In Response to “On the Media” Episode “There Must Be Another Way”

This post is written in reply to WNYC’s program “On the Media” August 5, 2016 episode, entitled “There Must Be Another Way”. The topic of the episode was third party voting in the United States.

While I have mixed feelings about the episode as a whole, mostly I came away disappointed. While I didn’t appreciate the point of view of the show, that America’s crappy first-over-the-line electoral system renders votes for third parties irrelevant or wasted, I did feel like that was at least partially balanced out by contrary points of view that were permitted to appear, such as the voice of Ralph Nader.

What was really unforgivable about the show, however, was the elephant inhabiting the room that must have all but crushed Bob and Brooke with its huge fat ass when you were recording it. Not once did our intrepid hosts utter the words “libertarian”, not once did they allow “Gary Johnson” to pass their lips and make it out of the editing room. There was exactly one off-hand mention of that name, by one interview subject on the show. And he was just talking about how the Johnson votes would cancel out the Stein votes.

Really? You think you can just ignore that in your episode dedicated to third parties? When you went to Russia, did you ignore Vladimir Putin and United Russia?

In this year, with the kind of public outcry against the two-party system that is unprecedented in post-war politics, when third-party support is through the roof, it doesn’t occur to you to so much as mention the party or the candidate that is garnering by far the largest support? The party that has been working for decades to garner the kinds of polling numbers that they now enjoy? The party whose national polling numbers are knocking at the door of those presidential debates you mentioned?

The Libertarian Party is enjoying a breakout year, the kind that has never occurred in neither my lifetime nor in the careers of Bob and Brooke, and you interview…. Ralph Nader? The LP increases support and donations by an entire order of magnitude and you interview Ralph Nader’s campaign manager? The youth vote favors Gary Johnson by huge margins, you have elected Republicans at all levels, federal, state, and municipal, jumping ship and registering Libertarian, and you spend the entire episode wondering if Jill Stein will get to 5% or deprive Clinton of Pennsylvania?

Even if you just consider the angle of, actually covering the changing media landscape, the omission is gigantic. When Gary Johnson is polling higher with Millennials than major party candidates, when CNN is having multiple Libertarian Town Halls during prime time (and winning the hour’s ratings when they do), when even the New York Times Op-Ed page is encouraging its readers to take a good, objective read of the Johnson platform and plan for criminal justice reform, we get an episode where the program on media trends fails to cover this enormous shift in how the media is covering the Libertarians? How many more magazine covers does Johnson need to appear on before it occurs to you to maybe give him a call before the guy who ran almost 2 decades ago? The press figured out that Libertarians are finally a credible story this year. Why haven’t you?

If either major party will face a “spoiler” this year (and I agree with Ralph Nader on that word), it will be the Republicans, and the wound might even prove fatal. With the Libertarian Party taking in the huge numbers it’s seeing this year, and finally presenting a threat to the GOP coalition that cannot be easily dismissed, it makes the lack of attention paid to the libertarian threat all the more inexplicable.

This seems like such an incredible omission to me, I am at a loss when wondering how the episode came together like it did. Perhaps it’s time to widen the perspective of the show, and hire someone that reads Reason, Rare, and, God help you, Breitbart.