Friday, July 14, 2006

Is WKRN Going Fox On Us?

With the hiring of partisan schlock jock Steve Gill, WKRN seems to be headed toward becoming another rightward-slanted news outfit. The station already fields a "faith and ethics" reporter who often does stories with a clipped, evangelical bias and without attention to Nashville's mainline-to-progressive religious community (have you ever seen Jamey Tucker do a story on Unitarian-Universalists or on Metropolitan Interdenomination Church? All I've seen is stuff like touchdown prayers and Belmont Church). Now they are handing their audience Middle Tennessee's greatest grifter, sophist, and shill in the person of Gill. That will no doubt appeal to a certain segment of the viewing audience. For guys like me it is repellent. If I want partisan applesauce to go with my news, I can already tune in to Mark Hyman over on Fox News 17 for grins. If WKRN is not going to simply report the news in unbiased fashion, I hope the station will find ways to give the other side of the partisan divide equal time, otherwise I will be spending less time watching Channel 2 News.

6 comments:

  1. Ha! I had just send Brittney and email asking if WKRN was going to be the new "fair and balanced."

    ReplyDelete
  2. I sent WKRN an email stating I will NEVER watch any of their news shows if the go ahead and hire this blowhard. At least they could find a progressive and have a good ole "point/counter point". But they would probably find a Alan Colmes type anyway.

    ReplyDelete
  3. well, according to the Tennessean, in the "Brad About You" article this morning, the person interviewed about the hire at WKRN stated that they will not hire a counterpoint person. Doesn't matter to me, counterpoint or no, I still don't want to see that jackass on my tv.

    I'm kind of disappointed that NiT has stayed so quiet on this so far...

    ReplyDelete
  4. I'm posting about it right this minute. (Well, when I'm not commenting. :)

    ReplyDelete
  5. I really thought better of WKRN than this. My mom called with the news. She's fired up; says she'll never watch again.

    Good grief, are we in East Tennesse now?

    ReplyDelete
  6. For the record, if you're interested, I've done several stories with pastors of Metropolitan Interdedenomininational Church. I've also spoken several times with Unitarian pastors. The UUC pastors have never been available for interviews (there are only a handful in Nashville).

    ReplyDelete