption, but nothing about Christie's own taint.
All in all, it was a poor performance that showed a superficial understanding of NJ's politics fit more for a thirty second segment of Fox than a five minute segment on NPR.
So I am barely waking up this morning and I hear a blathering Mary Martha Corinne Morrison Claiborn Boggs a.k.a. Cokie Roberts talking about how the Katrina Report was all Republicans as is the opposition to the UAE owning the port system.
First off, in fairness, the Republican committee that issued a report on Wednesday is totally Republican. However, when asked on ABC's This Week, Rep. Gene Taylor said that they didn't bother to subpoena White House records, for fear of being stonewalled and thus delaying the report. I guess the report just HAD to come out February 15th so that folks planning Mardi Gras could prepare special floats with Chertoff bullseye's painted on. Either way, the Republican committee failed to really scathe the White House because, the White House wouldn't let them see their records. Good job Committee. In other words, the reasons Democrats boycotted the committee in the first place came to fruition in the Republican's version of the GAO and DHS Inspector General reports. I won't even get into how screwed up our country is when Republicans get stonewalled by their own party's leader.
Besides, this is only the first of 3 reports on Katrina. The next one to come out is from a BI-PARTISAN Senate Committee. Too bad Cokie forgot to mention that.
However, Cokie wasn't done lifting the Republicans above all ills.
She then went right ahead and blatenly lied.
Cokie went on to say that Republicans were the only one's outraged over the UAE takeover of our Port system. This as we all know, is what Washingtonian Press Folk would potentially call, blatant disregard for the truth. Isn't it enough that Bob Menendez has to issue rapid responses to Michael Chertoff? Go ahead give it a listen, not one mention of Menendez, Clinton, or any legislation that they happen to have already introduced! Though there was a tone of belittlement when she mentioned Chuck Schumer using 9/11 familes to highlight the issue. You can almost hear her think "politicizing 9/11."
However, NPR wasn't done with their Republican cheerleading effort just yet. Immediately following Cokie Roberts' wankery, Peter Overby filed this report, which basically tried to explain the already debunked convoluted way that Harry Reid shares guilt in the Abramoff scandal. The explanation itself is totally convoluted, then again, most baseless accusations come accross this way.
This Morning Edition's pyloric parastolsis gives credence to the idea that NPR really stands for Nice Polite Republicans.
Today Jan 20th, the Philly NPR show "Radio Times" did a cool interview with the Atrios blogger in their second hour.
I sure am learning a lot. It's worth checking out. the link to the show is here http://www.whyy.org/91FM/radiotimes.html
If you listen to WHYY you might have heard them mention BlueJersey this morning during the pledgedrive. I volunteered to man the phones in "pledge central" and they were gracious enough to plug us. Image courtesy of Terry Gross.
