1. Reticent to Reform Social Security, Prefer Taxes to Stock Market
The CBS Evening News tied a story on President Bush's plan to reform Social Security to a worker who supports the idea of private accounts for a portion of an employee's payment, but only after anchor Dan Rather reverentially described Social Security as "the biggest, most successful retirement program in the world." Though over time the stock market has always out-performed Social Security, John Roberts warned of instability in the stock market. Over video of people on the floor of a stock market yelling and waving their arms, Roberts asked: "Remember what happened to all those 401(k) accounts three years ago? The people who print Social Security checks never act like this." Roberts concluding by bringing up how "some critics claim that the coming shortfall could easily be covered by repealing the President's tax cuts." Earlier, on CNN's Inside Politics, Dana Bash fretted about how Bush issued a "no new tax pledge even though some congressional Republicans say the President should be open-minded about how to fund transforming Social Security."
2. Soldier Fronting Question for a Reporter Not of Concern to Nets
A reporter for the Chattanooga Times Free Press boasted in a Wednesday e-mail, which was revealed on Thursday, that the soldier in Kuwait fronted his question for him when the National Guardsman asked Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld about the lack of armor on vehicles in Iraq, an exchange which earned massive media coverage. On Thursday night, CBS didn't mention the disclosure and ABC and NBC reporters considered it irrelevant to the larger topic. Peter Jennings emphasized that "it was certainly clear from the other soldiers' reaction to the question, that better protection is a big issue." And on NBC, Jim Miklaszewski dismissed any concern about the journalist's professionalism: "Whoever came up with the question, it's put the debate over the safety of American troops front and center."
3. CNN Empathizes with Illegals Who "Chauffeur Disabled People"
CNN's Paula Zahn Now on Wednesday night delivered a brief on behalf of illegal aliens who are upset they may lose their driver's licences. While reporter Maria Hinojosa made a couple of brief references to anti-terror security concerns, she spent most of her story defending the illegals and laying out a litany of horrors which would befall their families if they lost their licenses. Hinojosa showcased one mother who "uses her license to chauffeur disabled people" and whose U.S.-born kids would be hurt if forced to return to Mexico. As Hinojosa leaned forward, from the back seat of a taxi, the female driver complained: "I'm driving very stressed. I can't concentrate anymore because I'm getting worried." Hinojosa empathized: "They drive trucks and taxis, care for children and clean homes." Following her taped piece, Hinojosa made clear to Zahn where her sympathies lie: "I think what is really incredible, Paula, is the level of stress and fear that these people are living in is something that most of us don't understand. We just don't see it. And they are really feeling it on a very human level."
4. Newsweek's Meacham: Like McVeigh, Jesus Executed for Sedition
In the bad analogies department, Newsweek Managing Editor Jon Meacham compared Jesus Christ to Timothy McVeigh and Aldrich Ames, since Jesus was crucified for "the crime of sedition." Even Don Imus was taken aback by the bad analogy, suggesting: "Aldrich Ames is probably a better example than Timothy McVeigh." And on Monday's Hardball, Meacham compared the telling of Jesus' life to how Ted Sorenson may have years later recounted his time with John F. Kennedy.
5. Boston Talk Host David Brudnoy, Friend of the MRC, Dies at 64
David Brudnoy, a long-time Boston radio talk show host with a libertarian/conservative outlook, who overcame a near-death experience with AIDS in 1994 and series of hospital stays late last year as he battled Merkel cell carcinoma, succumbed to complications from the cancer just past 6pm local time Thursday night. He was 64. Brudnoy was a friend to the MRC, serving since 1992 as a judge for our "Best Notable Quotables" annual awards issue for the year's worst reporting, twice (in late November of 1994 and late November of 2003) filling in his ballot from his bed at Massachusetts General Hospital. Every year he was amongst the first to return his ballot. In addition to hosting a nightly radio talk show host in Boston since 1976, the prolific Brudnoy delivered commentaries on various local TV stations over the years, reviewed movies for a chain of suburban newspapers, taught journalism classes at Boston University, in the early 1970s started writing articles for the National Review magazine and, in 1997, penned a memoir.
Reticent to Reform Social Security, Prefer
Taxes to Stock Market
The CBS Evening News tied a story on President Bush's plan to reform Social Security to a worker who supports the idea of private accounts for a portion of an employee's payment, but only after anchor Dan Rather reverentially described Social Security as "the biggest, most successful retirement program in the world." Though over time the stock market has always out-performed Social Security, John Roberts, the probable future anchor, warned of instability in the stock market. Over video of people on the floor of a stock market yelling and waving their arms, Roberts asked: "Remember what happened to all those 401(k) accounts three years ago? The people who print Social Security checks never act like this." Roberts concluding by bringing up how "some critics claim that the coming shortfall could easily be covered by repealing the President's tax cuts."
Earlier, on CNN's Inside Politics, Dana Bash fretted about how Bush issued a "no new tax pledge even though some congressional Republicans say the President should be open minded about how to fund transforming Social Security."
Rather introduced the December 9 CBS Evening News story: "President Bush called again today for historic changes in the biggest, most successful retirement program in the world: Social Security. CBS's John Roberts reports on the plan, the cost, the battle ahead, and what it all means to you."
Roberts began, as the MRC's Brad Wilmouth checked the closed-captioning against the video: "Tad DeHaven could be the poster child for Social Security reform: 28 years old, a college graduate, in the work force for six years, getting married next May, expected to retire in 2042. That's the year Social Security goes broke." Tad DeHaven, National Taxpayers Union employee: "I don't expect to get anything from Social Security, okay. I don't consider it in terms of my long-term planning and financing. It's not going to be there. That's my assumption." Roberts: "So Tad is fully on board the plan to establish private accounts for Social Security to allow younger workers to invest a small portion of their payroll taxes in the stock market." DeHaven: "Allow me to invest some sort of money in the marketplace where I am going to earn a positive return, where I am going to have a property right to this." Roberts: "But getting there will carry a whopping price tag. To fund the transition to private accounts while paying current retirees will cost an estimated $1-2 trillion." Thomas Saving, Social Security Trustee: "We're suggesting a change in the payroll tax." Roberts: "One of President Bush's Social Security advisors unveiled a plan today that would pay the cost with a modest increase in weekly payroll taxes. 'Not a chance,' said the President today." George W. Bush in the Oval Office: "We will not raise payroll taxes to solve this problem."
Roberts: "Which leaves other options -- raise the retirement age, reduce benefits, or borrow the money -- none of which are easy to swallow. Then there's the issue of stock market stability. Remember what happened to all those 401(k) accounts three years ago? The people who print Social Security checks never act like this. But DeHaven argues doing nothing is not an option." DeHaven: "At some point in time, somebody has to step up to the plate. If it has to be my generation, then I say, 'So be it.'" Roberts concluded: "And in an indication as to just where this fight is heading, some critics claim that the coming shortfall could easily be covered by repealing the President's tax cuts. But under the current system, there's no way to save that money for the future. And at the rate the government is spending money, there likely won't be anything to save anyway. John Roberts, CBS News, the White House."
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Soldier Fronting Question for a Reporter
Not of Concern to Nets
A reporter for the Chattanooga Times Free Press boasted in a Wednesday e-mail, which was revealed on Thursday, that the soldier in Kuwait fronted his question for him when the National Guardsman asked Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld about the lack of armor on vehicles in Iraq, an exchange which earned massive media coverage. On Thursday night, CBS didn't mention the disclosure and ABC and NBC reporters considered it irrelevant to the larger topic. Peter Jennings emphasized that "it was certainly clear from the other soldiers' reaction to the question, that better protection is a big issue." And on NBC, Jim Miklaszewski dismissed any concern about the journalist's professionalism: "Whoever came up with the question, it's put the debate over the safety of American troops front and center."
Chattanooga Times Free Press reporter Edward Lee Pitts is embedded with a Tennessee National Guard unit headed to Iraq and when he realized the vehicles in which he'll be riding lacked armor, he began to write stories about the problem. In an e-mail, to his colleagues back in Tennessee, which was given to Jim Romenesko and Matt Drudge, Pitts admitted: "I have been trying to get this story out for weeks -- as soon as I found out I would be on an unarmored truck -- and my paper published two stories on it."
In the December 8 e-mail, Pitts was triumphant about how he got a soldier to pose his question (an excerpt):
I just had one of my best days as a journalist today. As luck would have it, our journey North was delayed just long enough see I could attend a visit today here by Defense Secretary Rumsfeld. I was told yesterday that only soldiers could ask questions so I brought two of them along with me as my escorts. Before hand we worked on questions to ask Rumsfeld about the appalling lack of armor their vehicles going into combat have. While waiting for the VIP, I went and found the Sgt. in charge of the microphone for the question and answer session and made sure he knew to get my guys out of the crowd.
So during the Q&A session, one of my guys was the second person called on. When he asked Rumsfeld why after two years here soldiers are still having to dig through trash bins to find rusted scrap metal and cracked ballistic windows for their Humvees, the place erupted in cheers so loud that Rumsfeld had to ask the guy to repeat his question....
The great part was that after the event was over the throng of national media following Rumsfeld -- The New York Times, AP, all the major networks -- swarmed to the two soldiers I brought from the unit I am embedded with....
END of Excerpt
For the e-mail in its entirety, as posted by Romenesko on the Poynter Institute site: poynter.org
To comment on the Pitts e-mail: poynter.org
For the DrudgeReport posting of the Pitts e-mail, with links to his previous stories: www.drudgereport.com
ABC and NBC on Thursday night, both of which for a second straight night led with the fallout from the exchange with Rumsfeld, offered glancing mentions of the role played by Pitts, without even using his name:
-- ABC's World News Tonight. Peter Jennings: "Just one other note about this story. We learned today that a reporter for the Chattanooga Times Free Press, who's was traveling with the soldier who asked the question yesterday, 'worked on the question,' to use his words, with the soldier. It was certainly clear from the other soldiers' reaction to the question, that better protection is a big issue."
-- NBC Nightly News. Jim Miklaszewski concluded from the Pentagon: "As for the question from Specialist Wilson, a newspaper reporter now claims he helped Wilson put it together. Whoever came up with the question, it's put the debate over the safety of American troops front and center."
A Friday Washington Post story, "Reporter Prompted Query to Rumsfeld: Troops Cheered Soldier's Question," included a picture of Edward Lee Pitts: www.washingtonpost.com
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CNN Empathizes with Illegals Who "Chauffeur
Disabled People"
CNN's Paula Zahn Now on Wednesday night delivered a brief on behalf of illegal aliens who are upset they may lose their driver's licences. While reporter Maria Hinojosa made a couple of brief references to anti-terror security concerns about letting illegal aliens get licenses, she spent most of her story defending the illegals and laying out a litany of horrors which would befall their families if they lost their licenses. Hinojosa showcased one mother who "uses her license to chauffeur disabled people" and whose U.S.-born kids would be hurt if forced to return to Mexico. As Hinojosa leaned forward, from the back seat of a taxi, the female driver complained: "I'm driving very stressed. I can't concentrate anymore because I'm getting worried." Hinojosa empathized: "They drive trucks and taxis, care for children and clean homes."
Following her taped piece, Hinojosa made clear to Zahn where her sympathies lie: "I think what is really incredible, Paula, is the level of stress and fear that these people are living in is something that most of us don't understand. We just don't see it. And they are really feeling it on a very human level."
Paula Zahn introduced the December 8 Paula Zahn Now segment caught by the MRC's Ken Shepherd: "Today the Senate passed the intelligence reform bill. The vote was 89-2. That came a day after the House approved it. The reforms are based on the recommendations of the 9/11 Commission and will put one person in charge of coordinating all of the nation's intelligence agencies. One thing not included in the bill, a provision preventing illegal aliens from getting driver's licenses. Congress put off that concern until next year. The government says there are at least seven million illegal immigrants in the United States, and critics worry that it's just too easy for terrorists to slip into the country, get IDs and blend into the population. But with so many undocumented workers holding down jobs, denying them permission to drive could be disastrous for them and some say for their employer. Maria Hinojosa tells us more."
Hinojosa began her taped piece: "Like a lot of mothers, Fidelina Perez (ph?) drives her daughter to school to keep her safe. Fidelina Perez, driving car: "I bring my daughter every day because I hear on the news a lot of drugs." Hinojosa: "But 14-year-old Nancy, who wants to be a doctor, has a new worry. Her mother is an illegal immigrant and New York is about to take away the driver's license she got using a fake Social Security number." Nancy Perez, in car, crying: "It is just hard, because of the thought of having to leave here if they lose their job or anything. I don't want to." Hinojosa: "Nancy and her sisters were born here, U.S. citizens. They're afraid that if their mother gets stopped driving without a license, their parents will be deported to Mexico, which they left 20 years ago." Maria Perez, the daughter of the illegal alien, in her bedroom: "I know that if they get deported to Mexico, we are never going to come back, because they don't have their papers yet and we can come back, of course, because we were born here. But I don't want to leave my parents because that's going to make me like so sad." Hinojosa: "Fidelina says she uses her license to chauffeur disabled people and to get to her job as a domestic, not to commit acts of terrorism like the 9/11 hijackers. They legally entered the United States and then obtained 63 driver's licenses around the country." Hinojosa, translating for Fidelina, who apparently hasn't bothered to learn English even though road signs are in English: "'We are decent people,' Fidelina says, 'tranquil. We would never think of wanting to hurt anyone.'" Hinojosa: "But Brian DeCell, who lost his son-in-law on September 11, says, without immigration reform, terrorists can use a driver's license to board planes, rent cars and open bank accounts." Brian Decell, father-in-law of September 11 victim: "Somebody who is undocumented, it's a person that you don't know who they are, gets a driver's license, that gives them the keys to the city. That was the terrorists' favorite tool."
Hinojosa: "In New York state alone, an estimated half million people have legal driver's licenses, but are suspected of having entered this country illegally. This taxi driver is one of them." Unidentified female taxi cab driver, driving with Hinojosa leaning over her shoulder from the back seat: "I'm driving very stressed. I can't concentrate anymore because I'm getting worried." Hinojosa: "They drive trucks and taxis, care for children and clean homes. I asked some of them how the U.S. can protect its borders if it provides them with a valid ID, even when they entered this country illegally." Hinojosa: "'This country definitely has to control its borders because it's dangerous to not know who is coming in,' this man told me. 'But by giving us an ID or license, then they would have a lot more control over who we are and what we do.'" Hinojosa: "Rosalyn Kennedy Lewis (sp?) employs Fidelina to care for her family home. She says she can't afford a legal worker." Rosalyn Kennedy Lewis: "I understand that they are illegal, but they should take into consideration how they have lived their life, what they have accomplished with their life, and what their children are like. And it should be done on a case-by-case basis. Those people that are motivated do belong here. That's what America's about." Hinojosa: "Losing their licenses means these workers will fade completely into the underground economy." Hinojosa with same non-English speaking cab drivers as earlier: "'We're not many terrorists,' this man said to me. 'Many people say we will use these licenses to do harm. And we aren't going to use them to do that. We are using them to work.' And he said, 'In the same way a lot of people from here died in those towers on September 11th, many immigrants died in the towers as well.'"
Zahn then asked Hinojosa on set: "And Maria Hinojosa joins us now. How sensitive to the 9/11 families' concerns are these illegal workers? Do they understand why that man is outraged that you have got millions of illegal immigrants driving around with legal driver's licenses?" Hinojosa: "I think they understand. I think what they're telling me is, they don't understand the contradictions. On the one hand, they are here. They know they came here without papers. Many of them say, we wish we didn't do that. But they worry that, by not having the licenses, they are going to be pushed into more underground and perhaps doing other illegal actions, for example, getting somebody to get you insurance in another state so you can have a license here. They're saying to me, we want this government to document us. We want to tell them where they are, so they can come and get us if we have a problem. They're saying, we are here. We're not going anywhere, seven million of them." Zahn: "So we really don't know what Congress is going to do when they take this up next year. But what is the assumption by most people you talk to? If they crack down on the driver's license problem that these folks will indeed go underground like they suggested to you they would?" Hinojosa: "Well, these people said to me -- I asked all of them, will you leave if this happens? And they said, we can't leave. Many of them have kids who were born in this country." Zahn: "Who are now considered American citizens." Hinojosa: "Exactly. So they say, how can we leave? So they really are in a quagmire. I think what is really incredible, Paula, is the level of stress and fear that these people are living in is something that most of us don't understand. We just don't see it. And they are really feeling it on a very human level. And, yes, they understand that this country wants to get things under control. And they say, we want to work with you. So I think that's the big question." Zahn: "Yeah. And we could understand that from your piece tonight. Maria Hinojosa, thank you."
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Newsweek's Meacham: Like McVeigh, Jesus
Executed for Sedition
In the bad analogies department, Newsweek Managing Editor Jon Meacham compared Jesus Christ to Timothy McVeigh and Aldrich Ames, since Jesus was crucified for "the crime of sedition." Even Don Imus was taken aback by the bad analogy, suggesting: "Aldrich Ames is probably a better example than Timothy McVeigh." And on Monday's Hardball, Meacham compared the telling of Jesus' life to how Ted Sorenson may have years later recounted his time with John F. Kennedy.
[The MRC's Tim Graham submitted this item for CyberAlert.]
About 16 minutes into a roughly 20-minute interview, on Wednesday's Imus in the Morning, exploring Meacham's Newsweek cover story examination of the accuracy of the biblical accounts of the birth of Jesus in the gospels of Luke and Matthew, Meacham explained how he believes the gospel writers were rearranging the history of the times to have the maximum persuasive effect on potential adherents. Matthew wrote to persuade the Jews, Meacham contended, adding: "Luke is writing more for the Gentiles, and what's so fascinating to me about this is by having the holy family answering the decree from Augustus. Remember, Jesus was executed as a traitor, as a criminal, for the crime of sedition. He was executed by the empire in the way you would execute -- we would execute today, you know, Timothy McVeigh or Aldrich Ames or somebody. Uh, it was for crimes against the state. It was for rebellion."
Don Imus was taken aback, and retorted, with a bit of a laugh: "Aldrich Ames is probably a better example than Timothy McVeigh."
Meacham replied: "Yeah. But it was a very, you know, it was the most humiliating death. It was, you know, a state-sanctioned death. So, if you think about it, Luke is very subtly suggesting, it seems to me, that Jesus was not always trouble for the empire."
Meacham, on Monday's Hardball on MSNBC, offered the same message of historically mangled Gospels. Making the point that the gospels were written decades after the death of Jesus, Meacham brought up the media's favorite President: "My sort of unprofessional guess is that nobody really bothered to write a whole lot down, because why write it down if the kingdom of God is about to show up? And then as they started dying off, you're about 25 years into it, this is sort of like if President Kennedy had been seen as the Savior. If in 1990, Ted Sorensen and Arthur Schlesinger had decided, you know, he may not be coming back, we'd better start writing this down. And so therefore, you're at a slight remove."
For Meacham's December 13 Newsweek cover story: www.msnbc.msn.com
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Boston Talk Host David Brudnoy, Friend
of the MRC, Dies at 64
A Remembrance by Brent Baker, MRC Vice President for Research and Publications:
David Brudnoy, a long-time Boston radio talk show host with a libertarian/conservative outlook, who overcame a near-death experience with AIDS in 1994 and series of hospital stays late last year as he battled Merkel cell carcinoma, succumbed to complications from the cancer just past 6pm local time Thursday night. He was 64. Brudnoy was a friend to the MRC, serving since 1992 as a judge for our "Best Notable Quotables" annual awards issue for the year's worst reporting, twice (in late November of 1994 and late November of 2003) filling in his ballot from his bed at Massachusetts General Hospital. Every year he was amongst the first to return his ballot.
In addition to hosting a nightly radio talk show in Boston since 1976, the prolific Brudnoy delivered commentaries on various local TV stations over the years, reviewed movies for a chain of suburban newspapers, taught journalism classes at Boston University, in the early 1970s started writing articles for the National Review magazine and, in 1997, penned a memoir.
[Web Update: ABC's Peter Jennings on Friday
night, and CBS's Bob Schieffer on Sunday morning, delivered tributes to Brudnoy.
See the December
13 CyberAlert.]
I will forever be grateful to him for helping to guide my political views and instill an interest in politics and an understanding of the necessity to apply guiding principles in order to maintain consistency. As a Boston area resident, at age 13 I began listening to Brudnoy -- as I did my school homework -- when in 1976 he took over the 8pm to midnight shift on the old WHDH Radio (850-AM) -- back before talk radio was popular nationally. At about the time I left for college in Washington, DC in 1981, Brudnoy jumped to WRKO (680-AM) and I treasured being able to hear his wisdom and insights whenever I returned home (except when he was bumped by the Celtics, a bane to Brudnoy and his loyal listeners). Shortly after I graduated college, Brudnoy, in 1986, moved to WBZ Radio (1030-AM), a 50,000 watt clear-channel station which I could pick up at night in Virginia since its nighttime signal reaches 38 states.
For many years he held down the 7pm to midnight shift on "NewsRadio 1030," but as his health declined he cut back to 7 to 10pm. That still kept him on the air late enough so I could catch a bit of his show as I drove home in the evening, a habit I have maintained for the past 18 years, but which now must end. Out of habit, on Thursday night I tuned in 'BZ and was moved by the outpouring of admiration for Brudnoy expressed by caller after caller to 'BZ's Jordan Rich.
Brudnoy was unique and irreplaceable. I listen to a lot of talk radio and tune in local hosts whenever I travel and have heard no one who combines Brudnoy's compelling conversational style, which could make any topic interesting, with a well-reasoned political philosophy of strong defense and small government with both economic and personal liberty.
Others have observed since Brudnoy's death became imminent that listening to him was like attending a college course each night. As Boston Globe columnist Jeff Jacoby recounted in a 2001 column on Brudnoy's first 25 years as a talk host, Brudnoy reached across expected boundaries: "Jon Keller, political analyst at WLVI-TV (and one-time producer for the David Brudnoy Show), recalls the time he was covering a story at the Grove Hall fire station. 'And there were all these tough-as-nails firefighters sitting by a radio, listening to Brudnoy,' Keller says. 'I asked one of them why he liked it. You know what he answered? 'He tells me stuff I don't already know.'"
In a Thursday night story aired on WBZ Radio, Keller provided another on-target quote about Brudnoy's achievements: "I think the thing that's always going to stay with me, is the sheer courage of the man. I mean who ever thought that perhaps the most prominent symbol of courage here in Boston, would come from a gay, Jewish, egghead from Minnesota?"
Globe reporter Brian McGrory, in a Thursday story, "Brudnoy, in cancer's grip, prepares for end," provided an excellent summation of what made Brudnoy so unique: "In an age of radio hosts who try to achieve high ratings by slinging brutal insults against public officials and athletes, Brudnoy has always stood a world apart. A self-described libertarian, he appears as consumed by curiosity as by opinion. He is the rare host who reads the books of his author-guests. And he sheaths his most pointed questions to politicians in politesse.... "His show was often an eclectic cocktail of modern culture -- a philosopher one hour, a novelist pitching a book or a movie star promoting a new film the next, and maybe a U.S. Senator in the last slot of the night."
For McGrory's article in full: www.boston.com WBZ Radio has posted a page with an obit for Brudnoy and links to many related items, including his AIDS foundation: wbz1030.com The page features a 17-minute RealAudio clip of a good-bye interview conducted Wednesday at Mass General with Brudnoy, by WBZ Radio newsman Gary LaPierre: "Good-Bye: Gary LaPierre interviews David Brudnoy on December 8, 2004." Brudnoy struggled to speak, but his sense of humor and heroic acceptance of death came through.
Friday's front page Boston Globe obituary, "Brudnoy, icon of airwaves, dies: To many, a voice of warmth, reason." www.boston.com Friday's Boston Herald obituary, "Hub mourns loss of radio icon Brudnoy: Death with dignity, just as he lived." news.bostonherald.com
[Web Update: National Review Online has posted Brudnoy's
April 17, 1995 article for the magazine, "Positively HIV." Go to:
www.nationalreview.com]
Amazon.com's page for Brudnoy's 1997 memoir, Life is Not a Rehearsal: www.amazon.com Much has and will be written and said in Boston about Brudnoy, but I think a June 14, 2001 Boston Globe column by Jeff Jacoby delivered a solid tribute to Brudnoy and what he meant to his listeners. An excerpt:
BRUDNOY'S FIRST QUARTER-CENTURY
To mark David Brudnoy's 25th anniversary as a talk show host, WBZ Radio put out a glowing press release hailing "the longest continual, virtually uninterrupted tenure of a weekday radio talk show in Boston history."
*Virtually* uninterrupted? Hiding behind that adverb was the unpleasantness of 1990, when WBZ cancelled Brudnoy's top-rated nightly program and replaced it, presumably to save money, with a cheaper syndicated show from out of town. It was an unfathomable decision, an easy finalist in the Most Boneheaded Move By A Radio Executive competition. Broadcast professionals were amazed. Inside Radio, a trade newsletter, headlined its story, "WBZ-AM, Boston Slits Its Own Throat Late-Night."
That about summed it up. The protests flooded in by the thousands, and not just to WBZ but to its owner, Westinghouse Broadcasting, as well....In a lead editorial, the Boston Herald urged WBZ to reverse course. "David Brudnoy is a Boston institution," it said, "and all of us -- really, *all* of us -- miss him."
Full disclosure: I wrote that editorial. Even fuller disclosure: Brudnoy and I have been friends for years, and over those years I've often had the pleasure of being on his show, both as guest and as guest host. But even in 1990 you didn't have to know Brudnoy personally to understand that life in Boston would have been markedly poorer if his nightly conversation -- intelligent, informed, articulate, good-natured -- had ceased being a part of it. Happily, WBZ soon saw the error of its ways, and restored him to his microphone....
And 11 years later, Brudnoy is still No. 1 in the ratings.
They are something of a paradox, those ratings. On the one hand, it is easy to enumerate the virtues of Brudnoy's brand of talk radio. His program is erudite but accessible -- "smart talk for everyone," the Globe once called it. He lets his callers have their say and often gives them the last word. He really reads the books of the authors he interviews (and he interviews an awful lot of authors). He is polite, even courtly, to his guests. He absolutely refuses to play to the groundlings: there are no sex jokes, no doubles-entendres, no phony bombast, no psychics, no vulgar sound effects, no
webcam.
If you've got half a brain and a dab of intellectual curiosity, how could you *not* like the Brudnoy show?
Yet Brudnoy's formula is just the one most talk shows avoid.
Ninety-nine talkmasters out of 100 will tell you that cerebral, talky, courteous, ideas-heavy radio programming is sure death in the ratings book. Their market research doubtless proves that listeners have no interest in the kind of show Brudnoy does. Except that, manifestly, they do. And have, for 25 years.
Some months ago, I e-mailed David an eye-opening article by Michael Ledeen on Africa's AIDS crisis, with a note suggesting that it might make a great radio topic. I cc'd the note to Ledeen, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, and promptly got a message back. "I LOVE David Brudnoy, the single most literate man on the radio." Countless scholars, authors, and assorted eminentoes would agree.
But authors, scholars, and eminentoes do not generate high ratings. Tens of thousands of loyal listeners, white- and blue-collar both, do -- and do they really care about AIDS in Africa?
Jon Keller, political analyst at WLVI-TV (and one-time producer for the David Brudnoy Show), recalls the time he was covering a story at the Grove Hall fire station. "And there were all these tough-as-nails firefighters sitting by a radio, listening to Brudnoy," Keller says. "I asked one of them why he liked it. You know what he answered? 'He tells me stuff I don't already know.' "
Would that guy listen to a conversation about an AIDS epidemic halfway around the world? You bet he would.
Delivering the commencement address at Salem State College last month, Dr. Brudnoy -- he actually has a fistful of earned degrees to go with the honorary one -- made a point of distinguishing fake "diversity" from the genuine article.
"One diversity stands above all else," he told the graduates. "Diversity of the brain. It's not how we look or what our last name is or what our grandparents' linguistic group is or what our sexual orientation is, but what and how we think that matters.... Ideas are the product of individuals, and it is individual diversity, which flows from the mind, that matters. But how often do we hear people talk...about diversity of ideas? Never."
Well, maybe not *never.* In most of the eastern United States, you can hear ideas in all their diversity take center stage five nights a week, three hours per night, on WBZ-AM1030, where the night's best conversation -- and David Brudnoy's second quarter-century -- is underway.
END of Jacoby column
Goodnight, Bruds. We'll miss you.
-- Brent Baker
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