Milwaukee Public Radio's odd preoccupation with conservative special interest groups

August 31, 2011 by Uppity Wisconsin

Tune in, tune outIn terms of its news and cultural programming, WUWM-FM in Milwaukee is, like most public radio stations, a reasonably good alternative to the shock-jock, wingnut talkmeister, carnival-realilty programming you get on most commercial TV and radio outlets these days. Milwaukee Public Radio, as the station is also known, is every bit a complement to Wisconsin Public Radio.

But MPR, like WPR, lately has had a bit of a problem with balance. To some extent that's because both entities are surely stressed by the attack of right-wing "kill public radio" types, and their call to de-fund such public outlets altogether. In WUWM's case, a little bit of this problem also may spring from the fact that station manager Dave Edwards is, by several accounts, a somewhat conservative guy, like too many other people in modern American radio broadcasting.

But mostly it's just because right now the conventional radio news mentality is that conservatives are the newsmakers and that the only political news of interest is who's winning and who's thinking of running. Which ideas conservatives spend a lot of bucks and a lot of time engineering and packaging for easy electromagnetic dispersal. When, that is, they're not actually in the studio hosting the show, or running the station.

Today's example: a feature story on WUWM's afternoon drive-time newscast. You can listen to it yourself below. The skinny: The station wondered what "special interest groups" are thinking about the field for the US Senate seat that Herb Kohl is vacating and the kind of candidate those groups are looking to support. The problem: Of the three interest groups interviewed for the piece, all are conservative to very conservative: the Wisconsin Realtors Association, Wisconsin Right to Life, and Wisconsin Manufacturers and Commerce.

The station's web site notes the piece is one in a series, so we went back and looked at earlier news reports on upcoming campaigns and elections. And it wasn't a pretty sight. Most of WUWUM's earlier pieces going back a year have been about the recall elections. There was no similar news story interviewing progressive groups of any kind. Maybe that's coming up tomorrow, or next week, or next month. But nothing so far listed in the online archive.

And what did the three conservative special interest groups interviewed today think the next senator from Wisconsin should espouse? You can guess:

* A pullback on "recent" and "new" government regulations, especially relating to businesses and environmental quality. You know, stuff like regulating the financial and housing industry that got us into the current economic mess. Rules that protect clean air and water. Rules that protect consumers from rapacious business activities. That kind of regulation.

* Greater efforts to stimulate Jobs and economic development (now there's a no-brainer, except that Republicans only talk tough about this need while working tirelessly to block any government effort that isn't a tax cut, and several that actually are, but which originate from Democrats.)

* Repeal of "Obamacare" Hey, GOP Sen. Ron Johnson already has said this is vital, so let's double down.

* Furthur curbs on abortion which, according to Wisconsin Right to Life's Barbara Lyons, is vital because it will give Republican candidates an edge over Democrats in any matchup.

* Lower taxes (except, of course, in the demonstrated cases where Republicans don't want lower taxes)

In other words, Wisconsin's major conservative special interest groups are prone to spouting major Republican talking points. Some "news."

But more important, isolated reports like today's WUWM news feature only serve to advance the meme that the GOP agenda is approaching some kind of general consensus. The WUWM report was leavened somewhat by a tag interview with UWM professor and former Democratic lawmaker Mordecai Lee, who observed that current GOP politics represents "a resurgence of a different kind of conservativism. I think it’s fair to call it sort of talk radio conservativism. In other words, much more combative, much more negative about government. It’s the sort of starve the beast kind of approach." There's your context and counterpoint, WUWM-style.

As serious students and practitioners of journalism know, news stories that focus on the betting line and the strategy in electioneering aren't very useful to citizens who deserve to know a lot more than simply what a candidate claims to think and believe and what he or she promises to do. This isn't elementary school and it shouldn't be a popularity contest. What's most useful to the citizenry are news reports that provide in-depth examination of the issues facing voters: Unemployment, environmental threats, health care costs, the housing crisis and more. They are illuminating to the extent they offer an analysis, in human terms, of what's going on and what's behind these issues, as well as comparative ideas on what might be done to deal with them. That's far more useful to citizens than whether conservative groups like conservative candidate X better than conservative candidate Y.

If you do insist on mostly covering the race itself rather than the issues, then at least be sure to cover the issue of the election process itself, such as vote suppression schemes, hackworthy voting machines, unlimited anonymous campaign spending, and the like.

I'm not saying WUWM never produces issue-oriented reports. But to the extent the station -- like way too many news outlets these days -- insists on covering the greyhound race rather than conditions in the kennels, it would be far more community-minded and journalistically professional of the news department to balance today's kind of report with an examination of liberal/progressive special interests. Let's hear, too, from environmental groups, pro-choice groups, organized labor and other major supporters of left-of-center candidates. What do they think the ideal candidate should be like? Or is their thinking on these matters already a foregone conclusion among news reporters?