The Unfriendly Airwaves

Did a radio interview on the local NPR station (KPBS) yesterday. I had gotten word Friday that the local affiliate was seeking a Catholic guest for a show Monday morning on the role of religious leaders in politics and was told that they would call me to set up the interview.

They never did.

Nevertheless, Monday morning they called, expecting me to do the interview momentarily. It was a sign of what was to come that they were so disorganized that they didn’t realize that they hadn’t talked to me before.

I sat through a long interview with another guest, from a liberal church (“The Church of Today”) who spoke enthusiastically about “promoting change” and “certain people” not “having their voices heard” (the people in question, she indicated upon further questioning, seemed to be those who disagreed with the policies of the Bush administration). Her segment went on for so long that the producer came on the line to tell me that they had “extended her segment” and please don’t hang up.

When my interview began, the hostess asked me a couple of perfuctory questions about whether religious leaders should encourage their congregations to do anything particular in the political arena (e.g., should priests tell congregants to vote pro-life).

In keeping with radio’s soundbite format and the need for turn-taking, I answered these questions briefly, expecting the hostess to ask follow-up questions in order to flesh out the viewpoint I was presenting.

Instead, she started taking phone calls.

I responded to the first caller (a Jewish woman who, to tell the truth, was sufficiently incoherent that I couldn’t tell what she was saying, except that she was clearly opposed to religious leaders doing more than telling people to turn out to vote).

Then the hostess took three more callers in a row, without asking me to comment on any of them.

I thought they had moved on, ended my interview without telling me, and was considering hanging up. But by now enough time had passed that a caller had gotten through who had heard my remarks and was responding to me. The hostess noted that I was “still on the line” (she was expecting me to take the hint and hang up, perhaps?) and turned to me for comment.

This provided me with what the hostess had not: a chance to elaborate on my initial answer in more detail. So I did, and finally felt some satisfaction that the Catholic viewpoint was being explained to the audience (rather than blocked by the hostess’s moving on abruptly). I was now able to talk (still briefly) about how the Catholic Church recognizes the need to teach people of the need to vote in a way that protects fundamental human rights.

We took another caller, to whom I also got to respond, and the interview ended.

Though I felt by the end of the interview that I had finally been able to sketch a framework that made the Catholic view intelligible to the audience, I was still unhappy with the way the “interview” had been conducted and told the show’s producer so when she came on the line after my interview (the first time I think I’ve ever done that, even when very dissatisfied with an interviewer’s conduct, though I’ve never been left hanging on the phone for three consecutive callers before, not knowing if the interview is over, either). Her excuse for its poor quality being that they were trying to do too many things at once and couldn’t “please everybody.”

Afterwards, a friend quipped: “A Southern California National Public Radio station handling a conservative guest in a biased manner? Really?”

What I found most fascinating about the process, though, was the callers. It wasn’t just that the callers disagreed with me. I can understand people disagreeing on the issues (abortion, euthanasia, etc.) and trying to articulate an alternative viewpoint. It wasn’t even that the callers were inarticulate. My job as an apologist makes me a professional articulater, so I don’t hold callers to radio programs to a high standard of articulation. It was that the callers were simply incoherent–and people of every walk of life should be professional coherers.

Their statements were so disjointed, it was impossible to figure out what they were trying to get across. I heard a lot of emotion from them. There was anguish and indignation and sarcasm in their voices, but I couldn’t piece together coherent arguments. The best I could do was try to listen to the themes (e.g., religion, politics, sex) they seemed to be hitting and then respond to what I supposed an articulate person who disagreed with me might say about these themes.

Unfortunately, since I barely had any air time, I didn’t get to respond much at all.

Living in Southern California, I occasionally am made aware that many people simply live on a different moral planet than I do.

It’s never a fun experience.

Author: Jimmy Akin

Jimmy was born in Texas, grew up nominally Protestant, but at age 20 experienced a profound conversion to Christ. Planning on becoming a Protestant seminary professor, he started an intensive study of the Bible. But the more he immersed himself in Scripture the more he found to support the Catholic faith, and in 1992 he entered the Catholic Church. His conversion story, "A Triumph and a Tragedy," is published in Surprised by Truth. Besides being an author, Jimmy is the Senior Apologist at Catholic Answers, a contributing editor to Catholic Answers Magazine, and a weekly guest on "Catholic Answers Live." View all posts by Jimmy Akin