The New York Observer, August 22nd, 2005
In today's New York Post, Brian Maloney and Michelle Malkin take a hatchet to the straw man that is Air America Radio. The right wing dynamic duo look at the liberal radio station's dealings with the Gloria Wise Boys & Girls Club of the Bronx (See: Investigators probe community center loan to Air America Radio, AP, Newsday, Aug. 12, 2005) and its checkered financial past.
But what's really got Maloney and Malkin worked up is a gushy quote from The New York Times—cough, cough, The Liberal New York Times—that seems to gloss over the station's financial problems:
Air America, the much-hyped liberal media venture that was supposed to revolutionize talk radio, is "solvent and apparently stable": So claim the gullible cheerleaders at The New York Times, who made that unsubstantiated assertion in a recent glowing profile of Air America host Janeane Garofalo.Seems like an egregious oversight, no? How could The
Times see fit to print such a phrase in a recent profile if the station is being probed by Eliot Spitzer?
Well, it all depends on what your definition of 'recent' is. The above quotation comes from a Times 'Arts & Leisure' profile of Garofalo, by Paula Span, And Don't Even Get Her Started on the War, from March 27—nearly four months before the whole Air America/Gloria Wise story broke in late July.
Related: From the online edition of Maloney and Malkin's piece, as of 10:30 AM, EST:
The dispute made national headlines in April 2004, when Multicultural Radio booted Air America off its stations in Chicago and Los Angeles over bounced checks. [cun: may lose this stuff: ] A New York judge ruled against Air America and castigated it for its "meritless" legal actions against Multicultural Radio in June 2004 — yet the network has since remained mum about its failure to pay up.Or, hey, you could keep it in there. (Emphasis added)
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Matt Haber
