WP: Armed Forces Radio Tunes Out Liberal Show Host [View All]

[highplainsdem]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/17/AR2005101701666.html


Armed Forces Radio Tunes Out Liberal Show Host

By Howard Kurtz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, October 18, 2005; Page C01

Liberal radio talker Ed Schultz was eagerly anticipating his debut yesterday on Armed Forces Radio, which agreed last month to carry his program to nearly a million soldiers around the world.

But at 7 a.m., Schultz's producer got a call from Allison Barber, the Pentagon's deputy assistant secretary for internal communications, who said without explanation that the deal was off.

Perhaps, Schultz said in an interview, it was just a coincidence that he spent the end of last week chastising Barber for coaching a group of U.S. soldiers in Iraq before a teleconference with President Bush.

<snipping paragraphs including some about Manny Levy, chief of the radio division for the Armed Forces Network, contacting Schultz's distributor last month about the AFN decision to carry the first hour Schultz's show starting 10/17>

Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman said last night that Levy "got ahead of the process" and that no decision had been made in a review of which programming to add to the network. When asked about Schultz's insistence that his criticism of Barber played a role, Whitman called that "an unfortunate misperception on his part. That has nothing to do with this."

<snip>

It's very clear from what Levy said last month that a decision had been made, and it's been reversed. I hope this gets a lot of attention in the MSM.