Dean Barnett had an insightful look into the medium of talk radio last week that deserves to be read. Fundamentally, Barnett asks which comes first, the talk radio host or the interested listener?
The answer, logically, is the listener. The talk radio show thrives when it speaks to issues listeners care about. The audience does not simply appear overnight to be led like sheep by the authoritative voice emitting from the speaker.
Yet all to often one hears critiques of talk radio spouting such themes, describing the Rush Limbaughs of the world as having "followers" who are herded toward divined outcomes based on the rants and musings of the host (Note: this fallacy is often likewise errantly applied to leaders of the so-called "Religious Right").
Is that the case or do the listeners partake of the show because they enjoy the format, enjoy the discussion of issues and politics, and often find themselves in agreement?
It's not unlike debates about money in politics. If only it was enough to simply roll one's eyes at the naifs who insist that voters can be "bought" with slick TV ads and glossy mail pieces. Or that the votes of elected officials can be likewise "bought" with $2,300 maximum contributions to races that cost millions of dollars.
Please.
But such is the logic of the mavens who decry talk radio, who lament the heavy expenditure of funds in politics (at least when it's not being spent by their preferred candidate), and who cheered campaign finance "reform" as some urgent priority to "cleanse" the political system. Sidenote: that worked out well, no?
Such thinking is an insult to the average American talk radio listener. It's an insult to serious candidates for public office. And it's an insult to the many people who do their human best to serve in our political system with integrity.
More directly, such thinking conveys a total lack of respect for the intelligence and self-determination of one's fellow man. Thus in the end, such positions really say more about those uttering them than anything else.
Posted by Eric Earling at January 27, 2008 08:51 AM | Email ThisA talk show is active: it requires effort, it is ever-changing even within the same subject matter.
Ostensibly, one is news while the other opinion.
Again, static vs active: a couch potato vs a triathlete.
Liberals tend to follow, The Dems show us this by their very closely held and hightly valued coalition of interest groups. They lead a tightly formed parade.
Consevatives tend to think for themselves. Often interest groups agree with us, but just as often they don't. Huckabee and McCain are the perfect human examples of that.
They (liberals) lead a tightly formed parade.
We (conservatives) have a come as you are picnic on acres.
What draws me into Kirby, Rush, OReilly and a few others is they run with facts and will let the opposing viewpoint present itself (if they have the stones to come on.
Posted by: Andy on January 27, 2008 11:27 AMI see this among my social scientist colleagues in anthropology/archaeology and their attitudes towards blogs. Most of them see the Internet as useful only as a source of "good and reliable information provided by experts". It's the same sort of top-down dissemination of information that they like. It's similar with Journalists: they don't think the rabble ought to have an outlet, especially if said rabble disagrees with them. They just don't *get* that a marketplace of ideas involves stuff that they don't like to hear.
Posted by: Frank Black on January 28, 2008 03:52 PMLiberal radio such as Air America are just another medium of which there are many.
It's a market deal. Supply and demand. Since there is almost no supply of conservative media, talk radio was born to fill the demand.
On the other hand, there is an abundance of liberal media supply and about the same amount of demand as conservative.....so you get little viewers/listeners everywhere rather than concentrated in a few places.
Posted by: drw on January 29, 2008 12:38 PM