Volunteers Disqualified:

You don't normally think of a bacon cheeseburger deluxe as brain food, but a trip to the town diner usually gives me plenty to think about. The regulars can be relied on to talk--at length--about everybody else's business. Today Mike, a frequently-disappointed friend of public radio, and I had round thirteen of a years-long discussion of "fair and balanced." While no one scored a knockout, Mike always gives a brisk workout.

A couple good licks from Mike: "Two sides to every story" is Beltway fiction. Outside the DC partisan bubble, there are five or twenty sides, or maybe only one--but it's hard to tell from NPR. Or--think tank commentators always have an agenda, they are there to sell their point of view, not to advance an open discussion of the facts.

So here is my modest reform agenda. First, burn all the rolodexes. Anyone who volunteers themselves as an "expert" on a given topic is automatically disqualified. Compile a new address book of those who have to be dragged kicking and screaming to the mic. Second, any time you use a source with a 202 (DC) area code, you have to obtain views from people in twenty other area codes before calling a 202 number again. And third--what about bartenders as talk show hosts? They already manage the angry, the annoying, the opinionated and the overheated on a daily basis. Call in an expert.