We recently did a live Coast to Coast AM radio show again, after a hiatus of many years, when we started broadcasting from a studio in our home, then moved to the internet. We were in a different studio (in California instead of Texas) but other than that, not much had changed, except in one big way.
It was the same as always: taking along some high protein food (so we didn’t get desperate and raid the vending machines for candy and chips), and driving to the studio late at night. Radio studios are usually pretty grungy, since the audience doesn’t see them, but this one was spiffy and clean, although I really can’t praise the “decor.”
This reminds me of something a friend in San Antonio to me. She used to do short reports on the local news about UFOs and edge subjects, and said it would get so hot on the newsroom set that the male anchors would often wear only the tops of their suits?the coat and tie. If they had ever stood up, the camera would have revealed that they were attired in shorts and sandals below the waist!
Since after the initial guests, “Coast” wanted Whitley to do open lines, I suggested that I come along too, so that I could talk to anyone who’d had a contactee or abductee experience and tell them if what happened to them was common. Since I’ve read over half a million letters from people about their personal experiences, this is something that I’m uniquely qualified to do.
When you’re doing a late night live talk show, you start off with a lot of enthusiasm (fortified by coffee or tea and an afternoon nap), then your energy starts to flag around midnight. But then, thank goodness, you somehow get a jolt of energy around 1:30 so you head through those last two segments at high speed!
In most studios, they have a TV monitor on “mute,” up high where you can see it when you’re talking into the mike. I assume this is in case there is a breaking news story, like 911.
In this case the TV was tuned to Fox News, a station I never watch. I haven’t snubbed it intentionally, I just prefer the BBC America News, because it’s so intelligent and wide- ranging. Also, whenever they report a story from a particular part of the world, they show a globe and highlight the location of that country. This is a huge boon for someone like myself, who could be called “geographically-challenged,” since I spent too many of my school hours lost in daydreams.
I have to admit that whenever I looked up at the monitor, I was appalled. I understand that political parties and candidates have a perfect right to run TV ads extolling their candidates, but this was supposed to be a NEWS show, yet they were doing the same thing! First, there seemed to be ENDLESS shots of Sarah Palin, as if her being a vice-presidential candidate meant that I should be interested in what color shoes she wore.
The “news” report was unabashedly for McCain: Obama was hardly mentioned. Again, this would have been fine if it was a paid political announcement, but this was supposed to be “news.” There was a news “crawl” underneath, while the show was being broadcast. When I watch CNN, I always keep an eye on these, for late-breaking news and sports scores.
But this crawl didn’t present information, it presented OPINIONS. One of them said something along the lines of, “McCain calls Obama a socialist.” I found this particularly amusing, since the Bush administration has just completed one of the biggest government bailouts of private business in modern history, and if this isn’t “socialism,” then I don’t know what is!
It made me reflect that our country is very ill-served by its news media. Whitley and I have always complained that legitimate news about UFOs is either ignored or ridiculed. But this goes even further: it presents propaganda as legitimate news. As such, it’s a dangerous precedent for America.
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