'Firings miss fundamental problem'

Joel McNally, a talk show host himself on WMCS-AM in Milwaukee, in the Shepherd Express:

Another reason to fire McBride was that her show was never very good. It was the same right-wing clichés you could hear from Sykes delivered in a more annoying voice.

The excuse for the firing was an attempt at wacky comedy by McBride about the tragic death of a 4-year-old Milwaukee girl caught in the crossfire of an inner-city shooting.

McBride set up a mock interview with black Milwaukee columnist Eugene Kane about the little girl’s murder that had Kane squawking like a chicken.

Kane is a frequent racial target on right-wing shows. Most decent people would fail to see the point—or the humor—in attacking Kane over a heartbreaking tragedy that touched an entire community, black and white.

None of these firings over isolated, tasteless incidents addresses the fundamental problem with talk radio. That is the dominance of one narrow-minded point of view promoting intolerance.

The solution isn’t to fire all the right-wing radio hosts, as enjoyable as that might be. The solution to offensive speech in a free society is more speech.

We desperately need more points of view on the radio.

He also comments on Don Imus and Michael McGee. You can read it here.