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April 13, 2010 12:42 AM UTC

Questions for Norton filtered on conservative talk-radio show

  • 43 Comments
  • by: Jason Salzman

(Worth noting, not really surprising – promoted by Colorado Pols)

You know talk radio shows filter out unwanted questions and stop unwanted callers from getting on the air.

There’s the mute button, which the host can use to silence a caller with the tap of a finger.

And there’s the person (the producer or possibly the host herself) who fields the calls asks about the topic of the call.

But Ross Kaminsky, the host on Backbone radio http://backboneamerica.net/ yesterday, took call-filtering to the next level by asking his listeners to submit questions for his review. Then, he said, he’d select “at least one of them” to present to Republican U.S. candidate Jane Norton, who was featured in the last segment of his show.

By asking and selecting questions himself, Kaminsky eliminated the remote chance that a caller would get on their air and ask a question that Kaminsky didn’t want asked.

I asked Kaminsky if this take-no-questions-directly-from-callers arrangement was orchestrated in advance with the Norton campaign.

Kaminsky said it was not.

“The reason that I did was not in the interest of filtering,” he told me. “It was for time management. Frequently what happens is you get a caller and they spend one or two minutes with a preamble to their question. When I only have a total of about 17 minutes with a candidate what I have found is that too much time gets wasted. The intent of my approach was time management not filtering particular questions.”

I actually thought Kaminsky was gentle with Norton, but I’ll discuss this in my next post.

But tough questions aside, Kaminsky’s heavy approach to filtering questions was out of step with the way most talk-radio hosts conduct interviews. Conservative and liberal talk-show hosts allow callers to question candidates and politicians directly, and it usually makes for more engaging talk radio. The callers are often the best part of these shows, not the hosts.

“They [other talk-radio hosts] usually have much more time with a candidate than I had [with Norton], It’s a lot easier to take callers’ questions when you’ve got a candidate for an hour or two, or you know they are going to be on frequently.”

Plus, he said, he asked Norton every question he got.

By setting up his question-filtration system, Kaminsky makes his show smell bad.  That’s for sure.

Just like The Denver Post looks bad for publishing just one article in the last 27 weeks with a Norton quotation, obtained in an actual exchange with a reporter.

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43 thoughts on “Questions for Norton filtered on conservative talk-radio show”

  1. You’re a big proponent of being a journalist that’s straight-down-the-middle, eh?

    Didn’t you drive around the country with a caricature of Bush with flaming pants?

    2. doesn’t mean I can’t at least try to be fair in my writing–even if I state my own opinion.

      I tried to be fair to Ross in this Post.  

      1. You can’t keep your left-wing, pro-client agendas out of your posts. I’ve never seen you write a thing that was objective, fair or insightful.

  2. A person with a radio show who broadcasts what he wants to broadcast and who doesn’t broadcast what he doesn’t want to broadcast: Isn’t that the point of a talk show?

  3. I spoke with Jason Salzman fully knowing that his intent was to criticize me.

    I absolutely stand by my answers to him:

    I had 17 minutes planned with Jane Norton.  It ended up being 15 minutes because of phone trouble.  I did not want to lose two- or three-minute chunks to long question preambles by callers.

    Of the four questions I got, I asked three directly almost word for word and I got into the broader subject of one (which was health care).

    My intention was never to filter questions for the purpose of protecting Ms. Norton, and I did no such thing.

    After all, I’m having a hard time myself deciding whom I believe to be the best Republican candidate.

    The one comment that Mr. Salzman made to me which I thought had merit is that he thought it made a radio show more interesting to have the questioners themselves ask the question.  I do take that aspect of his comments seriously and might change my approach to allow the caller to ask the question directly after making sure the producer asks the caller to please make his or her introductory comment as brief as possible.

    At the end of the day, however, in addition to the specific defense I made to Mr. Salzman of my approach, I would say one other thing:

    It’s my show and if he wants something done a different way, he should get his own show.

    My intent is to help listeners be informed and entertained.  If my approach caused less of either of those than it could have, then I made a mistake.  My thought process at the time was that given the short time with Mrs. Norton on the air, it would probably be more informative to listeners if I asked the questions.  

    There was nothing sinister in the approach, no “filtering”, no protecting a candidate, and no request by the campaign for me to do it that way.

    Still, if the show could be just as informative but more entertaining with a different approach, I’m absolutely open to trying it a different way.

    And I will try to get Jane Norton back on the air within a couple of months and have the questioners question her directly.

    I will also try to do the same with Ken Buck, whom I expect to have on the show in two weeks.

    At the end of the day, I think it’s rather petty of Mr. Salzman to post his “critique” given that I explained all this to him in no uncertain terms.

    For him to write something saying I “filtered” the questions to Norton makes it sound like something it wasn’t — and Salzman claimed to believe me when I explained my approach to him.

    So either he’s utterly desperate to write anything bad about a non-liberal, no matter how petty, or else he’s calling me a liar.

    In either case, I’d expect better even from someone whom I recognize differs from my political views.

    At least I gave him the courtesy of telling him that I took seriously his comment about the show possibly being less entertaining than it could have been.

    And I say this to all of you with the full realization that most of you on the liberal-tending pages of ColoradoPols — at least those who know who I am — don’t like me very much.  I’m OK with that.  I’d just prefer a more honest criticism.  Anyway, I’m a big boy and none of the attempted politically-oriented criticism matters to me, but I do want to make my show as entertaining as possible (without sacrificing the informative aspects of the show). So for that, I thank Mr. Salzman for his insight.

          1. He’s the most trenchant commenter (including Salzman) on the thread.

            You guys are freaking out because you know that eventually reality has a collision course with a crazy liberal agenda, and that’s got to be really demoralizing.  

            November is only a few short months away, then you can go back to playing the victim.

            1. I’m thinking you need to ask for a lighter blend the next time you are at the dispensary.  You clearly are having some delusional experiences.

              Remember how you continually bragged about how Republicans were going to successfully obstruct health care reform and it was going to be Obama’s ticket to a single term.  So how did those bold and braggadocio predictions turn out for you?

              Are we supposed to be quaking in our boots over two uber-lobbyists from the Republican ranks pushing corporate welfare as the solution to all our problems?  If that is your fear factor Bubba then bring it on.  Your Attorney General is so idiotic that he has invited his own demise by using his office for GOP political purposes.  Someone is going to be looking over their shoulder but it might not be Democrats.

              FYI: The DOW finished over 11,000 points today.  If you are wishing that our economy fails so you can blame it on Obama then you really have turned into an unpleasant traitor.  But if the economy continues to recover then the big change election you are predicting is toast.  What a predicament you are in.

                1. like you are trying to convince yourself that your party really does stand for something positive and pragmatic.

                  The strain is showing in your vain attempts to characterize everything that Democrats do is a disaster for them and the country and there is going to be hell come election day.

                  The carefully controlled presentations with media sycophants like Kaminsky show that your party is terrified to let their candidates candidly speak because they know their candidates are stale lifeless personalities with little to offer other than warmed over and discredited Reaganomics.  I would be going all tightly controlled propaganda if I was Kaminsky because it is imperative for Republicans that the mask not slip on these candidates before election day. Their corporate masters would not be happy if these Stepford candidates are revealed for what they are.

                  1. Dude, we’re giddy about what’s about to happen.  18 months ago our party was being declared dead.

                    We’re about to take back Congress, and I’m barely able to contain my enthusiasm.

                    1. express it! it will be more enjoyable for the rest of us when you attempt to say ” I predicted these losses, back in April.”

                      the higher the expectations the lower you will feel when they do not come true.  

                    2. encounters with the real world then why do they only appear in tightly controlled propaganda events like the ones the fawning Kaminsky arranges for them?  You stiff upper lip seems more designed to bolster your fragile ego than any outward confidence that your party has moved beyond voodoo Reaganomics and is offering realistic solutions for a regulated economy and diverse population.

                      I didn’t know that helping people find jobs was a lefty “regime” plot to take away your liberties.  You really have been drinking too much tea lately.  Try some ingesting some real facts about the current state of the economy and check back with me later.  I think you are going to be shocked that the evil Obama administration hasn’t set up any death panels yet so you still have some ticks left on your mortal clock.  The world isn’t in as dire a condition has the last days of the evil Bush regime and voters are going to notice.

                    4. They don’t even want to extend unumployment benefits to these people.

                      Obviously Reagan didn’t even though he promised that trickle down was going to be good for even the non-wealthy.

                      Check the latest unemployment statistics if you want to check in with the real world or do you still believe that unregulated capitalism will automatically create jobs for all?  You seem to have a case of amnesia regarding who is outsourcing our jobs.

                    5. Who can’t get a job in 99 months?  Don’t you think that’s encouraging the wrong mindset?

    3. (OMG – this is my second comment tonight agreeing with a Republican – I’m going to hell, or at least heck, when I die.)

      When I interview I ask here for suggestions. I then go through those, along with the ones I have thought of, and come up with what I think are the questions that will best illustrate who the candidate is. It’s a judgement call, and we all make different decisions.

      But as Ross said, the amount of time is short and you want to get maximum bang for the buck. In addition questions in the line of “isn’t it true that everything you stand for is evil” are not terribly interesting – the candidate is not going to answer yes.

    1. I don’t get why Ross was surprised or irritated. Jason is nothing if not a blatant ski chalet Lib wearing the fashionable trenchcoat of “progressive” because he thinks like AltRock it makes him hip and edgy.

      Just a quick look it his posts.. Heck his websites show that as a FACT. OMG, his website is titled “Progressive”.

      C’mon, Jason. Sometimes its sometime nice, but never anything but focused on getting your Dem elected. Which is it that you support anyway?

  5. It’s hard to determine which ranks higher on the unintentional comedy scale, the mixture of this “host” and this candidate, or the fact that more people probably read this post than actually heard the program.

    As for Kaminsky making his show smell bad, that’s never stopped him with his lightly trafficked blog, so why expect it now?

    1. Mr. Menezes,

      As I recall, you were fired from your job as a “media watchdog” because your lies weren’t effective in Colorado.  Didn’t Soros move you out to the prairie somewhere?

      Really, could your opinion be any less relevant?

      2. 🙂

        You sound a lot better when you stick to the high road. Republicans should learn to do that more often. They’ll win more elections.

        1. Sometimes it’s hard to stick to the high road when someone is so intent on dragging you on to the muck-filled path he’s on.  Hard to say whether it would have been better for me to ignore Menezes, but I rather enjoyed my response.

          At least Jason Salzman was civil in disagreement.  Menezes is just bitter and jealous, it seems to me.

          Anyway, I’ll take it as a minor victory that you agreed with me for even a few moments.

          As for the high road and winning elections, let’s talk in November…

            1. Ralphie,

              You might like Menezes and dislike me, but really, what about his comment was “light-hearted”?  It was snide and insulting. And of course he has every right to be either or both.  But I have a right to respond.

              As for shameless self-promotion, I please guilty.

              Do me a favor and get your own radio show and then don’t do any “self-promotion” and see how it goes.

              I don’t apologize for self-promotion, shameless or otherwise, especially because I am not paid to do the radio show. I do it because I enjoy it and I think it is (or could be important.)

              And don’t bother trying to insult me by saying “nobody would pay no”…I recognize that might be true, though I hope that with practice it will certainly not be true in the future.  But self-promotion is a necessary tool of the media game.  Did you ever accuse Menezes of self-promotion?  He makes me look like a piker in that arena.

  6. Your source, Jason???

    But tough questions aside, Kaminsky’s heavy approach to filtering questions was out of step with the way most talk-radio hosts conduct interviews. Conservative and liberal talk-show hosts allow callers to question candidates and politicians directly,

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