Brian Lehrer and the Liberal Media
My daily routine begins with listening to NPR news as I eat breakfast and read email. Often, I’ll get involved in whatever is on my computer, and the radio will continue to play past ten o’clock, when Brian Lehrer’s phone-in talk show comes on. This is a mistake. By this point, the radio is at best the distraction of mild noise; more often, it’s an extreme irritant.
Call-in programs attract idiots. On NPR, you get a higher class of idiot, but idiots nonetheless. A college degree, alas, is no proof of critical thinking. Holding Lehrer responsible for listeners who like to hear themselves talk wouldn’t be fair, though I do feel WNYC is doing us a disservice by hosting a call-in program at all. Unfortunately, it’s Lehrer himself who typically gets under my skin. His liberal bias is that flagrant.
For the record, I lean to the left, myself. Our voting records above the municipal level probably look quite similar, though I will cast my ballot for very moderate Republicans. Any candidate who wraps himself in the flag, waves the cross, or tells me that trampling civil liberties is the only way to preserve American ideals – and that includes a frighteningly large proportion of politicians – instantly loses my vote. I favor gay marriage, gun control, abortion rights, and corporate watchdogs. Holding these positions does not excuse me from regular, critical, and skeptical consideration of individual policies. Nor does it excuse Brian Lehrer.
In principle, he invites guests from different political camps to speak, alternately encouraging them to elaborate and challenging their posittions. In practice, only liberal views get a full hearing on the show, because Lehrer doesn’t play fair as a host, largely by offering only token challenges to guests he agrees with. Asking a stock question along the lines of, “Your opponents say your position is wrong because X-Y-Z. Are they correct?” is standard practice. Guests expect this question, and have long ago developed stock answers to X-Y-Z. A good host will press the issue, questioning the assumptions behind such pat answers, and denying evasive and vacuous responses. A fair host will ask followup questions of all guests. Lehrer does not, expressing real doubt only of conservative views; for liberals, he takes pat exchanges as asked-and-answered.
When he has a strong opinion about the topic at hand, he may break in on a guest in mid-sentence. Sometimes, such interruptions are appropriate, as when a guest loses the thread of the discussion but continues to expound on verbal autopilot, or when a question is being evaded. At other times, such interruptions prevent a guest from presenting a fully reasoned argument; he is unable to finish explaining his reasoning. Lehrer frequently interrupts guests he disagrees with, sometimes with justification; he rarely if ever interrupts a liberal guest for any reason, especially not once the guest trails off into a lecture about the evils of a system that represses homosexuals, racial minorities, or the poor.
Most insidiously, Lehrer probably doesn’t even realize he’s doing it. (I am indebted to my wife for this observation.) Disputing an outrageous claim before it gets eclipsed by subsequent conversation is natural and desirable; I expect Lehrer feels he is pouncing on unsupportable claims when he interrupts a conservative guest, without a moment’s awareness of the dubious liberal ideas he lets slide. It’s easy to feel that a pat answer from your camp is sufficient, even when it’s not. And yet, while the pat answers are coming from my camp, they don’t sound sufficient to me – a sure proof that the program is merely preaching to the converted.
Liberals can, and should, do better; after all, liberalism is grounded in a belief that everyone can distinguish truth from flim-flam, if they get a good, thorough examination. More to the point, it is a lot harder for the opposition to write off our opinions as partisan when we stick aggressively to real analysis of the whole issue. Leave “echo chamber” politics to the Ditto-heads. We don’t need it.
Nobody else needs it either, for that matter.