Last week, John Phillips, a talk radio host on KABC AM 790, had PBS SoCal CEO KOCE Mel Rogers on his program. The topic: PBS SoCal’s (aka KOCE-TV) news partnership with the Voice of OC, an outlet that receives almost all of its funding from public employee unions and Democratic politicians.
PBS SoCal’s “Real Orange” news show relies heavily on the Voice of OC for coverage of orange County government and politics, and broadcasts a regular feature with Norberto Santana, the editor-in-chief of the Voice.
Phillips confronted Rogers with the facts about the Voice: that its existence depends on funding from the Orange County Employees Association and Democratic politicians, and that it’s board of directors is dominated by liberals and Democratic partisans.
Here’s a link to the podcast of the interview. Instead of dealing with those facts, Mel Rogers keeps falling back on the same response, claiming the Voice provides fair, reliable investigative journalism:
“I’m concerned that viewers get fair, solid investigative journalism. Up to this point, we’ve never found an instance where Voice of OC has not given us that. And the day they do, we won’t have a relationship with them.”
Whether or not he meant to, Rogers spelled out a termination clause for SoCal PBS’s partnership with the Voice.
Clearly someone is spending too much time on the golf course and has no idea what’s going on in his so-called newsroom.
Since PBS gets my tax money, I think he should be fired!