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February 7, 2005
Social Security and KPBS
Last week Full Focus, a local television show on KPBS, had a special on the proposed changes to Social Security. The program featured host Gloria Penner along with three guests, Democrat Congressman Bob Filner, UCSD History professor Michael Bernstein, and San Diego County Treasurer Dan McAllister. Both Filner and Bernstein were both strongly opposed to giving workers the option of investing a portion of their payroll taxes in private accounts, while McAllister agreed that there were problems with the President's proposal and suggested the matter needed further study.
Gloria Penner did her best to add a few Bush quotes to the debate, as she realized her viewers were only getting one side of the story. But as the host of the show, she was not prepared to fully defend some of the proposed changes. The guests left viewers with the impression that there were no imminent problems with Social Security, and that the trust fund was something Americans could count on to fund their retirement far into the future.
I was dumbfounded as to why no guest was present to defend a partial privatization of Social Security, so I fired off an email to complain how one-sided the show was in my opinion.
The next night Gloria read a portion of my letter (below) on the air, followed by an explanation that while they tried to get a Republican in Congress to come on to defend the President's proposal, none took them up on their offer. Still, surely they could have found at least one professor at UCSD, USD, or SDSU who supports the President's proposal I thought to myself.
Nonetheless, I thought that was an adequate response to my complaint but to my surprise the show's Executive Producer contacted me the next day, with another explanation and a response from Bernstein regarding some of my complaints. It led to an interesting correspondence that concluded with the possibility that I might be a guest on their show when they address the issue again in the future. We'll see what happens, but no matter what I was quite impressed with the follow-up on behalf of KPBS.
One final point, the numbers I used in the email below don't really tell the whole story. I'll be posting again on that topic in the next few days so stay tuned.
Posted by Peter Mork at February 7, 2005 10:41 PM
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