Air Date: Week of July 26, 2024

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Letters are read from Living on Earth listeners concerned about an interview with Conservative Climate Caucus and Republican US Congress member Cliff Bentz of Oregon, with comments from Host Steve Curwood about First Amendment rights of free speech and free press, and the dangers of censorship.

Transcript

CURWOOD: Our lengthy interview with Republican Congressman Cliff Bentz of Oregon last week prompted several comments from you, our listeners. Some wanted a more confrontational exchange. One wrote, “Maybe you could get an interviewer who knows how to push back if you're hosting a show about the environment and inviting Republicans on the air to cover all their talking points.” Adding “I've never been as shocked to hear an interview on public radio, typically considered "liberal leaning", and during an environmental program at that. Caving to Trump's bullying tactics that the media is biased isn't going to win you more viewers.” For the record, we cover relevant and accurate news and information from across the political spectrum --left, right and center and have never caved to bullying tactics by those opposed to truth in environmental reporting.

Larry Cooper offered a more measured critique: “Thank you for the interesting episode on the Republican Party. As an Oregonian, I was particularly interested in the Bentz interview. A lot of interesting things came up in that interview that really need some follow up to present more of the facts.... First of all, I was struck by Bentz's very confusing and contradictory comments over drafting of groundwater. On the one hand, he decried overuse of very deep wells, yet there are thousands of acres of hay being grown with this water in his district. Secondly, his discussion of dam removal and salmon seemed a total disconnect from reality. Dams block a tremendous amount of anadromous fish habitat, and there's no question that the salmon would be helped with dam removal. On top of that, there are alternatives to generating clean, storable energy in the region. Bentz goes further to claim that not enough is being done to mitigate predation of fish in the ocean! Yes, but hardly an argument against improving river habitat. You could do a good show looking at the indigenous tribal projects that are restoring stream flows and improving aquatic habitat in Bentz's district.... Thirdly, Bentz should be called out regarding his stance against federal protection of the high desert. We have some wonderful national monuments there and they DO do mitigation of invasive weeds. And of course his legal career has been greatly enhanced with the Chevron take down by the Supremes.... Thanks for a good show.” And thank you Larry, for your comments.

And I’ll comment here. A key cornerstone of American democracy is the freedom of speech, and I am reluctant to censor the stated opinions of public officials that some, maybe even many listeners to this program find unattractive. Fact checking is important, as you heard a while ago when we ran part of former President Trump’s convention speech. We fact checked his comments as we don’t care to broadcast “alternative facts.” But the line between fact and opinion can be blurry sometimes and people are certainly entitled to their own opinions. And as citizens in a democracy, we need to hear opinions from a wide range of sources, even if sometimes we don’t want to hear them, so we can better discern our own. President Thomas Jefferson once said we need a free press and free discourse to be free, and I quote: “Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.”

 

Links

Email Us at comments@loe.org

Oregon Public Broadcasting | “The Search for Solutions to Harney County’s Water Crisis”

Oregon Public Broadcasting | “Leaked Agreement Shows Federal Government Willing to Take Down Snake River Dams”