By Chad Groening and Jody Brown
(AgapePress) – A pro-family activist and radio executive doesn't think that a group of liberals is going to be successful in putting together a radio network to challenge conservative talk shows on the airwaves.
The New York Times has reported that a group of major campaign donors to Bill Clinton and Al Gore want to start a liberal network to counterbalance conservative radio programs like The Rush Limbaugh Show, Dr. Laura, and The Michael Reagan Show. The newspaper calls it an “ambitious undertaking” by liberal Democrats who believe they are “overshadowed in the political propaganda wars.”
According to the report, the group financing the endeavor hopes to attract “well-known entertainers with a liberal point of view for a 14-hour, daily slate of commercial programs that would heavily rely on comedy and political satire.” Similar attempts to establish liberal radio shows have failed.
Donald E. Wildmon is founder of the American Family Radio network, an 11-year-old radio ministry that boasts more than 200 stations nationwide. Wildmon does not think audiences will support a liberal talk show.
“Most of the people in this country are basically conservative,” Wildmon says. “They did not have an outlet. Then Rush Limbaugh came along and really reworked AM radio, which was a dying breed. Then the Internet came about, [providing] so many more options — and there are a lot of groups like AFR out there.
“I just don't look for [a liberal radio network] to be successful, but I'm happy for them to try it,” he says. “I'd like nothing better than to see them lose a hundred million dollars.”
Wildmon points out there are already liberal programs on the air that are being subsidized by the federal government. “I thought they already had a network like that,” he says. “I thought it was called National Public Radio or the Public Broadcasting System.”
Wildmon suggests those interested in the liberal network should invest with NPR and PBS and save American taxpayers $350 million a year. He points out a recent example of NPR's liberal bias in the actions of one of its affiliates in southwest Colorado.
KSUT recently turned away a local dentist's sponsorship when his on-air statement of support included a statement of his Christian belief in God. The radio spot included the motto for Dr. Glenn Rutherford's dental practice: “Gently Restoring the Health God Created.”
According to a report in The Durango Herald, the station staff agreed unanimously that Rutherford's spot could not contain the word “God.”
Wildmon says that type of discrimination is typical of NPR's hostility toward Christianity. “KSUT and NPR should make their motto, 'If you are a Christian, we don’t want your money, and we don't want your support,” he says.
According to Wildmon, because public radio stations like KSUT are supported by tax dollars, they are practically engaging in a form of government-sponsored censorship. He encourages every Christian business owner in America to immediately pull his or her support from the “intolerant” NPR.
In another example of anti-Christian bias, NPR recently was forced to make an on-air apology for implying in January 2002 that a Christian pro-family ministry, Traditional Values Coalition, was involved in the anthrax mailings to Capitol Hill following the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001.
(This article courtesy of Agape Press.)
