While I was tooling around town last Sunday, I decided to catch up on the news. So, I tuned it KYW, our trusty Philadelphia news station. Every city has a KYW. No music. No talk shows. Just stripped-down news.

The first thing I heard was a report on Israel’s election, describing the epic battle between Ehud Barak and Ariel Sharon. Suddenly, the report veered hard left, with an Israeli "man on the street" interview, moaning that warmonger Sharon would lead them into destruction. Sharon’s 50-30 lead was glossed over and Barak’s miserable peace failures that caused recent violence were ignored. And it ended. No opposing view. No balance.

Then, KYW aired a long segment citing a poll claiming Governor Christie Todd Whitman is unpopular, accomplished almost nothing, and New Jersey voters won’t miss her when she takes over the EPA. What poll was this? Why, none other than the New Jersey Star Ledger’s on-line poll. On-line poll? The Ledger flatly states "You probably wouldn’t want to use the (poll) results to settle a wager. It’s not scientific, but it’s fun." Fun? Not scientific? That’s news reporting? And KYW pounded these two stories every half hour for two solid days. I’ve accepted the network news liberal slant a long time ago. But my local no-nonsense news station spouting drivel by a left-wing New Jersey rag?

Et Tu, KYW?

It wasn’t always this way. Walter Cronkite claimed his first editor demanded he avoid adjectives. But today, news reporting has become a big performance, played by drama queens and pseudo kings. Can we shock ’em? Can we make ’em cry? Yet for decades, in the middle of "McNews" and noisy radio format fights, KYW has been an oasis of "Just the facts Ma’am" minimalist reporting. At the flip of a dial, you could count on getting the top news, weather, sports and maybe a man-bites-dog story inside of 10 minutes. Now, the Philly news station that clawed to the top with straightforward reporting is spewing political dogma. KYW has torn off its crown of objectivity and kicked it to the gutter of advocacy journalism. It’s like Miss America just became a hooker.

Atco, New Jersey native Kellyanne Fitzpatrick has spent her career battling the liberal media. Her organization, "the polling company™," must wade through left-wing push-polls and media slant to give her clients the real pulse of America. Fitzpatrick notes, "Lazy" now beats "Liberal" as the "L" word that best describes certain media practices. "They throw together a poll and report it like it’s hard news." That’s where the bias creep starts. She cites the ridiculous Newsweek poll that asked, "Do you think Bush should scale back his political agenda because he lost the popular vote nationwide and had such a narrow margin in the Electoral College, or that he should go ahead and pursue his plans for the country regardless of these factors?" Fortunately, 66% of Americans saw through that one, but Fitzpatrick notes "this stuff gets repeated enough to be considered fact."

Just like Joseph Goebbels said it would.

How could this happen to KYW? I think I know. Almost every station has a rival. The WYSP and WMMR rock & roll rivalry is 30 years old. Sid Marks and John Carlton have a dignified Sinatra and Classics competition. Q102, Power 99 and 103.9 wage a great pop-hip-hop battle. But KYW has no competitor snapping at their heels. Anyone who wins control can do whatever they wish.

It’s an old strategy. Liberals brilliantly took over network media years ago. However, their credibility suffered. Only 25% of Americans trust them. But don’t be fooled. Even though Fox has taken over the news mantle with a "Fair And Balanced" marketing strategy, media lefties still have power. In the meantime, conservatives took over the radio waves with talk-radio.

But KYW is different. Honest news got them the top spot in Philly. Now, they are abandoning this successful format to become advocates, complete with shoddy reporting and dubious research. What’s next? Quoting Al Sharpton’s web poll to see how America feels about race? Or Ted Kennedy’s on-line poll about tax cuts? If KYW wants to become Democrat cheerleaders, they should abandon pretense and become a liberal talk show. (I hear Al Gore is looking for a full-time job.) Or they should get back to real news and clear the decks of their liberal staff.

I hear NPR is hiring...

You can e-mail your comments to Tom at Coolhair1@aol.com.

Tom Adkins is publisher of commonconservative.com

Copyright © 2001 by Tom Adkins.
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