Portrait of Ralph Nader by Robert Shetterly
Listen to interview with Ralph Nader on WPFW Pacifica Radio
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Interview by Pete Tucker, written report by Chris Lewis (@Chris_Lewis_)
NPR is supposed to be full of liberals, right? Consumer advocate Ralph Nader would beg to differ. “Progressive leaders can’t get on public radio,” he said last week on WPFW Pacifica Radio. “The right wing gets on far more, because they’re afraid of the right wing. Public radio knows the right wing can stir it up in Congress.”
Nader spoke on the importance of Pacifica Radio and other independent media with WPFW Local Station Board chair Tony Norman and LSB member Pete Tucker.
“Just look at the news and look at the mainstream media and what is not covered,” he said. Conventional news outlets fail to explore the contradictions in American society, according to Nader.
For instance, student loans typically carry an interest rate between 3.5 and 9 percent, but “big banks can draw billions of dollars of borrowing from the Federal Reserve virtually free of interest,” he said. “It’s these kinds of contrasts that are almost never made by the mass media.”
Stations like WPFW play this vital role, Nader said. A former presidential candidate, Nader said Pacifica was “the only radio network that was accessible to us when I was running for president.” During the 2000 presidential race, Nader explained that he received a combined three-and-a-half minutes of airtime between Labor Day and Election Day from ABC, NBC, CBS, and CNN. “And we were polling five, six, seven, eight percent,” he said.
Listen to the interview to hear Nader on the Occupy movement, and why it should adopt the fight for a ten-dollar minimum wage as its signature cause.
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