Mission Statement

On August 18th 2006, the Diane Rehm Show on NPR (hereinafter called Nationally Paid Radio) had a segment on the emergence and proliferation of blogs and the alternate or citizen’s media. That gave me an idea. What about a blog about the Diane Rehm Show?

Don't get your hopes up if you are an extremist. I like the show. I'm a regular listener and occasional caller, although by virtue of how NPR is funded I am also a yearly financial contributor, and thus feel entitled to have a say so about its programming.

Diane Rehm hosts a show that is civil, "classy", intelligent, varied, relevant, and completely different from the “shout you down” “run-of-the-mill” shows that pass for “talk-shows”. The show is as elegant as the host herself. But there is a slight flaw: it leans liberal. Let’s be frank.

Besides the fact that most guests are of a liberal bent, and the fact that most topics are introduced by way of adjectives which betray that bias—there’s not one week that goes by that one doesn’t hear a topic introduced as “the Bush administration...”—the best example of the bias is in the weekly News Roundup (hereinafter called the Weekly Gang-up). The composition of that panel is typical of what can be seen in the rest of the mainstream media (hereinafter called the Old Media, or Liberal Media). It is usually a 3 against 1 ratio, that is, three liberals including the host and one token conservative.

Usually (although not done so much anymore) the three liberals are introduced without the nomination of liberal before their names, while the conservative is customarily introduced as “conservative commentator or writer so and so.” The implication is that the firsts are, of course, neutral and objective journalists. Because we enjoy The Diane Rehm Show and because we believe that a healthy unbiased media is healthy for Democracy, and because we contribute with our taxes to the airing of The Diane Rehm Show we therefore declare ourselves “Self-Appointed Ombudsman” of the best variety show on radio.