Armed Forces Radio Tunes Out Liberal Show Host

Liberal radio talker Ed Schultz was eagerly anticipating his debut yesterday on Armed Forces Radio, which agreed last month to carry his program to nearly a million soldiers around the world. But at 7 a.m., Schultz's producer got a call from Allison Barber, the Pentagon's deputy assistant secretary for internal communications, who said without explanation that the deal was off. Perhaps, Schultz said in an interview, it was just a coincidence that he spent the end of last week chastising Barber for coaching a group of U.S. soldiers in Iraq before a teleconference with President Bush. Barber was seen repeatedly on television last week asking mock questions to soldiers in Iraq, who generally gave responses similar to those they would momentarily provide to the president. Schultz played some of these clips on his show. The Pentagon said the soldiers were not rehearsed but apologized for "any perception that they were told what to say." "The fact is, they don't want dissenting voices or any other kind of speech unless it's going to be promotional for them. Obviously, these people are making sure they're not going to have any opinion other than the Rush Limbaughs of the world," Schultz said.
[SOURCE: Washington Post, AUTHOR: Howard Kurtz]
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/10/17/AR200510...
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In a related story:
* In Sign of Conservative Split, a Commentator Is Dismissed
In the latest sign of the deepening split among conservatives over how far to go in challenging President Bush, Bruce Bartlett, a Republican commentator who has been increasingly critical of the White House, was dismissed on Monday as a senior fellow at the National Center for Policy Analysis, a conservative research group based in Dallas.
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/18/politics/18bartlett.html?pagewanted=all
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