Fair and Balanced? Not so much

Guest post from state representative candidate Steve Silver:

Oh the naivete! I was so sure that here in the heartland of America, politics would not find its way into the control of the media. Boy was I wrong. Let me share a story with you that you may have a hard time believing.

A few weeks ago, I inquired at the local cable TV outlet about the possibility of appearing on one of their community happenings shows. {The program is called Community Connections and is hosted by a Brenda Wherman (please excuse the spelling of her name). Brenda is also the executive director of the Anderson Township cable access channel, a fact that you might want to keep in mind. I want to tell you that I never did speak to Brenda directly even though I had tried many times. All of the communication I had with her was via her assistant Nicki.}

I was informed that the policy of the program was that they would only interview incumbent political types. The reason for this was not clear to me right away, however it became very clear later on. I responded that I thought the policy was not very 'fair and balanced'. They responded by saying that I could have a half hour of my own time and produce a show of my own. They also said they would provide the equipment and a couple of techies to show me how to use everything. I deal with complex equipment everyday in my job and the thought of learning how to use cameras and video tape machines doesn't scare me. My problem was that I didn't have the time necessary to write, produce and edit this thing....something incumbents don't do when they appear on her show. How this is equitable still escapes me. It gets better though.

After a little checking, I saw that my opponent was on Brenda's show recently. He went on and on about the upcoming campaign, knocking her softball questions out of the park. Unbiased reporting this was not.

As it turns out, this whole Anderson Cable Channel is funded in part by the Anderson Township Trustees. They funnel cable franchise fees collected by Time Warner and paid by the citizens of the township to Brenda so she can run her operation. And guess what. All of the trustees are Republican.

So what we have is a group of Republican Trustees who direct funds paid by the citizens of the township to a cable concern that has a show, hosted by the executive director of the operation, that will only have incumbent (read Republican) politicians on as guests. YHGTBKM

And we wonder why we don't have good government.