The Best of Notable Quotables; December 18, 1995

Afraid of the Competition Award (for Impugning Talk Radio)

“Cut off the funding for NPR, or gradually reduce its funding to the point where it becomes a mere shadow of its usually robust, sensible self, and the American people may find themselves left with nothing much more than Rush and dozens of his mini-clones for information about the world. For Limbaugh’s ‘dittoheads,’ this may be the most splendid of tomorrows, but for other more thoughtful listeners, it may be the bleakest of forecasts.”

– Marvin Kalb, former CBS and NBC reporter and current Director of the Center on Press, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard, reviewing three books on talk radio, May 21 Washington Post.

Runners-up:

“Some people are very concerned about talk shows, radio talk shows in general, of course. Most of them around the country have a decidedly conservative bent. The rap that some people give them is that they reflect the views of a very vocal minority, the extremists in this country, and don’t really reflect the true nature of political debate in the United States. And, as a matter of fact, they tend to be quite divisive and sort of have a bad, a negative impact on the country.”

– Katie Couric to Oliver North, March 13 Today.

“The issue is whether what’s going out over the airwaves here and elsewhere is fanning the flames, is making the situation worse, that talk radio is not democracy in action, but democracy run amok.”

– NBC reporter Bob Faw concluding a January 3 Nightly News story.

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