Public-Broadcasting Critic Signs On as KCRW Host

David Horowitz, the arch-leftist-turned-conservative who has spent the better part of the last two years excoriating public broadcasting for what he says is a left-wing bias, is about to join the fold.

Starting May 15, Horowitz, who has taken credit for framing the current U.S. Senate debate over whether public broadcasting has liberal tendencies, will host a weekly afternoon interview program on KCRW-FM (89.9), the Santa Monica-based public-radio station.

Horowitz said he plans to call the program “Second Thoughts,” based on the title of the book “Destructive Generation: Second Thoughts About the ‘60s,” written by him and his partner, Peter Collier. The show will focus on ferreting out what he sees as the pervasive influence of leftists and liberals in American culture.

“I’m concerned about the places where there have been the greatest distortions, where the left is most entrenched,” Horowitz said, “where I can confront in the arena of ideas my former self and my former comrades.”

KCRW General Manager Ruth Hirschman said that she invited Horowitz to take the unpaid host position because she wanted to put a conservative voice on the air, and Horowitz promised to be contentious enough to hold listeners’ attention.

“I thought David would be perfect, because since he was on the left and is now on the right, he knows where all the bodies are buried,” Hirschman said. “We could have gotten a rather straight-line, main-line conservative, but I think the audience would have been bored.”

The idea, Hirschman said only partially in jest, was “to drive everybody up the wall,” while also rectifying Horowitz’s complaint that conservative voices were not being heard.

“I think we’ve got to give them a microphone and let them speak,” Hirschman said. “And this program isn’t about public broadcasting. This program is going to be about international and national issues. And it’s going to be about a right-wing perspective.”

The nation has had conservative Republican presidents for the last 12 years, Hirschman said, and without conservative voices, public broadcasting risks being ignored.

But Jeff Cohen, executive director of the liberal media watchdog group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, criticized the move, calling Horowitz a “censor” and disputing his contention that conservative voices are not heard.

“Who’s he balancing out there?” Cohen asked in a telephone interview from New York City. “Right-wing radio hosts are a tradition in Southern California.”

Hirschman, he said, was trying to “placate the people who want to abolish public broadcasting” by putting Horowitz on the air. He accused Horowitz, who once claimed credit for persuading public-television station KCET to take the program “South Africa Now” off the air, of being more interested in censorship than balance.

“David Horowitz’s perspective is everywhere,” Cohen said. “From Rush Limbaugh to John McLaughlin to Morton Kondracke, they go right, righter, rightist.”

Horowitz echoed Hirschman in saying his show will not focus on public broadcasting, explaining that he’s already been interviewed on KCRW about public broadcasting and that his views on the subject are already well known.

“We have made a serious critique of the system, which has taken over a year,” Horowitz said. “The view has been taken up by . . . some senators, and I expect public broadcasting will make some movement. . . . If I come out every week with a broadside, it’s just not going to do any good.”

Hirschman, known in public broadcasting as an aggressive fund raiser, has another theory about the future of Horowitz’s attacks on public broadcasting.

“I’m looking forward to running a subscription drive with him; I’m very curious to see how he pitches (for donations),” she said. “I think that by the time we’re finished, he’s going to be an advocate for public broadcasting. He’s going to be part of the mix.”